Post-Structuralism (Deconstruction)
Prof. Anil Awad
Simplified - Lecture Notes

As we have seen in the previous topic on Structuralism… ‘Things cannot be understood in isolation…they should be understood as the part of the larger structure they belong’…and also seen the examples…if we want to understand what is chair, we must know what is table, sofa-set, bed, show-case etc. It means simply that the meaning is ‘relational’…one object’s meaning is dependent upon the others. But have you noticed that the meaning is jumping from one object to another…from Chair>Table>Bed>Sofa>Show-case>Furniture and many more?

Yes…it is transferring to other objects. If you want to understand Chair…you must know Table. Chair is chair because it is not table. Black is black because it is not white, green or orange. So the meaning is transferring, jumping, passing to the other objects. It’s a kind of ‘binary opposition’…one is one because it is not two. Till it is oky. But here the post-structuralist tries to find out the fault…and it leads to the theory of ‘Deconstruction’. How? Let’s see.

As per ‘the theory of relativity’ by Einstein…the whole universe is moving. The Earth moving around sun, the sun moving with galaxies, million galaxies are moving and so the universe. What we understand about ‘time’ and ‘space’ is ‘relative’. Time – we count it with seconds, minutes, hours, days, weeks, months, years, and ages and so on…but it is in relation. Space – from millimeter to light years…again in relation. Why in relation…because not a single thing in the universe is stable…everything is in motion…moving and moving and moving. There is no ‘fixed pole’ in the universe to measure the development…only to count in relation. The same thing is with structuralism - the meaning is jumping and jumping and jumping. There is no fixed pole to determine the true meaning of the objects. Chair is chair because we understand it is not Table, Table is table because it is not bed etc etc. This is how we are watching the things. It makes a kind of structure in our mind. But if we start to analyze minutely…this structure start to vanish…because we have no fixed pole that tells us the true meaning. We always have to depend on something else. Now move to language…Sign (word) and Signifier (sound) and the object (Signified) are not the same. The word ‘tree’ (t, r, e, e) doesn’t mean the same…we have associated the meaning externally. In different languages the ‘tree’ is called with different pronunciations (‘Ped’ in Hindi, ‘Zad’ in Marathi and many more). Pronunciations or utterances or say signifiers do not represents the objects (signified)…So no fixed pole to determine the meaning…and here the genuine problem begins. The meaning is started to soar or say float aimlessly…and pointing it or fixing it in a particular structure becomes impossible. It is called post-structuralism. Post-structuralism is a theory while deconstruction is practice. When you start to find of the relation between Sign, Signifier and Signified…it is not one-to-one…and still we try our best to fix everything in a structure…without a stable centre or say fixed pole. The result is inevitable – D E C O N S T R U C T I ON…!

Now see the example (or mis-example) of Deconstruction. Take the famous quots… ‘My luv is like a red red rose, that has sprung in June’. A structuralist finds it as a love poem and starts to structuralize it. But post-structuralist deconstructs the poem. How?

My luv is like a red red rose

Take any word/phrase/idea from it. Ok.. we take ‘rose’. Rose is a flower…so the sunflower, lily, lotus, and many more. Flower plants are different in their structure than the other plants. What are other plants…description starts..???????? Ok. It is red rose. There may be yellow, white, blue and lavender colored roses. Now colour and their description starts…???????? Then the word ‘red’ is used two times. Why? Poetic device…reinforcement of the objects…what are the other poetic devices…description starts…?????? So it is a poem…love poem. There are also other genres like novel, drama etc. description starts. Love poem….poem of war/person/incident….description starts. Now the grammatical structure of the line….description starts…??????? Now move to pronunciation…sign, signifier and signified…it is different in different languages…in Hindi gualb, roza in tamil…description starts…???? Again the word, its meaning and etymology (origini)…????

How can you analyze a poem? How can you structuralize the poem? The meaning is jumping and jumping and jumping and there is no fixed center or pole to determine the development. Its just like Nuclear Chain Reaction. So reading the poem becomes a chaos…it has been deconstructed. It is a kind of ‘reading the text against itself’. You lose the charm of the poem. There is none on the earth who has read a single piece of literature by using deconstruction method. Keep in mind…although deconstruction is a practice it has philosophical base too – in the writing of Foucault, Derrida, Barthes and many more post-structuralists.

ANALYZING POST-STRUCTURALISM 
(DECONSTRUCTION)

Now read the following analysis...and clear your idead about the post-structuralism (DECONSTRUCTION)

What are the characteristics of post-structuralism as a critical method?

