Daniel Dennett on the Self as the Center of Narrative Gravity:
"It is certainly an idea whose time has come. Imagine my mixed emotions when I discovered that before I could get my version of it properly published in a book, it had already been satirized in a novel, David Lodge's Nice Work (1988). It is apparently a hot theme among the deconstructionists:
According to Robyn (or, more precisely, according to the writers who have influenced her thinking on these matters), there is no such thing as the "Self" on which capitalism and the classic novel are founded — that is to say, a finite, unique soul or essence that constitutes a person's identity; there is only a subject position in an infinite web of discourses — the discourses of power, sex, family, science, religion, poetry, etc. And by the same token, there is no such thing as an author, that is to say, one who originates a work of fiction ab nihilo. in the famous words of Jacques Derrida... "il n'y a pas de hors-texte", there is nothing outside the text. There are no origins, there is only production, and we produce our "selves" in language. Not "you are what you eat" but "you are what you speak," or, rather "you are what speaks you," is the axiomatic basis of Robyn's philosophy, which she would call, if required to give it a name, "semiotic materialism."Semiotic materialism? Must I call it that? Aside from the allusions to capitalism and the classic novel, about which I have kept my counsel, this jocular passage is a fine parody of the view I'm about to present. (Like all parody, it exaggerates; I wouldn't say there is nothing outside the text. There are, for instance, all the bookcases, buildings, bodies, bacteria...)" (Dennett 1991, Consciousness Explained, pp. 410-411)
Dennett blijft een realist die Kants copernicaanse wending niet, ten volle, serieus neemt. Boekenkasten, gebouwen, lichamen en bacteriën bestaan namelijk niet zomaar - onafhankelijk van ons. Ze zijn slechts bij de gratie van de taal die identiteitsstichtend is voor deze zijnden.
