Caltrops - We Love Katamari





	[quote name="Zsenitan"][quote name="Dear Lord.."]Says the one who derives homoeroticism from a teacher-student relationship. also deconstruct \|ˌdēkənˈstrəkt\| verb [ trans. ] analyze (a text or a linguistic or conceptual system) by deconstruction, typically in order to expose its hidden internal assumptions and contradictions and subvert its apparent significance or unity [/quote] Right, even though that's a shitty definition (it doesn't even mention culture or context, and it's circular, plus it's inherently funny to whip out a dictionary in this particular argument, plus you didn't even provide a source) it is still in the ballpark. That definition doesn't mean "provide really accurate and point-by-point specific reasons why someone is wrong" which is what you and that Ryuichi idiot want it to mean. There's nothing particularly modern about telling people why they are wrong. It doesn't need a name any more accurate or recent than "argument." You are thinking about the word magically. You have this word, "deconstruct," and its form suggests something to you - a splendid, incisive, powerful attack that dissolves everything in its path like a magic anime sword; or a furious army of microscopic truths which disassemble an argument like tearing apart the letters that make up the words. In order to arrive at your present misguided position, you take the actual word as a sigil and impute the imagined powers of your definition to it. Now the word, instead of an actual word with an actual meaning, is a kind of fetish or charm. You want to write it and have its (again, purely imputed) powers invoked. In this sensual, epic, magical word of your personal language, actual deconstruction roams like a dark wizard whose only goal is to mock and annihilate the beautiful phrases and meanings that you and others have built around yourselves. Actual deconstruction <i>is</i> reading faggotry in your teacher-student relationship - worse, it reads faggotry into your teacher-student relationship, and leaves it up to you to make some kind of call on whether that's a "good" thing or a "bad" thing. Deconstruction tells you that the way you are using language can be characterizes as "magical" and allows you to picture yourself as a cosplaying fool in response - but it does not tell you to picture yourself as a cosplaying fool. Deconstruction does not provide judgments on rightness or wrongness, nor can it be used to subsidize rightness or wrongness. You can attempt to prove something right or wrong, <i>or</i> you can attempt to deconstruct it - talking about where it came from, why it was written, how the words are used, what they mean, where their meaning came from and why they were written, putting it into context with other elements of culture, categorizing it with a group of peers as you note particular characteristics. To plain, straightforward, right-or-wrong-type people, deconstruction looks like a lot of wankery and head games, and it seems like anything can be shown to mean any other thing at will. It looks like a boring and interminable game - the kind that Wittgenstein was so fond of. To deconstruct <i>and</i> prove right or wrong is to point to a shifting seething place in an ocean of human interest and probability, call it wrong, and then say that it doesn't matter. I'm telling you all this not to hammer you with a Me Big You Small position like so much icycalm. I'm telling you this because I sympathise with your position (despite calling you a fag.) You have a beautiful and coherent dream of the way things are supposed to work. Indeed, there's no reason that they can't work that way. But they can't work that way <i>here</i>, nor any other place where actual scholarly-type people hang out.[/quote]