One of the many after effects of Trump’s election has been an altogether astonishing flowering of high fallutin exercises in cultural analysis. I particular enjoy those who play with popularized (populist?) deconstructionism. So, let’s join the (deep?) play.
Most of my own intellectual education has been plagued by the fundamental mis-readings of Saussure and Lévi-Strauss led by Derrida ([1967] 1978) and others. In various ways if have tried to write against deconstructionism, sometimes specifically (1994),
and mostly by implication. And yet, I have also felt party to many of these debates, particularly when they involve plays with “facts” and fiction, truth and relativism, history and narratives, and indeed the nature of reality (ontology?).
So, when the New York Times, as it regularly does, plays with “truth … that is always changing” (NYT, “How to fix the Met,” 3/1/2107) I could not resist tweeting and playing with the Times nemesis (and vice versa)—the author of the wonderfully truthy “truthful hyperbole.”
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