ABSTRACT
Postmodernism’s deconstructions were never ends in themselves. The point was always to arrive at new clarity in making the implicit explicit, requiring deconstruction to remain true to philosophy (Derrida, 1989, p. 218). Lingering questions remain as to how to accept and deal with–without trying to control and without submitting blindly to–the ways that language preformats the world as thinkable. Scott (1998) documents failed ‘high modern’ efforts in trying to improve the human condition, and points to language itself as the best model for new forms of social life capable of continually adapting broad principles to novel circumstances. Language provides the best available model because it is ‘a structure of meaning and continuity that is never still and ever open to the improvisations of its speakers’ (Scott, 1998, p. 357).
