The Theory Mess: Deconstruction in Eclipse (review)

Rapaport, Herman. The Theory Mess. Deconstruction in Eclipse. New York: Columbia University Press, 2001. Pp. xxi + 188.

In this overview of recent developments in theory, Herman Rapaport proposes the following argument: despite the considerable efforts by Jacques Derrida to provide a rigorous and consistent explanation of his philosophical perspectives over the past 40 years, the import of his works has been systematically eclipsed by all but a very few interpreters of his writings, due to combinations of willful ignorance, misprision, and bad faith. To develop a history of the contemporary “theory mess,” Rapaport presents his study as a “modular text”–a review of “symptomatic critical engagements and disengagements” centered on “the permissibility of the bewilderingly negative reception that deconstruction has received . . . despite the theoretical breakthroughs and ‘paradigm busting’ that deconstruction has self-evidently brought to pass” (xix). Although Rapaport’s own agenda becomes quite evident at moments, sometimes to the detriment of his focal argument, he admirably constructs an informative and provocative study by situating Derrida’s writings within the ever-shifting and often abrasive strata of interpretive critiques of his philosophical concepts.