[Rob Instigator]

http://www.nationalpost.com/arts/story.html?id=235947

1n 1908, after being lambasted in the press and cuckolded by his wife, Arnold Schoenberg reinvented classical music. We're still trying to figure out what comes next
John Keillor, National Post Published: Monday, January 14, 2008

[Glice]

Originally Posted by That article

The closest thing we have to a recent mainstream compositional hero was the grinning deconstructionist John Cage

Necessarily, given its audience, this article gives nothing like an accurate picture. But for the love of God, Cage a 'deconstructionist'? Even if that word did mean anything, it wouldn't mean anything.

[Rob Instigator]

ok
.

[Rob Instigator]

the "audience" you speak of are the highly educated and literate and worldy readers of the National Post.

and how is it that Cage is NOT a deconstructionist? deconstruction is just a term used to describe a person who seeks to undo the rules of whatever medium they are using, whether it be painting or music. it is a concept, and idea, and just as valid as the term "expressionist", "romantic" or "orthodox"

no wonder everyone talks about you behind yr back man!

[Glice]

Originally Posted by Rob Instigator

the "audience" you speak of are the highly educated and literate and worldy readers of the National Post.

and how is it that Cage is NOT a deconstructionist? deconstruction is just a term used to describe a person who seeks to undo the rules of whatever medium they are using, whether it be painting or music. it is a concept, and idea, and just as valid as the term "expressionist", "romantic" or "orthodox"

no wonder everyone talks about you behind yr back man!

The last sentence is obviously a good reason for me to not rise.

However, given that you said that, I'm not even going to do my usual thing of half-assedly constructing a cogent response. I shall just say:

You are wrong. Look up deconstruction. Look up modernism. Stop thinking out of the same place you talk from.

[Rob Instigator]

deconstruction is a philosophical term mainly. when it is applied to the arts it functions just as I said, as an idea.
Modernism is a concept that is applied to many of the arts from around the turn of the century to around 1914 or so.
Cage is not a modernist. Cage CAN BE described as a musical deconstructionist.

[Savage Clone]

Conceptualist, perhaps.

[Glice]

Originally Posted by Rob Instigator

deconstruction is a philosophical term mainly.

Yes it is. Go read Derrida.

[Glice]

Originally Posted by Savage Clone

Conceptualist, perhaps.

I concur with this.

[racehorse]

I think that deconstruction is a term that's usually used in describing a certain way of analysing art, particuarly literature, relating to the study of meaning. Although it was technically used incorrectly in the article, if one was giving a "deconstructualist" or a "post-structualist" reading to the article then the meaning of the word "deconstructionist" is not fixed and is allowed to slide outside the limits of precise meaning, therefore confirming rob's point that the word "deconstructionist" is quite clearly not meaningless - it has meaning for rob, and it has meaning for me.
Here, then, we see that that particular word has, actually, slid underneath your tight semantic boundaries without your realising it!!

[Rob Instigator]

just like saying "Wagner's musical colors are GNARLY!"

[racehorse]

yeah, i suppose, though i can't stand wagner!

[Glice]

Originally Posted by racehorse

I think that deconstruction is a term that's usually used in describing a certain way of analysing art, particuarly literature, relating to the study of meaning. Although it was technically used incorrectly in the article, if one was giving a "deconstructualist" or a "post-structualist" reading to the article then the meaning of the word "deconstructionist" is not fixed and is allowed to slide outside the limits of precise meaning, therefore confirming rob's point that the word "deconstructionist" is quite clearly not meaningless - it has meaning for rob, and it has meaning for me.
Here, then, we see that that particular word has, actually, slid underneath your tight semantic boundaries without your realising it!!

There's a particular irony about Derrida talking about Nietzscheian effacement whilst still retaining his notion that deconstruction was a non-practisable, non-processional (Heideggarian, by my understanding) being.

Ok, there's two predominant understandings of deconstruction - the Derridian one whereby deconstruction is not a practise, not a process, and not something that is done but something that is (and thereby is only obviated by the critic).

Then there's the deconstruction understood by American Lit-crit type whereby deconstruction becomes a total analysis, a taking-apart-and-putting-back-together. The latter is un-satisfactory to me in art because art consists in chains, not in blocks. If I analyse the (faux-) morpheme 'newreply' in the url to this reply I only get a small and, frankly, meaningless, aspect of what this thread is, what this thread is about, where it lives on the internet, where the people contributing live, what they think about, where they like to masturbate, who they like to think about while masturbating etc etc.

Cage's was never a deconstruction. He understood music, yes - his passages on his interest in various intervals as represented by various composers is a fascinating insight as to why Schoenberg took him on; his musical knowledge is sometimes questioned (you'll note, by contemporaries such as Harrison) but his project was never anything like an analytical one, his project (if, indeed, we're patronising Cage with such a high-intellectual narrative) was somewhere in the region of consolidating his modernist interests (Duchamp, Johns, Rauschenberg [sp?]) with his 'oriental' interests (Zen, Buddhism, Takemitsu etc).

Perhaps there's an argument to be made about Cage obviating underlying narratives to music (particularly around the ambit of his percussive interest, as in the 'noise' content latent to music), but this is terse and several degrees removed at best.

Bored of writing now.

[racehorse]

i agree with everything that you are saying, but most of it was unnecessary.
i was just saying that the word "deconstructionist" in the article was not meaningless as you said it was because rob got a meaning from it.
it's foucault's destabilisation of meaning - the death of the author, the birth of the audience.
i wouldn't have jumped in but i found a particular irony in the fact that here we are debating the precise meaning of deconstruction (relating to semiotics) when many people understand it to relate to the absence of definate, or author enforced, meaning in a text. that's all! anyway, i'm glad you spouted what you spouted, i definately learned a thing or two!

[Rob Instigator]

long live philosophy!
long live art criticism!

[Glice]

Originally Posted by racehorse

i agree with everything that you are saying, but most of it was unnecessary.
i was just saying that the word "deconstructionist" in the article was not meaningless as you said it was because rob got a meaning from it.
it's foucault's destabilisation of meaning - the death of the author, the birth of the audience.
i wouldn't have jumped in but i found a particular irony in the fact that here we are debating the precise meaning of deconstruction (relating to semiotics) when many people understand it to relate to the absence of definate, or author enforced, meaning in a text. that's all! anyway, i'm glad you spouted what you spouted, i definately learned a thing or two!

To your last sentence - you learned nothing. I'm merely some opinionated prick in some corner of the internet. If you're anywhere near the South-west of England we can have a pint; otherwise, this is merely pissing competitions.

Foucault I have no time for - you enjoy him all you like; I consider him rather insipid, generally as a result of being entirely besotted until Writing and Difference. Interesting you associate Focault with death of the author - does that pre-date Barthes in Foucault then?

The absence [absense] of the definite/ definitive is a 'trope' (genre, type) of nihilism, to my understanding, which, unless I'm much mistaken, is rejected outright by all. For what it matters (little) I'm drunk, and for what it matters (little), referents wiggle and hide but they never disappear; Wittgenstein re-introduces contingencies, a certain precedence of a certain sort of linguistic contingency, but this by no means precedes a linguistic relativism (postmodern linguistic relativity) which pre/ proscribes the misapprehension of a term (relative to all popular consensus) as its definition contiguous to its usage.

For all the rubbishness of postmodernism, we never rejected Kant, we will never reject Plato. ['We' is not the 'I' of Glice, or the 'I' of he who is 'Glice']

Lacan would've fucking loved the internet. What a prick, eh?