I really enjoyed listening to Prof. McDonald speak. I can imagine that an hour long discourse on Derrida and Deconstructionism would have been emotionally taxing had it not been presented by someone like McDonald. I'd never met/seen him before, but the man exudes passion and enthusiasm (he reminds me a lot of Quentin Terentino). I was blown away by the material, not so much because it was new to me, but because it was presented by someone that really cares about the subject.
I won't pretend to know much about Deconstruction, or Derrida. I can't even think of a solid definition. But the concepts get me riled-up, and anxious— anxious to learn, anxious to know more, anxious to figure it all out. I think a lot about the concepts of deconstruction without consciously being aware that I'm thinking about the concepts deconstruction. I have a tendency to "deconstruct" pretty much everything that I see and come in contact with. I don't fully understand anything, and I am not able to comprehend the "entirety"/"definite-value" of anything, therefore, I find myself constantly questioning the reality of myself and my immediate surroundings.
McDonald discussed how any object (a dog, a cat, a chair, the Queen of England) becomes that object in our mind— only through language ("Nothing exists outside of the text"), also, that "things" only exist in our minds because we compare them with other things that they are not.
That's a very interesting concept; one that coincides with another similar theory (do theories only exist because of the existence of other theories?), that nothing exists outside of the conscious mind— everything, before we consciously view and interpret it, is nothing more than probability waves waiting to be constructed. But that's a whole other animal to dissect.
I enjoyed the presentation, and now my mind has something to munch on for the next few months.
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