Post-Structuralism: Deconstruction

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Post-Structuralism Deconstruction

• Theory and Practice

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Outline

• -- Q A
• -- Jacque Derrida
• 1. Prologue Instability of Meaning
• 2. Writing as Différance
• 3. Transcendental Signified and Binarism
• 4. Deconstruction Literary Practice
• 5. Derrida in Context structuralism, Foucault,
  etc.

Assignments
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Q A

• What is Différance? What is Transcendental
  Signified?
• How is Western Metaphysics challenged?
• How do we do deconstruction in literary
  criticism? Is deconstruction similar to
  destruction?

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Q A

• Is deconstruction similar to destruction?
• Literary Deconstruction
• --show the hidden gaps in a texts meaning.
  Textual unity
• -- Reverse the hierarchical binaries, and allow
  the latter to supplement the formers.
• -- de-stabilize, de-center, but not destroy.

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Which of the following statements are not
ambiguous?

• I am 40 years old.
• The Republic of China was born on Oct. 10, 1911.
  
• I love you till the end of the world.
• The experience of the earthquake yesterday was
  quite uncanny.

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Which of the following statements are not
ambiguous?

• I am 40 years old. ? Who is this I?
• The Republic of China was born on Oct. 10, 1911.
  ? born?
• I love you till the end of the world (Apocalypse
  Now
• ? love?

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Language/Literature as an enclosed system with
two Axes
Paradigmatic/Selection

• Syntagmatic/Combination
• (narrative structure
• roles actions)
• metonymy

Thematic structure Motifs, mythemes, metaphors,
etc.
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Language/Literature as an enclosed system with
two Axes
??????????
Paradigmatic/Selection

• Syntagmatic/Combination

more stereotypical descriptions, or a fathers
advice to his son, etc.
-??????Chinaman -????/??/????/???????
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Why is language ambiguous?

• Why are meanings undecidable slippery?
• 1. Polysemy Traces of other signs, other
  meanings. (e.g. national birthday the
  uncanny)
• 2. Multiple Context Reference Undecidable.
  (e.g. The end of the world )
• 3. Meaning is not present in language it
  happens in between signifiers.
• 4. (intention and the unconscious)

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Freuds the Uncanny

• unheimlich, both homely and unhomely or
  both familiar and strange.
• According to Freud's description, the uncanny
  "derives its terror not from something externally
  alien or unknown but--on the contrary--from
  something strangely familiar which defeats our
  efforts to separate ourselves from it" (Morris
  source).
• e.g. the Gothic tradition, nightmare, castration
  fear.

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Spacing--

• Movement from one Signifier to another
• -- polysemy cultural connotations of
• -- spacing Meaning changed when the context is
  further revealed.
• Comic effects old traces vs. newly defined
  meanings.
• The traces of the old meanings are both present
  and absent.

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Writing and Différance

• Language a system of difference ? of Différance.
• While structualists had treated binary
  oppositions as stable terms in a formal
  structure, Derrida sees them as organized in
  unstable disequilibrium. ? because of the
  presence/absence of traces
• Derrida sees the signifieds also in a relation
  of difference, and they are turned into
  signifiers? floating signifiers.

(Textbook p. 123 28)
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Writing and Différance (2)

• Différance
• To differ
• A sign is defined by its binary opposition to
  another sign.
• 2. To defer.
• The signifier (black) that is distinguished from
  the other one (white) is not completely erased
  it is only deferred, bracketed or merely put
  under erasure. It can subvert the fixed meaning
  of the sign.

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Writing and Différance

• The chain of signification
• (1) symbolization or mythologizing

Signifier 1 (rose) Signified 1 (flower)
Signified 2 (love) Signified2(roselove)
Signified 3 (rosewoman in love) Signified 4 (rose weak, vain dependent woman in love)
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Writing and Différance chain of signification (1)

• Signifier Signified 2
  Signified 3

Asian People
Yellow
Exotic (Evil or Weak)
Other Racial Features What they did
Other Skin colors
Innocent, Strong and Civilized
White
White Americans
The other Americans
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Writing and Différance Chain of Signification (2)
Re-contextualization traces kept. e.g. 1.
Pharmakon 1). poison,
2). Pharmacy 2. lt?????gt?????? 3. Creole
Madame Butterfly in M. Butterfly and in the
characters of Song first and then Gallimard the
other parodies.
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Question

• Do you agree that meaning is always uncertain and
  slippery? What does Derridas views of language
  shed light on our communication?

