I am very happy to admit that I am intrigued by Post-structuralism and Deconstruction. I think I know more about Differance and the idea of infinite, open ended significations than Structuralism itself, though Structuralism led to this reformation of thought.
To be honest, I think this theory shedding light on the undoing of binary oppositions is very good and interesting in theory, but not in the practical world we live in. Why? Let me explain.
I believe in absolutes, in good and evil, beautiful and ugly, just and unjust, spirituality and depravity (arbitrary as I may be as an individual). Even though my absolutes are different from the next person's, they are still absolutes in my universe, and to be blunt, I am egocentric like any other. All that matters to me is me.
Because we are human beings, infinitesimal specks of dust, insignificant to the larger context, and limited in our perception, we are not created to bear the idea of infinite possibilities. We were created to live and die, to begin and end; therefore we are creatures of extremes, endings, and limitations. There is no way we can fully grasp the concept there are no identities, that all we can rely on are differences. This notion of endless signs and significations is too high above our realm of comprehension and functioning. Just as a dog will never fathom the intricacies of Derrida, we will never grasp the Greater Workings of the Universe. We should just be content with extremes of thought and coming to terms with the grayness in between. I mean, come on, if the gray areas are hard enough to live by, how are we supposed to live with infinities?
There is a reason we have laws and boundaries and borders. There is a reason we pass judgments on others, why we stereotype people and reserve our prejudices. It's because we were not created to figure out the grandiosity and totality of the universe. We are here to serve ourselves and even in serving others, we are still serving ourselves, never the higher cosmos. So why even bother to be so high and mighty, when that is left to some greater being, God? And really, what is God? Another container to encapsulate meaning so it doesn't run away from us.
In my opinion, absolutes and binary opposites, one signifier per signified, is the reality of our reality. And endless signifiers and signifieds is the reality of the universe's reality. We can not marry our reality with that of the universe's. We must exist as binary opposites (ha ha).
This whole idea that nothing can be contained, that there are no identities, is chaos of thought. I do not believe in chaos--there are no answers in chaos, and human beings must answer many questions in life. We survive on truths, not truths of truths of truths. We need the essence, the epitome of existence. We can't flourish amidst confusion and anarchy. We were made for structure as we have built half the earth into structures and buildings and left the other half to what we'll never grasp.
In order to keep sane, we cannot believe in this "ongoing network of relays and references" (Rivkin and Ryan 259). We must preserve our human side and know that we'll never get the answers in this reality, maybe when we die, who knows? But really, who wants to know? Sometimes it's true, ignorance is bliss. So, we must be happy in our little cubicles of the universe and not allow ourselves to get too caught up in our dreamy ponderings. We are creatures of thought. Wait a minute, perhaps we were made to hypothesize endlessly. Perhaps crazy postulations are inevitable in our beings. Perhaps we are projecting our thoughts, our grandiose ideations onto a blank screen, a universe that contains nothing, that means nothing, that perhaps in its entirety is smaller than a fragment of one person's consciousness. We may be far more complex than this ever-expanding-shrinking universe. Who knows? Yes, questions and confusions are inevitable in the human reign.
See, I love Post-structuralism!
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