Criticism of Value: Response to John Fekete

Abstract

The following comments grew out of an invitation to respond to John Fekete’s address delivered to a conference on Literature and Politics. The rumour that Fekete was preparing a book to be called something like Life after Deconstruction (it has just appeared as I write this as Life after Postmodernism¹) set my deconstructive adrenalin pumping. I didn’t want to become an apologist for deconstruction, God knows, but on the other hand I didn’t want to find myself passed by before I had even begun to feel confident about what the limits of deconstruction might be. But then it occurred to me that possibly the possible title of that possible book could itself be resisted and be read as a statement of value, instead of as a historical description. Instead of saying that deconstruction was now behind us and that we could now get on with the living, it might be putting deconstruction ahead of life in an order of evaluation. Deconstruction first and, as for the living, let the servants do that for us.