Explaining the Definition of Deconstruction

Name: Vadher Ankita.

Paper: E-C-203: Literary Criticism: Western and Indian Poetics-2.

Topic:Explaining the Definition of Deconstruction.

SEM: 2, Part: 1.

Year: 2011/12.

Submitted To,

 Dr. Dilip Barad,

Dept of English,

                                              Bhav. Uni.

z What is Deconstruction? z

Derrida was the most influential philosophy in 70s and 80s of last century. In the criticism of literature, deconstruction is a theory and practice of reading which question and claims to ‘subvert’ or ‘undermine’ the assumption that the system of language provides grounds that are adequate to establish the boundaries, the coherence or unity, and the determinate meaning of a literary text. Typically a deconstructive reading sets out to show the conflicting forces within the text itself to dissipate the seeming definiteness of its structure and meaning in to indefinite array of incompatibility and undividable possibilities. Derrida did not invent the term deconstruction. First he found in a dictionary it was archaic word and also started to use in the 1960s. The meaning of the term ‘deconstruction’ has expanded far beyond those intended in derrida’s own first use of it. The word itself is now commonly used as a pretentious Alternative to “analysis”. Deconstruction is sometimes used as a label for what literary studies in general dose to poems plays, and novels, breaking them down to see how they work the implication often being that as for the child who takes apart their new toys on their birthday morning it may not prove possible to you things back together again. Deconstruction troubles our nation of definition because of its intense concern with singularity with what makes things individual or unique governed by something like a principle of respect for singularity, it makes more sense to think of Deconstruction in the plural a series of responses which seek to be as faithful as possible to their various objects whether a partition text, author, or historical event. This is why Deconstruction can’t be a method which would imply subordinating its objects regardless of their variety and singularity to some kind of mechanical operation. Deconstruction it should already be clear is awkward suspicious of the theoretical reduction of the world and pre-eminently wary of traditional philosophical interest in essences, ideals and abstract logics, it also recognizes the encasing of asking the kinds of question which can only be posed philosophically. One side of Deconstruction is this critical questioning of philosophical assumptions. Which are also the assumptions which underlie the way? We think, all the time, as Derrida commented in an interview in 1968, “Everyday language” is not innocent or neutral. It is the language of western metaphysic and it carries with. It is not only a considerable number of presuppositions of all type But, also presuppositions inseparable from metaphysics.

            Deconstruction is very interested in the way in which identity is never simply complete or given but is the product of these kinds of decisions of assumptions. Derrida is cornered as much with historical events with language the identity of written and verbal signs that which allows them to be respected, used and understood in new context to men things. Quite different from what was ordinary “Ghostliness” that open and provisional identity which characterized all identities. Deconstruction consists in exploiting the potential of the text by the reader who may bring in his own interests political philosophical literacy ideological. This is based on a language philosophy which stresses the relativity of meaning in as much as “Language is a system of difference without positive terms” Deconstruction is instructive.

Example:

                   If Deconstruction can be the name of a record label known for putting out chart friendly dance, music in the late 1980’s of a dreary 1999 album by earnest singer song writer Meredith books and of a series of skate punk rock festivals in 2002 and 2003.

                        It has became an excellent example of Derrida’s point that what makes communication possible is “inerrability” or to decode his term the sense that to be a word means something like this opposability of being carried in to ever changing contexts and put to ever different uses.

z Deconstruction and Post Structuralism z

                        Post-structuralism term referring to the new way texts are read and interpreted. It is a view of literature derived from Jacques Derrida’s theory of writing and more distantly from the linguistics of Saussure. Traditional interpretation of texts consisted in getting at the intention of the author and suppressing the kind of subjectivity which often interfered with it. Traditional interpretation also assumed that it is possible to get at the meaning of the text because it is universal. “Language is a system of differences without positive terms” it was Saussure who showed that signs differs from each other and they become meaningful through their differences which take the farm of opposition.

