Why everyone is questioning everything in 2024
on deconstruction
Hi! I’m Katie, and I’m a cultural and social psychologist—but you can think of me as your BFF with a PhD. I live in the desert of Texas alongside the cacti, roadrunners, and horned lizards. If you’re looking to understand your inner landscape and the whirlwind of the world around you, I hope you find something of value here. Make sure to subscribe—and you won’t miss a beat! Thank you so much for being here.
What do you call a small body of water?
A pond?
A waterhole?
Perhaps even a lake?
What if I said to you, “we swam in the tank yesterday”?
What would come to your mind?
If you’re from the South, it’s likely you know exactly what I’m talking about.
You’ve seen a tank.
You’ve likely thrown a fishin’ line into it or you have even swam in one.
For others of you, you might be floored.
“What is she talking about?”, you think to yourself.
You might argue with me that a tank is a tee shirt with no sleeves.
Or it’s a large storage receptacle that holds liquid or gas.
This usage of the word, tank, likely originates from the Sanskrit word tadāga.
Tadāga, in Sanskrit, means pond.
I grew up fishing in my grandfather’s tanks, watching cows drink out of them.
I’ve lost a shoe or two in the sticky mud at the bottom.
But, if you don’t speak Sankrit or didn’t grow up in the South, this meaning may be lost on you.
You may even find yourself confused without this discussion into my meaning behind the word.
My junior year at university, I took a Linguistics course.
It was one of the most formative courses of my college career.
We studied dialects and accents, things like why some people say “tank” and others say “pond”.
Why some people say “access road” while others say “hop on the feeder!”
We studied the etiology of language.
I grew a passion for understanding how and why we use language.
I grew an awareness that even though we are speaking the same language, oftentimes we aren’t.
Meaning can get lost in translation through the conveying of even as simple of a concept as “tank”.
Knowing that, I began to imagine what misconceptions and miscommunications happen when we attempt to talk to each other about bigger concepts like “God”, “justice” or “Christian”.
How do we know that we are all talking about the same thing?
I’ve come to firmly believe that it’s so important we identify exactly what we mean when we speak with each other about these large concepts.
Social psychology research specifically has shown that we tend to assume others are much more similar to us than they actually in fact are.
So, when you are using the term “God”, I likely assume you mean the same thing that I mean.
This can cause us so many problems.
We develop expectations that others are incredibly similar or exact copies of ourselves, and when we come to the inevitable realization that they are not, we are shaken, shocked, put out, or even angered.
In relationships and interactions, communication is generally always key.
And, communication in our own communication is arguably key as well.
NAMING DECONSTRUCTION
Deconstruction is one of these big terms that has a vast, overarching meaning but is often used by individuals for various aims.
It’s a term that has been used loosely in the online space, places like Twitter and Instagram.
And, again, it has become a term that means so many different things to so many different people.
Ask the Gospel Coalition what deconstruction is, you will get one answer.
Ask a modern philosopher, you will likely get a very different answer.
Even poll the loose deconstruction community on the Internet, and you will be left with a surprisingly wide range of definitions.
Deconstruction can be incredibly helpful language to adopt, so whether its the first time you’re hearing it or you use it in daily conversation, it’s important that we explore this term before we even begin using it with others.
In that, we can all start on the same page, adjust our expectations, and even find new ways to use the term as a label that can serve us and inspire us to grow.
WHERE DID DECONSTRUCTION ORIGINATE
While many believe deconstruction to be a new term, borne out of the masses of Exvangelicals gathering on the Internet, deconstruction is a philosophical concept that originated in the field of philosophy in the 1960s.
Jacques Derrida, a twentieth-century French philosopher, was the first to coin the term.
Derrida’s original intent was to present a literary critique.
He believed that language often falls short in describing life and human experience.
He regularly discussed language and its place in society.
He was passionate that our post-enlightened society was too heavily-dependent upon language, particularly spoken language.
He called this phenomenon logocentrism and argued that this heavy dependence creates an ungrounded sense of certainty and correctness.
Derrida’s work eventually bled into the social and political arenas.
He was justice-oriented, equity-focused, and passionate.
It’s hard not to see his personal life interwoven throughout his work.
As a young Jewish boy in Algiers, he was removed from studying in formal school because of his Jewish status.
He found himself within the intersection of three religions, Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, all of which, he observed, seemed to hold tightly to a religious absolutism and lacked a respect for any contradictory believer.
