Post-Structuralism: Deconstruction Theory and Practice.
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Transcript of Post-Structuralism: Deconstruction Theory and Practice.
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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
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?
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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.
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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. • 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.
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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 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?
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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.
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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。
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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”; 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)
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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.
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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
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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.
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“ 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.
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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)
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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 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)
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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
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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.
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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.
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Question
• Do you agree that meaning is always uncertain and slippery? What does Derrida’s views of language shed light on our communication?
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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
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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
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
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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)
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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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〈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?
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〈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
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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
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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.
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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 )
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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?
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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
1. "The Blind Man"
2. Review “The Purloined Letter”
3. Review the whole unit and bring with you at least one question.