10.27.2009
Everything is a text (1)
Lipton ad from November 09 issue of Real Simple
And now, everybody knows it.
“I often describe deconstruction as something which happens. It’s not purely linguistic, involving text or books. You can deconstruct gestures, choreography. That’s why I enlarged the concept of text.” Mr. Derrida did not seem angry at having to define his philosophy at all; he was even smiling. “Everything is a text; this is a text,” he said, waving his arm at the diners around him in the bland suburbanlike restaurant, blithely picking at their lunches, completely unaware that they were being “deconstructed.”
— from Dinitia Smith, “Philosopher Gamely in Defense of His Ideas,” New York Times, May 30, 1998.
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First in an occasional series.
Joshua Glenn is a Boston-based writer, publisher, and cultural semiologist-for-hire. He does business as KING MIXER, LLC.
He is coauthor and/or co-editor of TAKING THINGS SERIOUSLY, THE IDLER'S GLOSSARY, THE WAGE SLAVE'S GLOSSARY, the object-oriented story collection SIGNIFICANT OBJECTS, and the kids' field guide to life UNBORED. He is co-founder of the websites HILOBROW and SEMIONAUT; and co-founder of the science fiction imprint HILOBOOKS. He produced and co-designed the iPhone app KER-PUNCH. He manages a secretive online community known as THE HERMENAUTIC CIRCLE.
In the '00s, Glenn was an editor, columnist, blogger (BRAINIAC), and new media producer at the BOSTON GLOBE. In the '90s, among other things, he published the philosophy/pop culture zine HERMENAUT; co-produced the DIY website and early online social network TRIPOD; and was an editor at UTNE READER.
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Agree everything admits of analysis. And certainly there is a lot one can do with the metaphor of “text.” And I understand of course why, historically, philosophers jumped on that metaphor when they “enlarged the concept.” It’s all good, except I wonder if it goes far enough. The idea of “text,” although liberating when it’s free of letterforms, is ultimately reductive: what are we leaving out by continuing to use it? I don’t know what I’d suggest in its place, yet(!), but it’s time for Metaphor 2.0.
Also time to move onto the next thing because, as suggested by this post, the concept of “everything is a text” has been literalized and vulgarized. (I should add: tenure-track academics literalized and vulgarized the concept long before Lipton Tea’s marketing dept. did)
Perhaps soul singer Donny Hathaway’s useful reminder that ‘Everything is Everything’ predates and surpasses the issue of metaphor entirely?