Derrida often felt misunderstood.
He even felt that others misused the term deconstruction in a way that he did not intend.
He was a non-dualist, infamous and complex as many non-dualists are.
His ideas were difficult to grasp, and his voice regularly threatened establishments, systems, and the status quo of the time.
For that, he was branded a trouble-maker and nihilist.
However, Derrida was not a nihilist at all.
His passion lied in challenging humans to release overinflated certainty.
He believed deconstruction to be a posture, a way of thinking, and a way of life.
He challenged society and the thinkers of his time to try to see the good and bad in all perspectives.
He spoke about issues like the privileging of men over women and words over art.
He challenged the favouring of speaking over feeling and profit over humanity.
His view was not one of nihilism; it was a letting go of unshakeable loyalty to certain beliefs and an embracing of open-mindedness to contradicting views.
WHAT IS DECONSTRUCTION
Derrida defined deconstruction as dismantling excessive loyalty to any tightly-held belief system while also embracing curiosity and openness.
He dismissed the intellectualized idea that there is always a perfectly-packaged answer to society’s problems.
Derrida argued that once we believe we have something figured out, it has slipped through our hands.
Peter Rollins uses a great example to illustrate this point in his book, How (Not) to Speak of God.1
Using the example of justice, he writes that once we believe we have grasped justice, we’ve lost all ability to grow in justice.
Therefore, if we ever think we have accomplished the thing and arrived, we lose the capacity to do better, evolve, and ultimately push ourselves and humanity forward.
Derrida also regularly spoke about aporia, a Greek word meaning empasse, puzzlement, or doubt.
He preached that we shouldn’t be ashamed of doubts or uncertainty but instead should find pride in our questions.
Aporia is a sign of maturity, and Derrida argued that grasping for correctness and perfect answers is at the root of human suffering.
Taking this Derridian view of deconstruction and marrying it with the relevant context of today, deconstruction includes asking hard questions, often about one’s upbringing, one’s socialization, cultural norms, or even individualized beliefs.
It’s examining and dismantling excessive attitudes and inherited belief systems that simply don’t make sense or don’t serve a greater or individual good.
It’s making space and eventually landing in a place where you can rebuild an authentic, life-giving belief system, one that’s rooted in a healthy sense of nonattachment and uncertainty.
If you have entered into the deconstruction process through the door of religion, recognize that deconstruction is not isolated to religion.
In some circles, it is used in that way.
Sometimes we will encounter issues that are specific to religion or even more specific to Western Christianity; however, the conversations around this topic should not imply that the exploring deconstruction as a concept is only relevant or helpful to someone exiting a particular faith system.
The ideas and theories rooted in the presented view of deconstruction are great invitations for anyone who is deconstructing any element of cultural programming.
You may be asking hard questions about many areas of your life: religious, social, cultural, political, economical.
Concepts and structures in your life that you may be deconstructing may include: religion, patriarchy, nationalism, family patterns, colonization, academia, consumerism, individualism.
This is normal and can absolutely be healthy if done well.
In fact, Derrida himself applied the concept of deconstruction to many socially-constructed beliefs.
Many people are rewriting the script for many areas of their lives and experiencing so much healthy growth throughout the process.
THE GREAT RESIGNATION
There is a movement sweeping across the United States and our world in this unique moment in time.
It’s sweeping across the pews of Western Christianity.
Church affiliation is on the decline, and churchgoers are walking out the church doors with no intention to return.
It’s sweeping across the halls and offices of many workplaces.
Employees are packing up their desks and filing their 2-weeks notice as The Great Resignation takes footing.
The COVID-19 pandemic and cultural events of the past few years have only poured fuel on this fire, and droves of individuals have turned to the Internet to find support and direction in their individual experiences.
Many describe this personal experience of uprooting and life change as waking up, mid-life crisis, even languishing.
A healthier term to adopt may be deconstruction.
If you’re one of the many who have been baptized in this thing we call deconstruction, know that so many have been in your shoes.
You’re likely feeling stuck and suffocated, lonely and isolated, lost and confused, but know that one thing you’re not is alone.
Perhaps adopting the term deconstruction will leave you with a newfound identity from which you can find validation and affirmation and allow yourself to grow.
Make sure you read the one where I talk about why you should know what you believe in 2024.
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Rollins, P. How (Not) to Speak of God (Orleans, MA: Paraclete, 2006).
Cover art by Alena Ganzhela used under license