Status Updates From Is There a Meaning in This ...

71: The main point I wish to make, however, is that beliefs about human authors are tied to beliefs about God. The unbelievers find it impossible to accept either the traditional picture of God or that of the author, for both pictures assume a kind of agency and intelligence that stands outside language and controls it, making sure that words correspond to the world and guaranteeing the reliability & truth of speech

40: Deconstruction is a strategy for resisting closure. Undoing is a half-serious, half-playful attempt to take things apart in order to show that there are different ways of putting them together. It would be wrong to mistake Derrida's play for mere foppery or amusing nonsense ... with deconstructors: their games, when played in earnest to the end, undo commentaries, canons, and civilizations.

22: Decisions about meaning, about how to interpet a text, are inextricable from questions about what it is to be human. The fate of hermeneutics and humanity alike stand or fall together.