On deconstruction

With the death of Derrida, a number of the listservs that I read have been commenting on the viability and relevance of his work. His a short pithy post from Tom Lynch, a professor at UNL.

"It's commonly done, but I don't think it is accurate or helpful, to conflate deconstruction with other allegedly "post" modern fields, such as, say, the new western history. Deconstruction says that every narrative has within it contradictions and exclusions that undermine it. Therefore it seems useful in challenging old narratives, and people often use
deconstruction to do things like "deconstruct" the frontier history narrative, without then realizing that any replacement they have in mind is likewise deconstructable because it is in the very nature of language and story (according to the theory) to be incapable of expressing reality. The old narrative, then, is not "deconstructed" because it is false, but because it is a narrative. Deconstruction cannot really be used to further any alternative story, it can only be used to knock all stories down as more or less equally contradictory and false.

I don't think this is true, and I don't think it's intellectually or ethically helpful. I think, for example, that the new western history is a more accurate rendering of the facts of what happened in the lives of real people in real places, not just an alternative but equally deconstructable construction. Just as the notion that the earth orbits the sun, and not
vice versa, is a more accurate rendering of the facts, and not just another equally (in)valid astronomical construction.

Not to speak ill of the newly deceased, but I think Derrida led a lot of folks down a cul de sac.

But what do I know. --Tom