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Deconstruction
Critical Theories:
Deconstruction
Deconstruction is a philosophical-critical approach to textual analysis
that is most closely associated with the work of Jacques Derrida in
philosophy and the Yale School (Paul DeMan, J. Hillis Miller, Geoffrey
Hartman) in literary theory and criticism. Derrida, in his own words, "wished
to translate and adapt to [his] own ends the Heideggerian word Destruktion
or Abbau""
One way to understand deconstruction is in terms of a critique of the
binary, oppositional thinking. This is to say, each term in the Western
philosophical/cultural lexicon is accompanied by its binary opposite:
intelligible/sensible,
truth/error,
speech/writing,
reality/appearance,
mind/body, culture/nature, good/evil, male/female, and so on. Derrida shows
that such oppositions constitute a tacit hierarchy, in which the first term
functions as privileged and superior and the second term as derivative and
inferior. The task of deconstruction is to dismantle or deconstruct these
binary oppositions.
As a critical practice, the deconstruction of these oppositions involves
a double movement of overturning of the hierarchy and displacement.
Within literary criticism, the deconstructive method is used to show
that the meaning of a literary text is not fixed and stable. Instead, by
exploring the dynamic tension within a text's language, literary
deconstruction reveals the literary work to be not a determinate object with
a single correct meaning but an expanding semantic field that is open to
multiple, sometimes conflicting interpretations. As Barbara Johnson
clarifies the term,
A deconstructive reading is a reading which analyses the specificity of
a text's critical difference from itself."
Even, this critical practice of reading may cause a drastic result for a text, as
J. Hillis Miller, one of the most prominent deconstructors, asserts,
The deconstruction, rather, annihilates the ground on which the
building stands by showing that the text has already annihilated the
ground, knowingly or unknowingly. Deconstruction is not a dismantling
of the structure of the text but a demonstration that it has already
dismantled itself.
However, Barbara Johnson gives a succinct statement of the aim and method
of deconstructive reading,
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would throw really interesting lights on the subject matter when the bits and
pieces are analyzed.
This philosophical form of literary criticism first appeared in Structure,
signs, and play in the discourse of human sciences. Derrida starts the
essay by defining a text. A text according to deconstruction is without a
centre but is bound. Literary theorist Terry Eagleton calls this nature
Working in Margins. Anything bounded even by boundaries does have a
centre. Derrida clarifies that the centre is the totality of the text. There is
nothing outside or beyond the text says Derrida.
Traditionally, context was referred to as the centre that holds the whole
text together. In order to deconstruct, context is never allowed to enter the
text. When an audience reads text with context, then it would be internal
reading of the text. Internal reading according to Derrida is insufficient.
Reading a text would constrict the text and rather making it a living thing it
would make the text as a prologue to someone elses life. Any text is a living
text. He clarifies this by saying my life as any life is a text. He wanted texts
to be treated with respect as giving context to the text would only limit its
meaning.
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DECONSTRUCTION
What
is
it?
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DECONSTRUCTION
A N D D I F F RA N C E
1. ABSTRACT
DERRIDA
Jacques Derrida's theory of the sign fits into the poststructuralist movement,
which runs counter to Saussurean structuralism (the legacy of linguist
Ferdinand de Saussure). Maintaining that the signifier (the form of a sign)
refers directly to the signified (the content of a sign), structuralist theory has
passed down a whole current of logocentric (speech-centred) thought that
originated in the time of Plato. With writing as his basis (the written sign),
Derrida has taken on the task of disrupting the entire stream of metaphysical
thought predicated on oppositions. He has elaborated a theory of
deconstruction (of discourse, and therefore of the world) that challenges the
idea of a frozen structure and advances the notion that there is no structure
or centre, no univocal meaning. The notion of a direct relationship between
signifier and signified is no longer tenable, and instead we have infinite shifts
in meaning relayed from one signifier to another.
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2. THEORY
CONTEXT AND PHILOSOPHY
The term "poststructuralism" refers to a critical perspective that emerged
during the seventies which has dethroned structuralism as the dominant
trend in language and textual theory. In order to understand
poststructuralism, we need to examine it in relation to structuralism.
Deconstructionist criticism subscribes to the poststructuralist vision of
language, wherein the signifier (the form of a sign) does not refer to a
definite signified (the content of a sign), but produces other signifiers
instead. Derrida (1978, 278) takes issue with the centre inherent in the
"structurality of structure". Turning to Claude Lvi-Strauss as a representative
of structuralist theory, Derrida uses the prohibition of incest and the
oppositions nature/culture and universal/prescriptive to show that this
structure can no longer withstand scrutiny: "The incest prohibition is
universal; in this sense one could call it natural. But it is also a prohibition, a
system of norms and interdicts; in this sense one could call it cultural"
(Derrida, 1978, 283).
Derrida thus rejects all of metaphysical history with its hierarchies and
dichotomies that have survived to this day, the foundation upon which all
of logic (logos, which means language) was laid. Derrida has rejected
structuralism, and as a result, the Saussurean schema (the signifier/signified
relationship) has been rethought.
