I use language just to screw you

[Guest guest]

you can check my new list:

 

deconstructionism/

 

 

--- the self serving will to power of language ---

 

from this pdf document:

http://www.intervarsity.org/evangelism/download.php?

article_id=2122 & version_id=3261

 

Definitions and descriptions are descriptions of a language game,

or rather a whole series of related language games, and definitions

occur in these language games.12Thus, language is a social

construct, whose terms and usage have social and political

implications. It is a game, and we can never escape the cage of

language in the ways that we understand our world, or talk about

our world. Language is necessarily connected to the worldview and

position of the people constructing it. This understanding of the

nature of language has profound implications. Here is an important

one: Self-serving bias doesnft just operate in the ways we use

language, it operates in the ways we created language. In other

words, self-serving bias is not only operative in how we use Grand

Stories, but even in how we create and use language itself. Jacques

Derrida is certainly one of the most brilliant and influential

advocates of the continuing critique of the nature of language.

Derrida shows how language itself can be inherently unjust and self-

serving. Then he proposes a method, called deconstruction, for

overcoming the very exclusion and injustice that language itself

fosters. As Ifve talked with Evangelical Christians, I have found

widespread misunderstanding and misconstrual of Derridafs basic

program against exclusion. Derrida, like other postmodern thinkers,

is battling for awareness about the self serving will to power, and

the ways that self serving will to power is integrated into the

very nature of language creation and usage. 11Ludwig Wittgenstein.

The Wittgenstein Reader.

All language systems have been built around polar or binary

opposites, Derrida suggests. God/devil, Christian/pagan,

civilized/barbarian, good/evil, Man/Woman, Christian/ Muslim, white/

colored, rational/insane, rich/poor, proletariat/bourgeoisie,

strong/weak and many other binary opposites lie at the heart of our

most common Western Grand Stories and the languages used to express

those stories. Those language terms have no meaning outside of the

whole system of thinking and of worldview that lies behind those

terms. And in each Grand Story, and in each corresponding system of

language games, one term or group is preferred and the other is

marginalized. The Postmodern critique arises out of this experience

of oppression and marginalization for the less valued term or group.

Derrida wants to overcome the inherent injustice rooted in the

nature of language itself. Derrida spares no one in his critique,

whether Christian, Marxist, humanist or postmodern. For instance,

Derrida, in a celebrated article on Foucault showed how Foucault

reinforced the very dichotomy between reason and madness that he was

trying to overcome in his book Madness and Civilization. (See

Derrida, gCogito and the History of Madnessh, Writing and

Difference). Derridafs analysis is brilliantand disturbing. Derrida

recognized that texts are full of tension. Language is always used

in ways that reinforce the dominance of one term or group over other

terms or groups. But Derrida also recognized that such simple

readings of texts often ignore crucial tensions that actually undo

some of the very dominance that the text is apparently trying to

promote. So Derrida de-centers the central term in a text, with the

goal of setting a language free from its dominance/suppression

dynamics. So the goal of postmodern critique is to overcome and

subvert relations of dominance that have been destructive. These

relationships of dominance are subverted in different ways by

different thinkers. But always the goal is subverting relations of

power and dominance. At the heart of the effort is the commitment to

let the Other speak and influence and be central. In the end, it is

not the reversal of power, but a new way to pursue discourse. We

pursue discourse through the playful dialogue between opposites. The

Other is now a valued partner in a playful dialogue and discourse.

What can we learn here? We can learn from the postmodern critique,

but we as Christ followers will reject the postmodern solution.

Playing in peace among completely incommensurable language games is

impossible and ultimately meaningless. In the end, after

deconstructing the Grand Stories and language systems, postmodern

critique is left with no real path from the gish to the goughth. No

new justice has emerged, but only a billion little atoms of

individual and communal justice bouncing endlessly and fruitlessly

against one another. All that is left is Nietzschefs Dionysian

ethic, the ethic of instinct and passion, the gish with no goughth

to channel it.

[Guest guest]

Which brings me to this:

more than the indefatigable tension towards overcoming you as an

adversary by my use of logic and arguments, there is the guilt

ridden tension that there is nothing i can do, say or think that is

not an attempt to (self-)destruction.