Post-Structuralism & Postmodern Texts

1. Post-Structuralism Defined & Marxism vs. Post-Structuralism

2. Fiction and Reality

3. Deconstruction

4. Subject and Power

Major Concepts of Derrida’s Deconstruction Theory

1. language as a system of difference, the transcendental signified

2. Critique of Metaphysics: logocentrism, phonocentrism, phalogocentrism

3. Deconstruction: practices

Writing and Différance

1. 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.

1. Différance: 1. To defer, 2. To differ

Writing and Différance

Two chains of signification: 1. symbolization

Signified 1

Signifier Signified 2 Signified 2

Signifier Signified 3

The other Americans

Other Skin colors Other Racial Features What they did

Writing and Différance: an Example

1. Signified 1 Signified 2 Signified 3

African People Black Evil and dirty

White Americans White Innocence

American InnocenceManifest Destiny

God

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. 《悲情城市》中的 〈幌馬車之歌〉

Questions

1. What is Transcendental Signified?

2. What is presence?

3. What the first step of deconstruction?

1. (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.

Questions & Answers

2. What is presence? 3. 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.)

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.

Deconstruction: practices

(p. 131)1. Open texts A text that deconstructs its unity or a

uthor.2. Reverse the text’s binaries or expose its undecidabi

lity or multiple meanings (131); 3. Study the process of signification of a sign or a text

and find out what it tries to erase.4. Find where the text differs from itself. (critical differ

ence ambiguity and undecidability)5. Radical contextualization to find out its intertextu

al references and thus undecidability of meanings.

Deconstruction: practices (2)

2. Reverse the text’s 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, “That’s a fib”

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”

Deconstruction: practices (3)process of signification in “The Purloined Letter”

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

Letter – 信﹐字母﹐ The Letter as a Floating Signifier. A pure signifier or the Phallus

Deconstruction: practices (4)

2. Find where the text differs from itself. (critical difference ambiguity and undecidability

e.g. “The Winter Palace” “One Art”

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-centuryLosing 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,

The Winter Palace (2)  Philip Larkin

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