Deconstruction

Deconstruction as a concept is a direct response to structuralism. Structuralism emphasizes a causality between systems and people. Think of structures as things such as marriage, family, government. These are institutional systems. Structuralism sought to simply define the structures in place.

Durkheim’s anthropological structuralism viewed the structure as reinforcing cultural expressions. For example, marriage reinforced monogamy on a cultural level. Marriage reinforced the family. As a result, marriage had to outcast those who did NOT reinforce the family. Thus cultural discrimination is explained, but not excused, by the structure.

Sociological structuralism is more nebulous, but it typically views structures as reinforced by society instead of culture. Structures condition behaviors or demand behaviors of us to fit within the social framework and hierarchy. Marx viewed these structures as favoring the class elite and oppressing the lesser class. Feminists mark through “class” and put in “gender.”

It bears stating: Deconstruction was not written with social change in mind. Deconstruction was, by and large, applied to words, syntax, and linguistic complexities. In fact, the books published by Derrida were Speech and Phenomena and Writing and Difference. Social change was not in the text.

Social postmodernists grabbed hold of deconstruction and turned it into an analytic tool. In fact, criticism has come to be inflated with deconstruction.

However, some critics are very pleased with stopping at postmodern deconstruction. The nature of the method appears to be academically based, but it is entirely subjective in nature. As a small thought experiment, which of these two sounds more authoritative and “correct:”

Men hate women and they keep them from doing things.

Societal norms and cultural values reinforce an invisible systemic problem of patriarchy by transmitting sociocultural expectations in traditional and new media that impart a belief structure in young women that they are powerless to oppressive, toxic masculinity that is also reinforced by the patriarchy. In this manner, the patriarchy hurts all.

Take as an example this article which aims to utilize social media for social deconstruction. In it, the author states that the cellular phone is resulting in a loss of social and cultural consciousness. Technology, as a result, has caused us to lose connection.

Look at the man with the green book. Look at the man with the black book next to the man with the green book. There are 4 people visible in this picture. Two of them have cellular phones. Two of them have books.

Cellular phones are causing a social problem by supplementing technology for human communication. Books, however, appear fine.

This is the root problem of deconstructionism. Deconstructionism relies, as one would expect, on the internal state and view of the observer as expert. This is a representation of something that Derrida wrote about in his Of Grammatology. In it, Derrida says that meaning of something is directly related to presence of the something in opposition by virtue of that thing existing and observed.

Patriarchy, due to its counter-existence, can be assigned meaning. This meaning, because patriarchy exists, is immutable. It has stability in meaning. The root of this is supposed to be the nature of linguistics. What are you in front of now? A computer. A computer is a computer. The computer will not jump up tomorrow and be a car. By virtue of it existing and us assigning a label, the object exists and will forever exist in its current form.

Furthermore, a computer only has meaning because it is not everything that is not a computer. If a computer turns into something that is not a computer, say a car, then the computer has no meaning.

Patriarchy has meaning because it is something that is not whatever patriarchy is not. It is opposite of not-patriarchy. Therefore because it’s not something else, it is something unique and immutable. “Blue” is not “blue,” it is “everything but blue.”

Therefore words are defined by their opposition status to another object. This is presented as a truth to the nature of words, things, and institutions. To handle the problem of existing terms, new terms must be created after the examination/deconstruction of old terms.

The problem here is, of course, that games journalists state that they cannot be objective or positivist. They can only be subjective or relativist. However, if you are relativist, you are not positivist. Positivism and relativism sit oppositional to each other both in argument and as items under deconstruction.

Not only are some using deconstruction incorrectly and conflating it with reviewing, they’re also getting the logic surrounding deconstruction incorrect.

Some want to embrace post-modern relativism while simultaneously accepting post-modern deconstructionism, refuting the possibility of positivism while using positivism to gain credibility, and engage in all forms of review while using none of them.

If you’re confused, you should be. We’re in a world where some can assert the universality of the patriarchy as an external, long-extant concept defined entirely by internalized concepts and experiences; this must be accepted as truth in a world where there is supposedly no truth.

Some games journalists are trying to be simultaneously positivist and postmodern. They are saying that they hold expert status for critical review while outright rejecting that there is an expert status for narrative review. Their reviews should be taken seriously as professionals, but they should not be held to the standard of professionalism requiring objectivity.

They are upholding the absolute truth of one concept (it’s absolutely true you cannot be objective) while simultaneously declaring another truth (there is no absolute truth) to unequivocally reject deconstruction of their own relativistic behaviors while accepting deconstruction derived from one point of view as truth.

In short, it’s a paradox, baby. A big, nasty paradox.