For Example:

Ø Red as a traffic signal means Stop while Green means go.

                              The connection between the signifier Red and the signifier stop is arbitrary, conventional, it is defined not by its essential properties but by the difference that distinguishes it from green or other signs. This feature made Saussure describe language as a system of differences without any positive terms. Derrida carries this argument its logical extreme when he shows that the very differences that make them meaningful keep them from meaning anything definite and also the signs don’t shed the multiple meaning they acquire in different contexts. They retain the traces of their other uses. Trace means a kind of eraser. Eraser is when writing itself erasing an idea.

Example:

Ø I have seen that people don’t close their eyes while praying.

                              This interdependence leads Derrida to the hypothesis that we can’t say what any sign means without reference to its relation to the other signs. In other words signifier differs from each other and from what they signify. The differences that make them meaningful keep them from meaning anything definite ha employs terms like trace / difference / differance /  supplement to explain this indeterminacy or phonon centrism or privileging speech over writing has no validity. Bloom would examine the relation of a text to its precursor this skeptical language philosophy with the one which we in India know we had our own skeptical and atheistic philosophy which accepted “presence” and who held the same view as Derrida but more ancient philosophy which accepted “presence”, “truth” and “meaning” while granting the impossibility of embodying it in human language except negativity. Infect, they said it can’t even be conceived by mind or by logic still maintained the importance of word as capable of expressing the truth. There is a verse which says: speech is measured out in 4 steps. The Brahmins who have the understanding when we listen this word Brahmins the ideas comes in a mind Brahmins means the wise that have the knowledge of the mantras. Derrida and his followers who pay so much attention to analysis of the semantic significance of words and to dismantling don’t speak at all of intonation and rhythm which may modify and integrate the meaning of individual signs and leads us to “presence”. This inclusive view of language can’t be dismissed as mere logo centrism.

                                                ™ Diachronic / Synchronic ˜

Diachronic:

                              Diachronic as related to the study of language both are related to the study Diachronic refers to the way of studying language taking in to the account the change and development through time and also a words grew with expert life.

Synchronic:

                              Opposed to the Diachronic synchronic which takes into the account those elements that are concern corneous synchronic available today which language existence today architect view of language.

Example:

Ø Thing - word, word – Thing

                                                ™ Difference / Differance ˜

                              Saussure defined language as a system of difference. He employs the terms sign / signifier / signified / parole / langue to define the whole system. The set of sounds the marks on the paper constitute the signifier. The concept thus named is called the signified. The relationship between the signifier and the signified is arbitrary/ conventional. Saussure terms langue as opposed to parole or speech which is what we find in individual utterances. Though the linguistic system langue is necessary for the speech events parole to be intelligible and produce their effects. It is impossible to establish the system itself without the speech events. The business of signification thus gets. Done only through speech, but the validity of its transaction is derived from the ratification by language system. Derrida shows that if in the linguistic system. There are only differences the play of differences involves constant references to other words; signs which are not there the meaning of which therefore entangle it with other signs. A word or sign differs each time we use it and yet retains traces of its other uses. The meaning of any word will never stop and declare itself at any point. There is a difference, by which neologism Derrida indicates how contracted differences result in a deferral.

Difference / Differance for Example:

 Ø       I am man.

                              It indicating / identity of man mean not an animal or not any gender. The language in hidden meaning.

                              Language always pretends to make things present to us but always fails. It defers postpones delays. This deferred nature of meaning forces us to realize that there is no arriving at it rather there is a dissemination of meaning. Derrida uses the word disseminating to suggest that meaning in a text is not single or hypostatized; on the other hand it is distributed among various alternatives which make the text ‘stratified’ as Christopher Norris would have it. Hence its relation to other text dissemination or its intersexuality. The multiple meaning become a source of joy Derrida uses the term graft to define the way two discourses may be ‘bound’. The reverberations set up by structures at once connected and divided are indicating by the term Tympana from tympanum which connects by transmission of sounds, the inside and outside separated.