Deconstructing Mr. Whiskers

One way for me to look at deconstruction is to use the mathematical concepts of calculus and set theory. Calculus developed as a technique to find ever smaller and smaller increments, to try and understand the infinitesimal difference between one point in time and the next point in time. Set theory looks at the relationships between groups.

Let’s say I am thinking about my pet cat, Mr. Whiskers. The trick is to explain Mr. Whiskers to you, either in writing or in speech. Using set theory, I can quickly bypass the scientific taxonomy that starts at the top with “life” and “domain” and “kingdom.” You assume my cat is alive and a member of the animal kingdom. Without talking about specifics, we’ve moved from the large group of all living things, to a subgroup of animals and then to the set of cats. That is the language history that you and I share, so we don’t have to get involved in those introductory descriptions.

But if you truly want to know Mr. Whiskers, then I must relate to you smaller and smaller differences (sets) between my cat and other cats. If Mr. Whiskers is purebred, I could tell you he is Himalayan. An image would come to your mind. But he is neither purebred nor Himalayan. Then I might say he is a “he” and he is black with white paws. That might be enough for you. Or you might want to know whether he is a kitten or a cat. You might want to know whether he is an indoor cat, outdoor cat or both. Does Mr. Whiskers eat wet food or dry? Has he been neutered?

Even with this continued parsing, you will never know Mr. Whiskers the way I know him. Of course, some of this could be avoided if I simply carried a picture of Mr. Whiskers in my wallet. But just as importantly, when you meet Mr. Whiskers, you and I will know him in a different way. Mr. Whiskers and I enjoy the baggage of history. I know about the spilled milk and the cat claws digging into the sofa legs. There is the woman that sold me Mr. Whiskers.

The physical form I call “Mr. Whiskers” can only be estimated by the language concept of “Mr. Whiskers.” Deconstruction tells me that no matter how many differences I discover using language, no matter how many sets and subsets of smaller distinctions and discriminations I create, I can only approximate Mr. Whiskers.

In Introductory Deconstruction, Rivkin and Ryan state, “One important implication of this insight is that if all things are produced as identities by their differences from other things, then a complete determination of identity would require an endless inventory of relations to other terms in a potentially infinite network of differences. Truth, as a result, will always be incomplete” (258). Practically, we have to stop somewhere when imparting information. We each know there is a point where finer distinctions are not necessary in the course of human communication. Each speech or written event benefits by stopping or continuing depending on the purpose and desired outcome.

For me, poetry is the most elegant form of deconstruction, although poetry existed long before the concept of deconstruction as a theory existed. If I start a poem this way:

More than two but less than three
transportation thoroughfares separated
in a sparse forest of primary color

you would think me clumsy, but your subconscious might recognize my clumsiness as the popular pattern by Robert Frost:

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,

Frost doesn’t tell us whether the road is dirt or paved or rock or cobblestone. Frost doesn’t tell us if the forest is sparse or dense. He deconstructed an image to this precise stopping point so we could reconstruct and own it ourselves, each individually in our own clumsy way.