The post-structuralist is engaged in the task of “deconstructing” the text or a particular/accepted reading of the text. This process is given the name deconstruction, which can be roughly defined as applied post-structuralism or post-structuralism as a method of reading and analysis. It is often referred to as “reading against the grain” or “reading the text against itself” (Eagleton). Another way of describing this would be to say that deconstructive reading uncovers the unconscious rather than the conscious dimensions of the text, all of the things that an ordinary reading of it glosses over or fails to recognize. According to Jacques Derrida, a deconstructive reading:

“must always aim at a certain relationship, unperceived by the writer [or readers], between what he commands and what he does not command of the patterns of language that he uses . . . [It] attempts to make the not-seen accessible to sight.” (Of Grammatology 158, 163)

So deconstruction practices what has been called oppositional reading, reading the text with the aim of unmasking internal contradictions or inconsistencies in the text, aiming to show the disunity which underlies its apparent unity. Notice that the aim of New Criticism by contrast had been precisely the opposite of this, to show the unity of the work beneath apparent disunity. Deconstruction aims to show the disunity of any text. This disunity is a product of language itself.

What Post-Structuralist Critics “Do”:

They read the text against itself so as to expose what might be thought of as the textual subconscious, where meanings are expressed which may be directly contrary to the surface meaning.

They fix upon the surface features of words--similarities in sound, the root meanings of words, a dead or dying metaphor and bring these to the foreground, so that they become crucial to the overall meaning or even disrupt the overall meaning.

They seek to show that the text is characterized by disunity rather than unity.

They concentrate on a single passage and analyze it so intensively that it becomes impossible to sustain a “univocal” reading and the language explodes into “multiplicities of meaning.”

They look for shifts and breaks of various kinds in the text and see these as evidence of what is repressed or glossed over or passed over in silence by the text and bring these to the surface, analyzing how their “presence” affects the overall meaning of the work.

Another way to think about post-structuralist analysis is to focus on the following stages or processes. Please keep in mind that these are not necessarily separate but often can be interrelated:

The verbal stage is similar to that of more conventional forms of New Critical close reading that we studied earlier in the course. It involves looking in the text for paradoxes and contradictions at what might be called the purely verbal level. For example, the repressed unconsciousness within language is evident in a word like “guest” and it’s cognate (that is, it has the same original root as) the word “host.” However, “host” comes from the original Latin word hostis, meaning an enemy. Think even further about the meaning of the word hos/tility or the relationship between a parasite and a host and you begin to see that even words where the meaning seems clear and “obvious” are filled with complications. This hints at the repressed double aspect of these words that a good critical reader can bring to our attention, complicating the meaning of the work. In addition to looking at the etymology of specific words, you can look at the interrelationship between words, how they create contradictions or inconsistencies that cannot be resolved. To do this kind of analysis, all you really need to start is a copy of the work, a good dictionary, and the dedication to be a close, observant reader.

The textual stage focuses on the relationship between common binary oppositions in the work like male/female, day/night, light/dark, good/evil, nature/society, etc, in which one term seems to be "privileged" or more highly valued over the other. A post-structuralist reading might try to look closely at this hierarchy in order to show how it is not sustained throughout the work, or how the two terms are not oppositional at all but interrelated and interdependent.

The linguistic stage involves looking for moments when the adequacy of language itself as a medium of communication is called into question. Such moments occur when there is implicit or explicit reference to the unreliability or untrustworthiness of language, juxtapositions of speech and silence, or an awareness of the limitations of language. In other words, moments in the narrative where we are made consciously aware of the problems involved in using language to create meaning.

KEY TERMS

1. Deconstruction

Deconstruction is a strategy of critical questioning directed towards exposing unquestionable metaphysical assumptions and internal contradictions in philosophical and literary language. Deconstruction often involves a way of reading that concerns itself with decentering—with unmasking the problematic nature of all centers. Further deconstruction is a form of textual practice derived from Derrida, which aims to demonstrate the inherent insatiability of both language and meaning. It rejects the word “analysis” or “interpretation” as well as it rejects any assumption of texts.

2. Binary Oppositions

The binary opposition is the structuralist idea that acknowledges the human tendency to think in terms of opposition. For Saussure the binary opposition was the “means by which the units of language have value or meaning; each unit is defined against what it is not.” With this categorization, terms and concepts tend to be associated with a positive or negative. For example, Reason/Passion, Man/Woman, Inside/Outside, Presence/Absence, Speech/Writing, etc. Derrida argued that these oppositions were arbitrary and inherently unstable. The structures themselves begin to overlap and clash and ultimately these structures of the text dismantle themselves from within the text. In this sense deconstruction is regarded as a forum of anti-structuralism. Deconstruction rejects most of the assumptions of structuralism and more vehementaly “binary opposition” on the grounds that such oppositions always previlege one term over the other, that is, signified over the signifier.

3. Differance

Against the metaphysics of presence, deconstruction brings a (non)concept called differance. Derrida uses the term “difference” to describe the origin of presence and absence. Differance is indefinable, and cannot be explained by the “metaphysics of presence.” In French, the verb “deferrer” means both “to defer” and “to differ.” Thus, difference may refer not only to the state or quality of being deferred, but to the state or quality of being different. Differance may be the condition for that which is deferred, and may be the condition for that which is different. Differance may be the condition for difference.