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The Transcendental Signified and Binaries

• The unmoved mover e.g.
• God (transcendental signified)
• The Bible (transcendental signifier)
• (Textbook p. 124) source/closure of meaning and
  center of existence. e.g. being, unity, truth,
  the good, reason, progress, identity, continuity,
  meaning, subjectivity, authenticity, etc.
  foundations

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The Transcendental Signified and Binaries

• They are the upper terms in hierarchical
  binaries e.g.

Man Light Reason Culture The Public West, etc.
Woman Dark-ness Emotion Nature The Private East, etc.
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Critique of Metaphysics logocentrism,
phallogocentrism

• Traditional binaries are hierarchical. Should
  be reversed or questioned.
• Logocentrism Logo as center, source, or founding
  presence of knowledge and human beings.
• Phallogocentrism Man/Woman sun/moon,
  reason/emotion, Subject/Object, etc.

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Ways of Questioning the Hierarchical Binaries

• The two terms are actually mutually determinant.
  e.g. The West has to define itself by
  having/rejecting an Other which is different.
  
• 2. The weak term is not really weak.
• 3. Mutually implicated One term implies its
  opposite term. examples

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Deconstruction practices
(textbook p. 131)

• 1. Open texts ? A text that deconstructs its own
  unity or author. (examples also M. Butterfly,
  its ending)
• 2. Reverse the texts binaries or expose its
  undecidability or multiple meanings (example M.
  Butterfly ? Madame Butterfly another)
• 3. Study the process of signification of a sign
  or a text and find out what it tries to erase.
  (e.g. Scarlet Letter Barthesian studies of
  commercials)

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Deconstruction practices (2)

• 4. Find where the text differs from itself.
  (critical difference)? ambiguity and
  undecidability (example)
• 5. Radical contextualization ? to find out its
  intertextual references and thus undecidability
  of meanings.

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• Reasons for the Disappearance of the river
• -- My departure ?growth
• -- The cartographer ?urban development
• -- The river itself ? Nature is betrayed and
  then changes itself
• -- Nobodys fault.

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• The original hierarchy subverted by the last line

River-Childhood-personified River- Mapped unchanged I?
My growth I Human error Urban development Childhoods memory?
wrong
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Deconstruction of Binary Opposition Example

• The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn Society vs.
  Nature, with Huck in between

Nature (River) Jim HThen Ill go to hell. "light out for the Territory"
Society (towns) H doubt and practical jokes "born again" as Tom use Ts intricate plan to rescue Jim
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Undecidability example 1
Billy Budd Billy Budd (a young sailor), Claggart
(master-at-arms), Vere (the captain).

1. Billy Budd innocent) vs. Claggart (evil)

• B. Claggart accuses B of planning mutiny. ? Bs
  blow
• B killer vs.
• C victim

Vere responsible and just ?
Allows an innocent man to be hanged.
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Undecidability example 2

• A slumber did my spirit seal
• I had no human fears
• She seemed a thing that could not feel
• The touch of earthly years.
•  ltGapgt
• No motion has she now, no force
• She neither hears nor sees
• Rolled round in earth's diurnal course,
• With rocks, and stones, and trees.
• (William Wordsworth )

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Undecidability example 2
A slumber did my spirit seal -- Contradictions
between

• present
• death
• the cosmic
• peacefulness and regularity

• past
• life
• the human
• fear

Gap What happened in between the present and
the past? Whose peacefulness is it? Whose
death and when?
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Derridian Deconstruction in Context

• 1. Anti-Foundationalist de-centering
• 2. Like New Critics, deconstructionists read
  closely to find out the contradictions and gaps
  in a text, but without reconstructing them back
  to a unity.
• 3. Like Foucault, D thinks that we are in
  language and are conditioned by its structure,
  polysemy and fluidity.

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Derridian Deconstruction in Context (2)

• 4. Other usages of différance desired object
  in unattainable, constantly deferred and
  replaced colonial mimicry disseminate/de-center
  colonial authority.
• 5. différance and temporary closure.

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Assignments

• "The Blind Man"
• 2. Review The Purloined Letter
• 3. Review the whole unit and bring with you at
  least one question.