Deconstruction Quotes

• Deconstruction insists not that truth is illusory but that it is institutional.

  Terry Eagleton

  Truth Is, Illusory

  "Frère Jacques: The Politics of Deconstruction". Book by Terry Eagleton, 1984.

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• That is what deconstruction is made of: not the mixture but the tension between memory, fidelity, the preservation of something that has been given to us, and, at the same time, heterogeneity, something absolutely new, and a break.

  Jacques Derrida

  Memories, Mixtures, Break

  Jacques Derrida, John D. Caputo (1997). “Deconstruction in a Nutshell: A Conversation with Jacques Derrida”, p.6, Fordham Univ Press

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• I always dream of a pen that would be a syringe.

  Jacques Derrida

  Dream, Communication, Would Be

  Geoffrey Bennington, Jacques Derrida (1999). “Jacques Derrida”, p.20, University of Chicago Press

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• I would say that deconstruction is affirmation rather than questioning, in a sense which is not positive: I would distinguish between the positive, or positions, and affirmations. I think that deconstruction is affirmative rather than questioning: this affirmation goes through some radical questioning, but it is not questioning in the field of analysis.

  Jacques Derrida

  Thinking, Analysis, Fields

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• I think the purpose of deconstruction is to take something apart and see how it works. If you're not going to put it back together again and watch it go, what's the point?

  Kurt Busiek

  Thinking, Together Again, Purpose

  Source: www.avclub.com

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• Cartooning is about deconstruction: you gotta tear something down to make a joke.

  Berkeley Breathed

  Tears, Jokes

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• Deconstruction glorifies the critic, humiliates the author, and makes the reader wonder why he bothered.

  Mason Cooley

  Wonder, Critics, Reader

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• What I think I have in common with the school of deconstruction is the mode of negative thinking or negative awareness, in the technical, philosophical sense of the negative, but which comes to me through negative theology.

  Harold Bloom

  Philosophical, School, Thinking

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• Deconstruction never had meaning or interest, at least in my eyes, than as a radicalization, that is to say, also within the tradition of a certain Marxism, in a certain spirit of Marxism.

  Jacques Derrida

  Eye, Spirit, Tradition

  "Moscou aller-retour" by Jacques Derrida, Saint Etienne: De l'Aube, 1995.

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• Oh see, first off you gotta realize - everything for me is a reconstruction or deconstruction. I would actually say deconstruction. Mission: Impossible would be the exception. That would be a reconstruction- deconstruction.

  Danny Elfman

  Would Be, Firsts, Impossible

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• I'm talking to you and it's basically a direct communication, whereas if I'm writing a letter to you and you read the letter, there are like 12 extra deconstruction and reconstruction steps in the communication.

  Kevin J. Anderson

  Communication, Writing, Talking

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• There is nothing outside the text

  Jacques Derrida

  Of Grammatology pt. 2, sec. 2 (1967)

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• I am someone who values truth - actual truth as opposed to "truthiness." I am also someone who has been trained in deconstruction in the literary theory department of Yale University, so I am someone who is tempted to believe that no absolute truth is possible.

  John Hodgman

  Believe, Literary Theory, Yale

  Interview with Scott Tobias, www.avclub.com. October 21, 2008.

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• If you deconstruct Greece, you will in the end see an olive tree, a grapevine, and a boat remain. That is, with as much, you reconstruct her.

  Odysseas Elytis

  Country, Poetry, Tree

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• Deconstruction is not meant to be a soft sighing for the future, but a way of deciding now and being impassioned in a moment.

  John D. Caputo

  Way, Moments, Impassioned

  John D. Caputo (1997). “The Prayers and Tears of Jacques Derrida: Religion Without Religion”, p.125, Indiana University Press

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• If you look at capitalism and patriarchy, they're both such hierarchical, competitive, oneupmanship systems. They've trained us all [to think] that power means having all the goods or having the most money or having the most attention or having the most fame. That's not the power that interests me. Actually, the deconstruction of that power is what interests me.

  Eve Ensler

  Mean, Thinking, Looks

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• Most of my formal choices are a combination of everything I learned about form - semiotics, linguistics, and the history of style experimentations tethered to literary movements (formalism, deconstruction, modernism, and postmodernism), and the basic principal of breaking every rule I ever learned from a patriarchal writing tradition that never included my body or experience, and thus has nothing to offer me in terms of representation.

  Lidia Yuknavitch

  Writing, Choices, Style

  Source: therumpus.net

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• You can't answer a kid's question. A kid never accepts any answer. A kid never says, 'Oh, thanks. I get it.'... They just keep coming with more questions - why, why, why? - until you don't even know who the fk you are anymore at the end of the conversation. It's an insane deconstruction.

  Louis C. K.

  Kids, Fatherhood, Insane

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• All sentences of the type 'deconstruction is X' or 'deconstruction is not X', a priori miss the point, which is to say that they are at least false. As you know, one of the principal things at stake in what is called in my texts 'deconstruction', is precisely the delimiting of ontology and above all of the third-person present indicative: S is P.

  Jacques Derrida

  Science, Missing, Ontology

  Jacques Derrida (2010). “Copy, Archive, Signature: A Conversation on Photography”, p.1977, Stanford University Press

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• Deconstruction: peering suspiciously at the text, I wait for it to make a slip and betray itself.

  Mason Cooley

  Waiting, Betray, Slips

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• Other people's deconstruction of your motivations doesn't help you do what you do. You can't swallow and think about swallowing at the same time.

  Stephen Colbert

  Motivation, Thinking, People

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• Deconstruction is great for the intellect, but it hurts the heart terribly.

  Eric Maisel

  Hurt, Heart, Intellect

  Eric Maisel (2000). “The Creativity Book: A Year's Worth of Inspiration and Guidance”, p.112, Penguin

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• I realize after spending so long working with images, semiotic deconstruction and redeployment becomes second nature. We all speak with images. I guess I look at everything sideways nowadays.

  Michael Salu

  Long, Looks, Realizing

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

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• For 179 years [The Book of Mormon] has been examined and attacked, denied and deconstructed, targeted and torn apart like perhaps no other religious history – perhaps like no other book in any religious history- and still, it stands.

  Jeffrey R. Holland

  Religious, Book, Years

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• Comedians dissect jokes all the time. Comedians are beautiful structuralists. But ultimately it's an athletic endeavor. You have to be able to just hit the backhand. You can't think about all the pieces of it. You can't think about your swing. You just have to do it. Reading someone else's deconstruction of what I do, all it does is put me in my head. On nights when the show goes particularly well, I am not aware of its fluidity. A lot of nights I'm just worried that I'm not going to be as good as the script in front of me.

  Stephen Colbert

  Beautiful, Reading, Night

  "Stephen Colbert: The Playboy Interview". Interview with Eric Spitznagel, www.ericspitznagel.com. October 27, 2012.

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