In defense of honest-to-goodness B.S.ers

Despite Wingate’s attempt to reassure this tutor about the fickle nature of this easily crossable line, I find myself beset with confusion similar in many ways to the confusion I feel when trying to grasp the deconstructionist theories of Derida (the poster-boy for postmodernism), finding many parallels between Wingate’s ambiguous “line” and the seemingly arbitrary standards of deconstructive critical theory; however, although I feel that I lack a concrete grasp on both of these concepts, I am nevertheless comforted by the fact that well-known academic authorities have expressed similar confusions concerning these tricky deconstructive ideas that challenge everything but seem to end up saying nothing, and only make us honest-to-goodness B.S.ers look bad, just as the philosopher John Searle pointed out in a review of book about Derrida’s philosophy in which he famously remarked, “This is the kind of stuff that give bullshit a bad name.”