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Social Constructionism, Deconstructionism and Some Requirements of Discourse

University of Sydney

Social constructionist metatheory allows that any coherent epistemology must be self-reflexive, but, while it denies that any assertion can be true, and that there are any independent realities to be referred to, it nevertheless treats discourse as having objective existence, and assumes that its own statements about discourse are true. Thus in asserting its own basic premise it contradicts it. Social constructionist metatheory borrows from deconstructionism and arrives at the same self-defeating scepticism. Derrida enlarges on Saussure's principle of the arbitrary relation between signifier and signified. Both linguists commence their accounts of the origin of language from a basis of epistemological idealism, thus undermining the stability of referential meaning. Derrida's attempt to reject the law of contradiction follows from his stress on the indeterminacy of meaning, and makes impossible the assertion of anything. His aphorism that there is nothing outside the text is revealed as his idiosyncratic version of classical idealism. Recognition of the possibility and necessity of objectivity in discourse is not, as some constructionists claim, author-itarian. It is essential for the effective criticism of social dogma.

Key Words: constructionism • differance • nativism • realism • reflexivity

Theory & Psychology, Vol. 11, No. 3, 393-417 (2001)
DOI: 10.1177/0959354301113006


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