Welcome dear participants to this final module
of this week.
After having established the directions in
which postmodern is criticism has developed,
today we are going to discuss post structuralism
and deconstruction.
The structure of todays module is like this
we would be introducing this idea of structuralism
with Saussure’s view of language.
We would move onto post structuralism introducing
it and also telling the differences between
structuralism and post structuralism.
We would also briefly discuss Derrida’s
main contribution to the development of the
deconstruction idea and then towards the end
we would also discuss a deconstructive reading
of Hilda Doolittle’s poem ‘Oread’.
We have seen that how during the postmodern
is development,
the finality of modernist idea was rejected
in favour of parallel and multiple truths.
It also started a closer reading of the text
and the textual reading is normally open to
interpretation.
So, what postmodern is had done was to establish
the supremacy of the text over a reading of
nature or phenomena from the perspective of
a social scientist who was trying to fix up
certain certainties.
The rational arguments find out what was the
truth and the correct answer whereas in postmodernity
we find that the texts became supreme.
And therefore they were open to interpretation.
Here I quote from Jane Kaplan who has said
that “the postmodernist methodology and
epistemological is characterized by the relative
eclipse of arguments about social science
modes of explanation”.
And it is also commented that there is a shift
towards theories from linguistics and literary
studies so shift towards linguistics and literary
studies is seen in the postmodernist phenomena
as we have been discussing during this week.
Postmodernism is started to become popular
during the sixties.
The Post is structural approach also is known
during that time for its efforts to offer
the critical review of normative concepts
in classical philosophy.
The Post structural and approach also based
on linguistic theories and in this approach
we find that they try to look at the revaluation
of language in terms of studying and understanding
theories of knowledge phenomenology as well
as hermeneutics also.
The development of the post- structuralist
theory is normally referred to a quintet of
French theorists and these are Derrida, Foucault,
Lacan, Kristeva, and Rolland Barthes.
These philosophers have had a major influence
on the readings of the structuralist theories
and the development of post structuralist
theories in the eighties.
It can be said that if a structuralist relies
upon the logic of language, Post structuralist
reveals rhetoric as the subversive poetic
sub conscious of that logic.
The quintet also attempts to unveil and problematize
the grand narratives on which the foundation
of the modernist society and thought was laid.
These philosophers have taken up different
avenues for finding out the nature of their
own theoretical expansion.
For example, Derrida has talked a lot about
the philosophy and its development, Foucault
has majorly limited to writings in the historical
context and power.
Lacan has talked about psychoanalysis whereas
Kristeva and Barthes have talked about literary
and cultural studies
Barthes’ concept of intertextuality and
Derrida’s concept of difference which is
a conjoined word combining two words difference
and deference.
So, these ideas provided the basis for radical
epistemology about how language and abstract
concepts do not allow us to ever gain certainty
in terms of knowledge.
Derrida also suggested that the conventional
link between the signifier and signified is
at best tenuous only.
Normally it is slippery and fragile and therefore
the meaning cannot be considered to be fixed
as a structuralist arguments had provided
to us.
Derrida has also said that the text has a
certain meaning within a context.
So, this idea of the relation between the
text and the context has become very important
in the context of understanding Derrida’s
philosophy.
He also says that the complete meaning of
your word is present in the speaker’s mind.
Such that it can be transmitted without a
significant slipping this idea has been termed
as metaphysics by Derrida.
Derrida has suggested that the western thought
has been dominated by logocentric claims these
logo centric claims maybe derived from different
aspects.
For example, they may be derived from art
or religion or science or political dogma
but they are always presented in a binary.
And in the binary a particular pole is always
privileged over the other and therefore it
is prescribed a greater value whereas it also
downgrades or excludes the other pool.
So, the modernist version of thinking in terms
of binary has been challenged by Derrida.
He has also discussed how logocentric claims
are normally made in justified he argued that
one way uses of language attempt to overcome
the limitations and circularity of signification
is to define concepts not in terms what they
are but through their difference from other
things.
Structuralism is a theoretical paradigm grew
out of the need to systematize the study of
literature and literary history.
It is also suggested at times that new critical
approaches had also laid the foundations for
structuralism.
As the very name suggests is structuralism
is concerned with the structures and more
particularly with examining the gender laws
by which they work.
It is a believe that individuals unit of any
system have meaning only by virtue of their
relation
to one another, an individual unit does not
have any meaning outside these relationships
like for formalism.
It has also concentrated and entirely on the
form and does not consider the actual content
of the text.
For example, it is not concerned about the
cultural interpretation or about the historical
significance of a particular text.
As long as I structure of relations between
the units is preserved it does not matter
which items you select.
You can take up a portion from an established
piece of literature or you can also take a
piece from say a newspaper report.
But the structuralist study would be analytical
only and it would never be evaluative and
therefore the cultural value of a particular
piece of literature or a particular piece
of writing has no meaning for the structuralist.
They refuse the obvious meaning of the text
something which is very apparent to a lay
reader and seeks illustrate to isolate certain
deepest structures within it which are not
apparent on the surface.
It also does not take the text at the face
value but displaces it into a quite different
kind of object.
The structuralist ideas where inspired by
Saussure’s writing.
It flourished in the first half of the 20th
century as an attempt to apply to literature
the methods and insights of the founder of
modern is structural linguistics particularly
Ferdinand de Saussure.
