Keesey, Ch 7 (Introduction)

“They are especially effective for dismantling foundationalist and essentialist arguments, for demolishing totalizing claims, for deconstructing ideologies, for delegitimizing power, and generally for demonstrating that nearly everything called universal, timeless, and natural is really local, historically contingent, and socially constructed” (416).

http://blogs.setonhill.edu/AngelaPalumbo/2009/04/the_question_of_timelessness.html

Literature and History = A Common Theme

Questions All (Future) Educators Should Ask Themselves
http://blogs.setonhill.edu/GretaCarroll/2009/04/questions_all_future_educators.html

Does history = politics?

“But deconstruction has also offered a more direct challenge to historical criticism. By calling into question the very concepts of origin, telos, and cause, deconstruction has threatened to deconstruct the historian’s as well as the metaphysician’s enterprise” (Keesey 410).

"Similarly, cultural critics' objections to terms such as 'humanism' and 'universal truth' rest not so much on epistemological grounds as on the fact that these terms have historically been used to privelege the views of one small group-white males of European descent..." (Keesey 413).

What's the difference?

Do you have culture?
http://blogs.setonhill.edu/JennaMiller/2009/04/do-you-have-culture.html

"One result of this emphasis has been a number of investigations into literary study itself as a cultural practice. What gets defined as 'literature', what texts get assigned in schools and colleges, what kinds of topics get discussed in classes and in standard exams? And who decides the answers to these questions? In short, what social forces influences reading practices and what are the social consequences of these practices?" (Keesey 413).

"Genetic studies that investigate an author's life and times to determine what that author might have meant in a given work continue to be produced in larg numbers" (Keesey 409).

http://blogs.setonhill.edu/SueMyers/2009/04/culture.html