Final Thoughts

Hello again. I just wanted to take the time to say thank you for reading my blog this semester. It was a great challenge to come up with material every week but I think we did a pretty good job.

My final post will be my exam essay. I figured I would post it because it mirrors my thoughts on theory and is a good wrap up. Enjoy kids! Thanks for a great class!!!


Grad Student Deconstructs Take-Out Menu is a remarkably satirical piece of work that pokes fun at critical theory in a way that supports in infamous death of theory after 9/11. The article is an incessant deconstruction of theory and its multifaceted layers.

The article begins by poking fun at the arbitrary nature of language by placing everything in ‘quotes.’ This references structuralism and the work so Saussure and Claude Levi-Strauss. By placing words it quotes, Rosenblatt points out the absurd or ‘absurd’ nature of bricolage and Saussurian concepts of signification and binary opposition; what does absurd even really mean?

Then Rosenblatt teases apart the every present battle of power and authorship. Does the reader have power or does the author have power? One will never really ‘know.’ This argument brings into play Foucault’s Death of the Author. Concepts like authorship/readership and power are one of the key elements of theory that turn people off from critical theory. The post theory mindset actually believes some of these theorists think too much.

The mere fact that Rosenblatt is deconstructing a menu points out the universality of critical theory and its applicability outside that pearlescent ivory tower. This article portrays the belief that in order to understand theory, one much apply it outside of the classroom. Anything can be deconstructed or critically analyzed; however, what merits a good analysis is up for debate.

The infamous academy and cannon of literature believe that only ‘great’ literature is capable of such intellectual pursuits. However, this cannon is the power structure that excluded women and homosexual writers for years. Does this not discredit the power of the illusive literary authorities? I believe it does. Deconstructing a take-out menu is the candle-snuffing attempt of contemporary theorists like Rosenblatt.

Rosenblatt concluded the article with another recurring theme in critical theory, the search of the real. What is real anyway? Who exactly is to decide what real is? This article points out that there are many ‘realities’ in this world. “What is a take-out menu not, anyway? Everything, of course. What is a take-out menu? Nothing, of course.” I believe this parallels so many arguments about theory. What is theory not, anyway? Everything, of course. What is theory? Nothing, of course. Theory is an. uphill battle to understand complexity after complexity where nothing is everything and reality and ‘the real’ are just varying degrees of interpretation.

Although this article satirizes elements of critical theory, it validates many aspects of critical theory and deconstruction. The article points out the maddening nature of deconstruction and its plaguing open-endedness. However, deconstructing things like a take-out menu really expose institutionalized notions of power and race that many of us mindlessly ignore. Therefore, theory is valuable. However, theory is dead...