Vintage Chris Rosebrough – Deconstruction Deconstructed, a.k.a. Having Fun with Words

On the May 17 edition of the Fighting for the Faith radio show, host Chris Rosebrough had a little fun deconstructing deconstruction.

The idea behind deconstruction is that any given text has no fixed meaning. Truth is experienced as the reader is in conversation with the text. There are infinite possibilities in interpreting the words scribbled on the page, and thus no ultimate truth, but rather your own self-made truth. What's true for you is just plain true, and what's true for me will also be. What’s handy about this hermeneutic is that it frees you from the thorny issue of having to limit yourself to what the author actually meant. This is of course a ridiculous premise. If it were true, there would be no point in attempting to communicate with anyone. But fortunately most normal people generally try to grasp the original meaning which the author intended, and are able to carry on a conversation with at least a modest degree of success, while avoiding all the intellectually charged undercurrents of deconstruction. There are, however, some postmodern people who insist on assigning their own meanings to a given text. One of these people is George Elerick.

Elerick is a journalist who writes for The Huffington Post and Wrecked online magazine. He certainly seems to uphold the postmodern tradition on his blog The Love Revolution, skipping social conventions such as capitalizing the first letter of the first word in sentences, giving the reader a bit of a head start on assigning their own meaning to the text. Links to Brian McLaren and John Dominic Crossan’s websites, and sites such as Queermergent and The Burning Man add to the postmodern ambiance.

Chris relates his own postmodern “experience” after receiving an email from Elerick inviting him to read Elerick’s blog post titled “throw away the cookie cutters.”. In this post George deconstructs the Genesis account of Adam and Eve, musing that “it isn’t a story just about two literal people, in fact, their [sic] is archaeological evidence that demonstrates the story originated on a scroll in ancient Mesopotamia. one of the many deeper layered meanings could be about judging others.” His story comes complete with the eisegesis of Hebrew words (actually “hebrew” to George) and a truly postmodern climax:

judging others in the traditional sense doesn’t allow much space for healing the world or broken relationships, in the traditiona [sic] sense it is the opposite of cheering and more like how adam and eve might have got it wrong. and so if judgement [sic] is about justice and setting things right, maybe we can stand shoulder-to-shoulder and believe in and dream out the kind of world god intended. i hope we can.

Hopefully I don’t have to explain to you how George Elerick’s deconstruction of Genesis departs from the meaning that God intended for the text. This point wasn’t lost on Chris either, who after another email exchange with Elerick responded with his own deconstruction of what Elerick said in his post, thus demonstrating the absurdity of deconstruction using the technique himself. The beauty of this is, as Chris points out, the postmodernist can’t refute or quibble with what you’ve said. You’re using their own rules, therefore your conclusions are perfectly acceptable, no matter how whacky they are.

Here’s Chris’s response to what George had to say:

George, remember that once a text is written there are a limitless number of interpretations that the reader can experience while in conversation with the text. Ironically, while I was in conversation with your text, the one that you pointed me to, the one on your love revolution dot com, love revolution blog, funny enough, I felt in my heart that this text was saying that homosexuality is a sin, that Ronald Reagan was the greatest president in the United States that has ever lived, that increased oil consumption by the world is a great thing for the environment, that Arianna Huffington is a ditz, and that non-dialectical judging is divine. You see, the key to unlocking this interpretation was found when I discovered that the Aramaic words for “Adam” and “Eve” are directly related to the Spanish word for mud, and everyone knows that mud looks like oil, and that Ronald Reagan had to deal with oil embargoes very early in his administration. So I think your post was an excellent example of a colonial imperialistic apologetic with metaphorical implications that can be applied toward further raping and ravaging of mother earth.

Wow! What a revelation. I didn’t know that the Aramaic words for “Adam” and “Eve” are directly related to the Spanish word for mud. Now it all makes sense.

As Chris says, “Friends don’t let friends go PoMo” (or CoWo). And that’s all I have to say about that. Stay Confessional my friends.


photo credit: oddsock