Current Position

*** My attitude at the time of writing coincides with Habermas  in the sense that that the abscence of an empirical foundation does not deny the possibility of a rational normative foundation which is essentially an ethics of communication, a meta ethics... if  once it is acknowledged that a 'text' can be read in as many different ways as there are readers, and  someone may have  a different association between internal feeling and external form,  the process of enquiry and communicationj becomes of much greater delicacy and importance, as assuming your own cultural forms, constructions and objects will lead to the same subjective experience & feelings in another is not rational in communicative terms...although it may be in terms of  'narrow self interested and oppressive' /'pragmatic' instrumental rationality via interpellation.. (c.f pre emptive/ stereotyping and provisional constructs) SRT

Derrida stated he sees deconstruction as Affirmation(ref). In  Derrida's own words :  deconstruction "doenst destroy but analyses the  layers and formation of  concepts, offers a genalogical analysis of trajectory of concept...  and analyses hidden assumptions"(ref youtube?). eg subject   human rights -  become aware of historical components of concept and all its determinations (human subject - female subject , european). He argues it doesnt undermine rationality in a universal sense,  but  a particular norm of rationality (associated with the universal claims  of Aristotelian binary oppositions and Cartesian Dualism and the idea of a rational coherent concious ego) which it can be argued  manifests in hegemony  and hence  deconsstruction can be seen as a step to a future, more  inclusive rationality that respects difference.  

Through abandoning meta-language ( a discussion about attribution) we abandon reason  this leaves " reason" to falls prey to instrumental rationality  ( an ideology that claims to not be an ideology ?) due to the influence of specialised  "expert interests" dominating the discourse via mystification and specialised language games ( we hand power to those who have the technique to win langauge games..)

Since the 1970's the  "empirical evidence"  points to the fact that our capitalist system,  driven by a narrow divisive instrumental rationality is well on the way to destroying its own ecological life support system... as it is driven by a limited form of "Rationality" assuming this is the case those with a more encompassing view have to respond  with some form of  rationality if they going  to be taken into account... whether it is and expanded form of rationality (Derrida) or a Communicative rationality (Habermas)

My stance is that I consider structuralist methods (eg Osgood, Kelly) can still be used effectively to elicit structures of meaning held by individuals and identify commonalities in meaning imposed via ideology even if the concept of universal structures has been disproved.

Also

take into account the width of world views from the performative to the empirical

In my opinion  essential criteria include 

1.  does the author discuss assumptions in an attempt to futher understanding or  purposely obscure them in order to win and assumed language game\ some authors claim that to clarify assumptions is impossible?

2, Frame problem  discourse boundary post structuralim : if we have a  closed expert discourse then instrumental  rationality is likely to dominate, how can we have a clsosed discourse if we have no  "self" but that constructed in discourse - c.f interpellation, binary dualism - categorisation systems <>  ecological

3: is there a simple binary distintion between  Marx and the post structuralists - Derrida 

4. Are binary distinctions addressed

5. is ideology, and instrumenta  rationality addressed

6. Are 'expectations' addressed ( expectations of outcomes in the context of experimentation)

7.In my opinion the main colonisation of the life world has been with Aristotelian Binary dualisms themselves and the dualistic premises on which our language, institutions and expert systems are built, and their manifestion in the Digital Hardware, and Software  - this needs to be taken into account. 

Those facets of Post structuralism that deny the legitimacy of any meta narrative based on unity or wholeness is  in my opinion questionable as all observation of nature shows it to consist of wholes (eg the systems approach ) the replacement of this model with  a flat plane of separate competing  discourses , priviliges distinction over union and those who promote it must be explicit about this bias  and how they address this  otherwise this leaves us with a  binary meta narrative...  and fits neatly with the meta narrative  of  a digital darwinian capitalism  of the "American Dream" as desrcibed in Jameson.

8. In what sense can/ does the performative  get colonised by instrumental rationality, is it inevitable ?

2.5 From group domination to professional and 

institutional power

Van Djik 362

9 Self Fulfilling prophecy.