Postmodernism and Deconstruction

You may have heard about Postmodernist Deconstruction? Have you wanted to know more about it?Well, start with the Postmodernism and the Deconstruction articles on the more than excellent free user-written encycolpedia Wikipedia. That should give you a good concise overview of what Deconstruction is all about, as well as what its critics say about it.For some unconventional criticism, read Chip Morningstar: How to Deconstruct Almost Anything, where a software engineer takes a jab at it.Deconstruction advocates refuse to define it in a precise manner. This give the opponents more ammunition calling it everything from being obscurantist, to imprecise, mere wordplay, to outright gibberish.Some of the postulates of Postmodernist Deconstruction are:

• (a) Language is imprecise, and has no inherent meaning, and thus communication between humans tend to lose the message.
• (b) Rhetoric often masks logical arguments.

Deconstruction techiques certainly have some merit: For example, if you look at war mongering politicians, or populist demagogues, or religious firebrands, you tend to agree with the above premises to a certain degree. Or, if you look at many people, and most societies, you will find that they focus on form rather than content, (e.g. color of hair -- probably a dye!), fashionable/attractive attire, or margins/fonts/punctuation in a report), these often take more weight and importance than the real substance (an individual's personality, contents of a report), you cannot help but agree.