Derrida explains that difference is the condition for the opposition of presence and absence. Differance is also the “hinge” between speech and writing, and between inner meaning and outer representation. As soon as there is meaning, there is difference.

4. Metaphysics of presence/ Logocentricism

According to Derrida, “logocentrism” is the attitude that logos (the Greek term for speech, thought, law, or reason) is the central principle of language and philosophy. Logocentrism is the view that speech, and not writing, is central to language. Thus, “Of Grammatology” (a term which Derrida uses to refer to the science of writing) can liberate our ideas of writing from being subordinated to our ideas of speech. Of Grammatology is a method of investigating the origin of language which enables our concepts of writing to become as comprehensive as our concepts of speech.

According to logocentrist theory, says Derrida, speech is the original signifier of meaning, and the written word is derived from the spoken word. The written word is thus a representation of the spoken word. Logocentrism maintains that language originates as a process of thought which produces speech, and that speech then produces writing. Logocentrism is that characteristic of texts, theories, modes of representation and signifying systems that generates a desire for a direct, unmediated, given hold on meaning, being and knowledge.

Derrida argues that logocentrism may be seen in the theory that a linguistic sign consists of a signifier which derives its meaning from a signified idea or concept. Logocentrism asserts the exteriority of the signifier to the signified. Writing is conceptualized as exterior to speech, and speech is conceptualized as exterior to thought. However, if writing is only a representation of speech, then writing is only a ‘signifier of a signifier.’ Thus, according to logocentrist theory, writing is merely a derivative form of language which draws its meaning from speech. The importance of speech as central to the development of language is emphasized by logocentrist theory, but the importance of writing is marginalized.

Derrida explains that, according to logocentrist theory, speech may be a kind of presence, because the speaker is simultaneously present for the listener, but writing may be a kind of absence, because the writer is not simultaneously present for the reader. Writing may be regarded by logocentrist theory as a substitute for the simultaneous presence of writer and reader. If the reader and the writer were simultaneously present, then the writer would communicate with the reader by speaking instead of by writing. Logocentrism thus asserts that writing is a substitute for speech and that writing is an attempt to restore the presence of speech.

Logocentrism is described by Derrida as a “metaphysics of presence,” which is motivated by a desire for a “transcendental signified.” A “transcendental signified” is a signified which transcends all signifiers, and is a meaning which transcends all signs. A “transcendental signified” is also a signified concept or thought which transcends any single signifier, but which is implied by all determinations of meaning.

Derrida argues that the “transcendental signified” may be deconstructed by an examination of the assumptions which underlie the “metaphysics of presence.” For example, if presence is assumed to be the essence of the signified, then the proximity of a signifier to the signified may imply that the signifier is able to reflect the presence of the signified. If presence is assumed to the essence of the signified, then the remoteness of a signifier from the signified may imply that the signifier is unable, or may only be barely able, to reflect the presence of the signified. This interplay between proximity and remoteness is also an interplay between presence and absence, and between interiority and exteriority.

5. Trace

The idea of difference also brings with it the idea of trace. A trace is what a sign differs/defers from. It is the absent part of the sign’s presence. In other words, We may now define trace as the sign left by the absent thing, after it has passed on the scene of its former presence. Every present, in order to know itself as present, bears the trace of an absent which defines it. It follows then that an originary present must bear an originary trace, the present trace of a past which never took place, an absolute past. In this way, Derrida believes, he achieves a position beyond absolute knowledge. According to Derrida, the trace itself does not exist because it is self-effacing. That is, in presenting itself, it becomes effaced. Because all signifiers viewed as present in Western thought will necessarily contain traces of other (absent) signifiers, the signifier can be neither wholly present nor wholly absent.

6. Arche-writing

The term ‘arche-writing’ is uded by Derrida to describe a form of language which cannot be conceptualized within the ‘metaphysics of presence.’ Arche-writing is an original form of language which is not derived from speech. Arche-writing is a form of language which is unhindered by the difference between speech and writing. ‘Arche-writing’ is also a condition for the play of difference between written and non-written forms of language.

Derrida contrasts the concept of “arche-writing” with the “vulgar” concept of writing. The “vulgar” concept of writing, which is proposed by the “metaphysics of presence,” is deconstructed by the concept of “arche-writing.”

7. Supplement

Derrida takes this term from Rousseau, who saw a supplement as “an inessential extra added to something complete in itself.” Derrida argues that what is complete in itself cannot be added to, and so a supplement can only occur where there is an originary lack. In any binary set of terms, the second can be argued to exist in order to fill in an originary lack in the first.

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Anil S Awad

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