A Letter to Justin Gentry

In response to Mr. Gentry's comment to my thoughts in "de punkum et postmodernum"

Justin:
I was thinking of Jacques Derrida (1930-2004), Michel Foucault (1926-1984), and Edward Said (1935-2003). Derrida and Foucault you may find interesting in their studies on literary criticism. They are some of the foremost on deconstruction (a word has an idea constructed behind it and a critic can 'undo' or deconstruct that meaning, kind of like word studies in IBS). In addition to deconstructing meanings authors had on words, Derrida and Foucault also advocated post-structuralism. This is your run-of-the-mill postmod relativism of meanings. With respect to exegesis, it becomes a matter of 'how do you interpret it' or 'what do you take from the text.' Edward Said is a singularly interesting case. My understanding is that he draws on Foucault's deconstruction theories. His best know work is Orientalism that seeks to deconstruct European notions of the Middle Eastern "Orient." This really ushered in the post-colonial historiography of the latter 20th century. If you want to read up on things, just go to wikipedia.org.

Si erro, monet me. (SEMM)

(Pardon the poor latin in the title of the previous post, the nouns should be in the ablative case and not the accusative. Dr. Schenck, if you are reading, I apologize.)