> Is it merely the grammatical division between subject and object -- are there two selves in the sentence 'I affect myself'?
No, there aren't, though I don't see why that has anything to do with the paragraph in question.
Are you saying that the foundation of Deconstruction itself rests on a violation of the use-mention distinction as obvious and pithy as "there is no 'I' in 'team'"?
I'm just saying there are many different ideas at play here. Those are a couple of examples of possible meanings I took from that sentence, just off the top of my head. My implication (which maybe I should have stated) was that if I can derive meaning from the sentence, then it might not be meaningless. And if the meaning I derive corresponds to what the author intended, then it doesn't seem like such terrible writing, just writing for a particular audience.
I agree with you, though, that it should be more accessible, though articles on the Stanford Encyclopedia can often be fairly technical. But it really takes a brilliant writer (which the author of the SEP article clearly is not) to make accessible something complicated and arcane. I just don't want you to draw the conclusion that because this guy couldn't do it in this particular sentence, a whole field of thought is crap. Or unfairly ascribe bad intentions to the author.
No, there aren't, though I don't see why that has anything to do with the paragraph in question.
Are you saying that the foundation of Deconstruction itself rests on a violation of the use-mention distinction as obvious and pithy as "there is no 'I' in 'team'"?