NOTE: DERRIDA ON OPPOSITIONS
What Derrida rejects is binary structure, and this goes beyond
the simple opposition signifier/signified. This structure in fact
underpins the history of philosophy, which conceives the world
in terms of a system of oppositions proliferating without end:
logos/pathos, soul/body, self/other, good/evil, culture/nature,
man/woman,
understanding/perception,
inside/outside,
memory/oblivion, speech/writing, day/night, etc.)
2.2 CONCEPTS
In order to do justice to Derrida's theory, which applies to both philosophy
and semiotics, we need to accurately define the concepts that shape it. Each
section will include several concepts, given that many of them are tightly
interwoven making it impossible to define one concept without considering
the others.
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lake
Signifier "water"-------------------
swimming
pool
H2O
Glass
water
of
rain
Indefinite Signified
When reading the word "water", we might think of water drops, a lake, the
chemical symbol H2O, and so on. We don't necessarily think of a set image
of water, a universal mental representation of it. And then, each concept
(signifier) to which "water" might refer can trigger another signifier. This
infinite chain from signifier to signifier results in a never-ending game and
opens the text, displaces it, sets it in motion.
2.2.2 WRITING, TRACE, GRAPHIE, GRAM
Words naturally refer to or "reference" other words. Derrida's grammatology
advances the idea that writing is originary in the same way speech is; there
is a perpetual tension without a power struggle. Consequently:
-Writing cannot be a reproduction of spoken language, since neither one
(writing
nor
spoken
language)
comes
first.
-Conceived in this way, writing is far more than the graphie [written form]; it
is the articulation and inscription of the trace.
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deconstruction shows us that dualisms are never equivalent; they are always
hierarchically ranked. One pole (presence, good, truth, man, etc.) is
privileged at the expense of the second (absence, evil, lie, woman, etc.).
In the case of speech and writing, we have attributed to speech the positive
qualities of originality, centre and presence, whereas writing has been
relegated to a secondary or derived status. Ever since Plato, the written word
has been considered as a mere representation of the spoken word: this is
what Derrida calls the logocentric tradition of Western thought.
"Deconstruction refers to all of the techniques and strategies used by Derrida
in order to destabilize, crack open and displace texts that are explicitly or
invisibly idealistic" (Hottois, 1998).
However, to deconstruct is not to destroy, and deconstruction is achieved in
two steps:
1. A reversal phase: Since the pair was hierarchically ranked, we must first
extinguish the power struggle. During this first phase, then, writing must
dominate speech, other must prevail over self, absence over presence,
perception over understanding, and so on.
2. A neutralization phase: The term favoured during the first phase must be
uprooted from binary logic. In this way, we leave behind all of the previous
significations anchored in dualistic thinking. This phase gives rise to
androgyny, super-speech, and arche-writing. The deconstructed term thus
becomes undecidable (Hottois, 1998, 306).
Deconstruction is being applied to texts, most of which are taken from the
history of Western philosophy. The new terms become undecidable, then,
rendering them unclassifiable, and causing two previously opposed poles to
become merged.
NOTE: PLATO'S PHARMAKON
Derrida conducted a deconstructionist reading of a famous text
by Plato in which there is a merging of opposite poles;
according to this reading, the pharmakon, "this 'medicine', this
philter, which acts as both remedy and poison, already
introduces itself into the body of the discourse with all its
ambivalence. This charm, this spellbinding virtue, this power of
fascination, can be - alternately or simultaneously - beneficent
or maleficent" (1981, 70). He adds that "'If the pharmakon is
ambivalent, it is because it constitutes the medium in which
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opposites are opposed, the movement and the play that links
them among themselves, reverses them or makes one side
cross over into the other (soul/body, good/evil, inside/outside,
memory/forgetfulness, speech/writing, etc.)" (1981, 127).
This theory has been taken up by literary scholars and writers, most notably
the feminists, who have used the deconstructionist approach and the
strategy of diffrance to give birth to new terms that bypass dualisms in
general, but more pointedly, the feminine/masculine dualism founded on
pathos/logos and other/self.
To
deconstruct
is
to bypass
all
rigid
conceptual
oppositions
(masculine/feminine,
nature/culture,
subject/object,
perception/understanding, past/present, and so on) and to not treat concepts
as if some were different from others. Each category preserves a trace of the
opposite category. (For example, androgyny carries traces of masculine and
feminine; the traces of the observer remain in an objectively pursued
scientific experiment; in nature, the law of survival of the fittest has
repercussions in social organization and structures.)
2.4 THE THEORY OF DIFFRANCE
The term diffrance originated at a seminar given by Derrida in 1968 at
the Socit franaise de philosophie. The term in itself represents a synthesis
of Derrida's semiotic and philosophical thinking. All of the concepts defined
earlier are active in this theory.
The grapheme a represents several features in the application of this theory:
1. Diffrance is the difference that shatters the cult of identity and the
dominance of Self over Other; it means that there is no origin (originary
unit). Diffrer [to differ] is to not be identical.
2. Diffrance marks a divergence that is written: the a that we can see, but
not hear.
3. Diffrer [to defer] is to displace, shift, or elude.
4. Diffrance is the future in progress (the fight against frozen meanings); it
is the displacement of signifying signifiers to the fringe, since there is no
organizing, original, transcendental signified.
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The writing of diffrance refers to itself, because it breaks with the concepts
of signified and referent. The emphasis on the theme of writing functions as
an antidote against idealism, metaphysics and ontology.
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