Dungeons & Deconstruction

What is deconstruction?

In 1967, the French philosopher Jacques Derrida published the book Of Grammatology. In it, he reevaluated traditional Western ideas, claiming there is no synthesis in the dialectics of text and meaning. He called this philosophical approach "deconstructionism." 

As J. Hillis Miller, the preeminent American deconstructionist, has explained in an essay entitled Stevens’ Rock and Criticism as Cure (1976), “Deconstruction is not a dismantling of the structure of a text, but a demonstration that it has already dismantled itself. Its apparently solid ground is no rock but thin air.” 

Derrida went through some lengths to say that deconstructionism was hard to define (not a method! not an analysis! not an approach!), but let's keep it simple: 

• Cambridge Dictionary states that deconstruction is "the act of breaking something down into its separate parts in order to understand its meaning, especially when this is different from how it was previously understood." 
• The Merriam-Webster dictionary states that deconstruction is "the analytic examination of something (such as a theory) often in order to reveal its inadequacy."

Deconstruction as literary criticism

Deconstruction wasn't intended for literary analysis. Deconstruction was intended to be a criticism of European philosophy in general, especially New Criticism (which was applied to everything, from literature to music to history). No, it said, you cannot create universal meaning! Even simple meanings break down! And so, literary critics took Derrida's paradigm and applied it to literature. 

In literary criticism, deconstructionism is practiced by "reading against the text." First, a close reading of the text is performed to fully understand and articulate the authorial point. Then, the reading is inverted to demonstrate the author's assumptions and flaws in their reasoning. 

A silly example: "How can you feel sympathy for the protagonist of 30 Rock, Liz Lemon? She is clearly the villain of this show! She holds out for a perfect partner but refuses to act decently to the people she's in a relationship with, she sees herself as a model of liberal values but compromises them consistently, she asks for sympathy from others but cannot produce a sympathetic reaction from an audience that literarily interprets her actual actions in the narrative at 30 Rockefeller Plaza."

The ultimate end of the act of deconstruction was the discovery of "aporias": a conundrum, a paradox, a irresoluble impasse in an inquiry. When reading a text against itself, it inevitably breaks down.

The signified butts head with the signifier

According to Derrida, and taking inspiration from the work of Ferdinand de Saussure, language as a system of signs and words only has meaning because of the contrast between these signs. That is, being subjective, the text has no fixed meaning, so when we read, we are prone to misread. 

D&D is a great example of the breakdown of meaning inherent in a text.

The meaning transcends the author's intent, evolving into a new form with repetition, reinterpretation, and the cultural context in which the text lives on, lives longer than the author. 

Gary Gygax scoured books of mythology for monsters to put into his rules for fantastic miniatures campaigns. He found the word "kobold" and described them as "a type of goblin" (more or less true, in a folklore sense). As supplements accumulated, there were a preponderance of goblins. To differentiate them, Gygax and other authors who came after, put flourishes on the description or art: the goblin had a dog-like bark, or was dog-like, or was horned. The art of the "doglike kobold" was put into the computer game Wizardry, which was a big hit in Japan. While kobolds had further evolutions in America, where D&D3E described them as lizard like, Japan continued with their depictions as dogs. Divergent species on two continents.(For a full discussion on the history of kobolds as a monster in D&D, see Knock! issue 5, forthcoming.)

There are many such cases. Many monsters don't resemble their folkloric counterparts ("trow, or drow, a type of troll" has become "sexy dark elves."). The terms "bard" and "paladin" have outstripped their source material (how can there be paladins without a Palatine Hill?). Even the more modern pulp fantasy inspirations have become misunderstood. What was referential in the text with a wink and a nod for the author and the audience of 1974 is unknown to the modern audience. Obvious references to the alignment patterns of Poul Anderson, the magic swords of Michael Moorcock, the magic systems of Jack Vance, are now obscure to the majority of players. 

Now, when you say "kobold" to an American fantasy adventure gaming enthusiast, the original meaning of "a type of goblin" is gone. If you show them a picture of the kobold in the book that Gygax found the term originally, they say "That is not a kobold." 

Deconstructing D&D

Critics of D&D (of which I am undoubtedly one) have practiced a cottage industry of deconstructionism for many years. Because gaming is mostly a hobby industry not an academic tradition (yet), this deconstruction is mostly done by instinct. Astute readers can tell that a close reading of the text of the game (we'll table the conversation of "where" the text of the game is - game manual? play culture? conversation during play? - until later) reveals inherent contradictions. 

The game says this, but really that. 

The game says its about heroic fantasy, but the heroic actions players are called on to make include "killing pregnant orcs so that the newborn orc will not trouble you later," aka, literal war crimes.

The game says its inspired by fantasy stories (the game is like Tolkien! Howard! Vance!), but the narratives of the modules don't have the same storybeats. Instead, the storybeats are more reminiscent of Westerns, stories loaded with manifest destiny colonialization subtext.

The game says its set in a medieval time period, but the essential touchpoints are all anachronisms (rapiers are Renaissance, the ships depicted are all Age of Sail, and taverns are essentially modern).

We do not name this action, or couch it in literary terms. But both RPG enthusiasts and RPG detractors have unfairly criticized D&D using deconstructionist techniques since its creation.

Unfairly, I say, not because the critiques of D&D are wrong, but if the same techniques for reading against the text were applied with the same rigor equally, every RPG would break down as well. 

However, the methodology for reading against D&D's text is applied so regularly, the components of the argument have become folklore for the RPG community. And people, when learning how D&D's text breaks down when you apply these arguments, think its a problem with D&D. 

It isn't. It's just that you learned the formula that makes that specific compound break down. There are stronger acids out there!

My point

Let me backtrack a minute. I'm not a deconstructionist, and I'm not really making any big claims about the approach. 

I'll quote the somewhat dismissive Khan Academy introduction on deconstructionism: "Junior misreaders worked away, becoming ever more like C.I.A. operatives, decoding false signals sent by a distant enemy, the writer. Deconstruction exalted itself with ever higher pretensions. ... Deconstruction transformed everything into social commentary, easily making affinities with sexual and racial politics, two other militant philosophies that challenge the sanctity of text."

RPG criticism is still fairly nascent as a lit crit movement, and most people doing it are hobbyists not academics. It would be unfair to criticize this labor, especially because it comes from a place of genuine interest in RPGs as an art space. The point of this blog post is not to do so. 

I'm trying to say: If you are interested in RPG criticism, there are traditions of literary criticism (etc.) that you can start from. That by studying literary criticism, you might arm yourself with the vocabulary to use to express your ideas more clearly. By reading other approaches to text, you can say "Aha, of course, that is what I meant all along! I'm so glad someone else has had this thought before and understands me!"