The cleansing act of deconstruction...

Jonathan Hall has a long, excellent article over at the Ooze, which I'd encourage you to read in its entirety. In it he says:

I was motivated to write this article after reading Jacques Derrida's "On Hospitality", which was recommended to me one day by a professor from South America for my research project on migration and conflict. I put down that article feeling I was onto something great, but also feeling overwhelmingly in the dark regarding what deconstruction really meant to me...

The act of deconstruction can be illustrated by examining the concepts "Justice" and "law". Imagine that justice is "undeconstructable". Justice is not a construct itself, but rather some future state, something indescribable, even impossible. Law, on the other hand, is a representation of Justice here and now, or rather, situated in some specific place and time. Law is contingent. It is historically and contextually embedded.

So what is deconstruction in relation to these two concepts? Law is the construction of Justice, its representation in a given time and place, relative to specific historical, cultural, psycho-social reference points. To deconstruct "law" is to reveal its boundedness in this network of relationships, to uncover its contingency, its dependency on a specific set of historical circumstances...

So what is the value of deconstruction (reconstruction)? The value is, I think, two-fold.

First, it is to reinvigorate constructions by crafting them in relation to the present. In so doing, they are made functional again. The law must govern a changing social world. The construction of justice in the present (the law) cannot fulfill its own standard of justice if it is not relevant to its current context.

Second, deconstruction can occur in such a way that it points to Justice, the undeconstructable, the unknowable, the impossible future. Reconstruction is limited to situating concepts once again in a context, but in the process we may hint at what Justice might be. We never attain it. Our representations cannot mirror the "undeconstructable". But the process of deconstruction and reconstruction may point towards it, hint at it, long for it, cry out for it, cry for it.

Deconstruction is thus the continual longing for the undeconstructable, and in that sense it is deeply relevant to a religious standpoint and a belief in the existence and relevance of God. It is not relativism, but rather a seeking of the truth with immensely high standards. It is unsatisfied with modernity and its constructions which, though attempts at perfection, ultimately fail to reflect the True, the Good, the Beautiful; or in the case of law, Justice. It is in the striving that we come closest to Justice, and indeed, to God and all that is undeconstructable. Or, in paraphrasing something Jack Caputo has said, it is in the dark of night that faith has superior capacity as a way of knowing. The darkness stands between our deconstructions, or reconstructions (and our rational capacity), and that which lies beyond. In looking towards the future, the impossible, it is ultimately faith that guides us...

It is by continuously deconstructing and reconstructing that we become better at seeking God, and also ourselves. Our imaginations of God and ourselves will never be correct. We must be playful with them, with the language and concepts we use to describe them, to act on them. We must focus not on better constructions, but better processes of deconstruction that point towards the undeconstructable.

Our job is to point, not to capture. Perhaps it is only God that is. We are only becoming.

Stirring stuff, and strangely moving for someone like me, who has in the past tended to read Derrida as corrosive to faith, and to the possibility of a valid encounter with truth. Either I misunderstood, and needed Jonathan's fresh and lucid reading, or Jonathan has built upon Derrida's foundation a new thing. Either way, he's done something pretty tremendous, which deserves far greater recognition than this article will probably receive.