Post-Structuralism

1
Post-Structuralism Postmodern Texts

1. Post-Structuralism Defined Marxism vs.
   Post-Structuralism
2. Fiction and Reality
3. Deconstruction
4. Subject and Power

2
Major Concepts of Derridas Deconstruction Theory

1. language as a system of difference, the
   transcendental signified
2. Critique of Metaphysics logocentrism,
   phonocentrism, phalogocentrism
3. Deconstruction practices

3
Writing and Différance

• binary opposition and supplement
• While structualists had treated binary
  oppositions as stable terms in a formal
  structure, Derrida sees them as organized in
  unstable disequilibrium.
• Différance 1. To defer, 2. To differ

4
Writing and Différance

• Two chains of signification 1. symbolization
• Signified 1
• Signifier ? Signified 2 Signified 2
• Signifier ? Signified 3

5
Writing and Différance an Example

• Signified 1 Signified 2
  Signified 3

African People
Black
Evil and dirty
Other Skin colors
Other Racial Features What they did
Innocence
White
White Americans
The other Americans
Manifest Destiny
American Innocence
God
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Writing and Différance
Two chains of signification 2.
Re-contextualization traces kept. e.g. 1.
Pharmakon 1). poison,
2). Pharmacy 2. Creole 1). Native,
local,pure 2). Native-born
whites 3). Hybrid 3.??????
lt?????gt
7
Questions

• What is Transcendental Signified?
• What is presence?
• What the first step of deconstruction?
• (Textbook p. 124) source of meaning and center
  of existence. e.g. being, unity, truth, the
  good, reason, progress, identity, continuity,
  meaning, subjectivity, authenticity, etc.

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Questions Answers

• What is presence?
• What the first step of deconstruction?
• 2. (p. 126) Opposite to absence presence of god,
  of meaning, essence, etc. implies fixed and
  domineering presence.
• 3. Reverse the hierarchical binary of
  presence/absence, speech/writing, and allow the
  latters to supplement the formers. (examples
  later.)

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Critique of Metaphysics logocentrism,
phonocentrism, phallogocentrism

• Traditional binaries are hierarchical. Should
  be reversed.
• Logocentrism Logo as center, source, or founding
  presence of knowledge and human beings.
• Phonocentrism In the speech/writing binary,
  speech is supposed to signal presence of the
  speaker.
• Phallogocentrism Man/Woman sun/moon,
  reason/emotion, Subject/Object, etc.

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Deconstruction practices

• (p. 131)
• Open texts ? A text that deconstructs its unity
  or author.
• Reverse the texts binaries or expose its
  undecidability or multiple meanings (131)
• Study the process of signification of a sign or a
  text and find out what it tries to erase.
• Find where the text differs from itself.
  (critical difference? ambiguity and
  undecidability)
• Radical contextualization ? to find out its
  intertextual references and thus undecidability
  of meanings.

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Deconstruction practices (2)

• 2. Reverse the texts binaries or expose its
  undecidability or multiple meanings (131)
• e.g. Araby
• Man Religious Quest ?
• ------ ? ------ ? ------
• Woman Object of Quest Bazaar Money/Vanity
• Refuse to be understood, critical, Thats a fib

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Deconstruction practices (3)

• 2. Study the process of signification of a sign
  or a text and find out what it tries to erase.
• e.g. The Scarlet Letter, I Wandered Lonely as a
  Cloud

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Deconstruction practices (3)process of
signification in The Purloined Letter
Letter ?????The Letter as a Floating Signifier.
A pure signifier or the Phallus

Scene 1 Scene 2 Scene 3
the blind The King The Queen The Minister
the complacent seer The Queen The Minister Dupin
the robber The Minister Dupin Lacan
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Deconstruction practices (4)

• 2. Find where the text differs from itself.
  (critical difference? ambiguity and
  undecidability
• e.g. The Winter Palace One Art

15
The Winter Palace 
Philip Larkin

• Most people know more as they get older
• I give all that the cold shoulder.
• I spent my second quarter-century
• Losing what I had learnt at university
•  
• And refusing to take in what had happened since.
• Now I know none of the names in the public
  prints,

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The Winter Palace (2) 
Philip Larkin

• And am starting to give offence by forgetting
  faces
• And swearing I've never been in certain places.
• It will be worth it, if in the end I manage
• To blank out whatever it is that is doing the
  damage.
•  
• Then there will be nothing I know
• My mind will fold into itself, like fields, like
  snow.