Post-Structuralism: Deconstruction

Theory and Practice

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

Q & A

1. What is Différance? What is Transcendental Signified?

2. How is Western Metaphysics challenged?

3. How do we do deconstruction in literary criticism? Is deconstruction similar to destruction?

Q & A

Is deconstruction similar to destruction?

Literary Deconstruction: --show the hidden gaps in a text’s

meaning. Textual unity-- Reverse the “hierarchical”

binaries, and allow the latter to supplement the formers.

-- de-stabilize, de-center, but not destroy.

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. • 多吃蔬菜﹐有益健康。• 中國人生性刻苦耐勞。• 你要做和事佬﹐真是吹縐一池春水。• The experience of the earthquake

yesterday was quite uncanny.

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 現代啟示錄 ) love?• 多吃蔬菜﹐有益健康。

insecticide? Vegi with blue cheese? • 中國人生性刻苦耐勞。 中國人？

Language/Literature as an enclosed system with two Axes

Syntagmatic/Combination

(narrative structure:

roles + actions);

metonymy

Parad

igm

atic/Selectio

n:

Thematic structure: Motifs, mythemes, metaphors, etc.

Language/Literature as an enclosed system with two Axes

Syntagmatic/Combination P

aradig

matic/S

election

: －中國人﹐華人Chinaman

－刻苦耐勞／現實／斤斤計較／不懂得人生樂趣

+ more stereotypical descriptions, or a father’s advice to his son, etc.

中國人生性刻苦耐勞。

Why is language ambiguous?• Why are meanings undecidable &

slippery? 1. Polysemy: Traces of other signs, other

meanings. (e.g. national “birthday”; 干卿底事; 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. (e.g. 十八層公寓)

4. (intention and the unconscious)

吹縐一池春水• 謁金門 馮延巳風乍起，吹縐一池春水。閒引鴛鴦香徑 ，手挼紅杏蕊。�鬥鴨闌干獨倚，碧玉搔頭斜墬。終日望君君不至，舉頭聞鵲喜。

• 中主李璟很欣賞這首詞，便對馮延巳說：「吹皺一池春水，干卿底事？」馮延巳答道：「怎及你的細雨夢回雞塞遠，小樓吹徹玉笙寒呢？」

（ http://203.198.70.29/subject/chlt/tangci.htm ﹚

Male poet and Waiting woman.

吹縐一池春水（ random samples from

Internet﹚• 東元聲寶合併 吹縐一池春水 .

中時電子報 03:59• 免費下載音樂軟體是否侵犯智財

權 , NAPSTER 吹縐一池春水 , 受質疑 .

• 她愛笑，笑得很野，有時不經意的把眉輕鎖，落在河表哥心中，就如吹縐一池春水 (source)

Traces of other usages

Freud’s “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.

“ Spacing”--

• Movement from one Signifier to another

十八層公寓— by 相聲瓦社-- polysemy: cultural connotations of 十

八層地獄 , 很持久﹐ etc.

-- 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.

Writing and DifféranceLanguage 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 signified’s also in a relation of difference, and they are turned into signifiers floating signifiers.

(Textbook: p. 123; 28)

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.

Writing and DifféranceThe chain of signification:

(1) symbolization or mythologizing

Signifier 1

(rose)

Signified 1

(flower)

Signified 2

(love)

Signified2(rose=love)

Signified 3

(rose=woman in love)

Signified 4

(rose = weak, vain & dependent woman in love)

The other Americans

Other Skin colors Other Racial Features What they did

Writing and Différance: chain of signification (1)

1. Signifier Signified 2 Signified 3

Asian People Yellow Exotic (Evil or Weak)

White Americans WhiteInnocent, Strong

and Civilized

White Man’s Burden

Manifest Destiny

God

Writing and Différance: Chain of Signification (2)

Re-contextualization; traces kept. e.g.

1. Pharmakon: 1). poison, 2). Pharmacy

2. 〈幌馬車之歌〉 ;吹皺一池春水

3. Creole; “Madame Butterfly” in M. Butterfly and in the characters of Song first and then Gallimard; the other parodies.

Chain of Signification 3: floating Signifier（王弼﹚“言者所以明象﹐得象而忘言；象者﹐所以存意﹐得意而忘象。﹒﹒﹒存言者﹐非得象也；存象者﹐非得意者也﹒”

象／言﹐意／象夏宇︰象 – signs; both present and

absent, empty and variously defined.

Question

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

The Transcendental Signified and Binaries

1. The “unmoved mover” e.g.

God (transcendental signified)

The Bible (transcendental signifier)

1. (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

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.

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.

Ways of Questioning the Hierarchical Binaries

1. 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

Deconstruction: practices

1. Open texts A text that deconstructs its own unity or “author.” (examples; also M. Butterfly, its ending)

2. Reverse the text’s 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)

(textbook p. 131)

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.

〈我把一條河給弄丟了〉Reasons for the Disappearance of

the river:

-- My departure; growth

-- The cartographer; urban development

-- The river itself; Nature is betrayed and then changes itself;

-- “Nobody’s fault.”

-- “ 是童年 / 把我記錯” -- Why?

〈我把一條河給弄丟了〉The original hierarchy subverted by

the last line

River-Childhood-personified

River-

Mapped; unchanged

I?

My growth; I Human error; Urban development

Childhood’s memory?

wrong

Deconstruction of Binary Opposition: Example

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

Nature (River)

Jim H:“Then I’ll go to hell.”

"light out for the Territory"

Society (towns)

H: doubt and practical jokes

"born again" as Tom ; use T’s intricate plan to rescue Jim

Undecidability: example 1

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

B. Claggart accuses B of planning mutiny. B’s blow

B killer vs.

C victim

Billy Budd: Billy Budd (a young sailor), Claggart (master-at-arms), Vere (the captain).

Vere responsible and just

Allows an innocent man to be hanged.

Undecidability: example 2A slumber did my spirit seal;

I had no human fears:

She seemed a thing that could not feel

The touch of earthly years.

 <Gap>

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 )

Undecidability: example 2

past lifethe human fear

present death the cosmicpeacefulness

and regularity

“A slumber did my spirit seal” -- Contradictions between

Gap: What happened in between the present and the past?

Whose peacefulness is it? Whose death and when?

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.

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.

Assignments

1. "The Blind Man"

2. Review “The Purloined Letter”

3. Review the whole unit and bring with you at least one question.