It is an interesting point that among other
subjects Saussure had been an avid scholar
of Sanskrit.
As a scholar he had Sanskrit as well as other
classical language and in 1880 the thesis
which was awarded to him
by the Lepzig University was on the use of
absolute genitive case in the rig Veda.
So it is very important aspect to for us to
understand that the linguistic traditions
of Sanskrit learning have also influenced
the way modern structuralist ideas have flourished
in the world.
Most of the classical structuralist notions
emerge from sources lectures in Geneva which
he had delivered between 1907 and 1911.
These lectures were published posthumously
in 1916 under the name of A Course in General
Linguistics.
Saussure viewed language as a system of science
which was to be studied synchronically rather
than diachronically.
He also suggested that each sign has to be
seen as being made up of a signifier is sound
image or its graphic equivalent and the signified
that is the concept or the meaning.
He further illustrates it and says that the
3 independent black marks which he refers
to as c, a and t are a signifier which evoke
the signified cat in the mind of a person
who has knowledge of the English language
however the relation between the signifier
and signified is an arbitrary one.
There is no inherent reason accept perhaps
the cultural and historical convention to
understand that these marks should mean cat
and should relate to a particular picture
in the mind of a language speaker.
Therefore, he suggests that the relationship
between the sign and the referent that means
the sign and what it refers to is absolutely
arbitrary.
Each sign in the system has meaning also only
by virtue of its difference from the others.
For example, cat has meaning not in itself
but because it is say not cap or cad or bat.
It does not matter how the signifier alters
as long as it preserves its different from
the are all other signifiers and here I quote
from Saussure he says in the linguistic system
there are only differences.
Meaning is not mysteriously imminent in sign
but it is functional.
The results of its difference from other science
in generates automatically a circular process
what is the same now maybe a referent if we
take it further and therefore meaning is not
fixed.
It cannot be nailed down but it is a scattered
and dispersed along the whole chain of signifiers
and it has never fully present in any one
sign alone.
But it is a rather a kind of constant flickering
of presence and absence together.
Howsoever they structuralist also maintain
that there is a definite link between the
sign and referent.
Saussure was more concerned with length, the
objective is director of science.
Which made his speech possible and he also
believed that the linguistics should not be
really too much concern with parole, what
he makes the name which he used for the actual
speech or what people actually said or meant.
Still Saussure contribution is very important
because he discovered the internal structure
of the linguistic sign and also differentiated
this linguistic sign from its mere acoustic
aspects.
And also from the mental processes with which
it was earlier confused.
If structuralism divided the sign from the
reference we find that the post structuralism
goes a step further and it divides the signifier
from the signified.
Post-Structuralism is basically a response
to the structuralist like Ferdinand de Saussure
also to the writings of
Claude Levi b Strauss in anthropology and
also to a certain extent a response to the
Russian formalism like Jacobson.
Among the most important representatives of
post – structuralism philosophy are as we
have already talked about them Derrida, Gilles
Deleuze, Lyotard, Lacan Foucault.
Zizek and his school and in the USA we find
that Judith Butler and Richard Rorty were
working in this direction.
These post- structurist and philosopher change
the shape of critical inquiry in the areas
of philosophy of language and they also influence
literary theory gender theories ethical interpretation
as well as neo pragmatism.
Post- structurist say the theories of the
structuralists as based on philosophy of language
and anthropology.
And they also have apply their insights to
a wider range of topics and radicalise some
of the premises which were put forward by
this structuralist.
At the same time, we find that there is a
lot of difference among the post structuralists
themselves also they are not exactly duplicating
each others ideas.
But some of them move historically or hermeneutically
some of them may based their ideas on discourse
analysis.
Or may also merge critical theory with psycho-analysis.
Despite all these differences we find that
at least there are two premises which are
common in his post - structuralists arguments.
First is the understandings about the way
language functions and we attach meanings
to language.
The second is that all of them were influenced
by phenomenology particularly as found in
the works of Edmund Husserl and Martin Heidegger.
The implication of the post- structuralist
philosophy convinced the people that language
is a much less stable affair.
Then the classical structuralists had initially
considered.
It is not a well defined or clearly demarcated
structure containing symmetrical units of
signifier and signified without any doubt.
But it is more like a sprawling web where
the meeting cannot be fixed.
According to the post- structuralist there
is a constant interchange in circulation of
elements where none of these elements is absolutely
definable and where everything is caught up
in trace through by everything else.
So, in a way we can say that the introduction
of the postmodernist fluidity and flux into
the structurist arguments resulted into a
post- structuralist theory.
At this point it is important to discuss Derrida
and his basic philosophy.
We find that he is not only a major figure
associated with the post structuralist argument
but he is also considered to be the founder
of deconstruction.
In order to understand deconstruction, we
also have to understand the exact meaning
of the term coined by him that is difference.
As we have already seen difference is a combination
of two different verbs.
To defer and to differ, that means this there
is a quality of differing as well as the quality
of difference whenever we refer to the quality
of meaning in language he says that language
is only a chain of signifier.
It does not consist of the Union of signifier
and signified as claimed by the structuralist
philosophers.
It also means that the concepts which we hold
dear to us are not solid and stable meaning
concepts.
But these concepts are also fleeting and there
is a continual interplay of signifiers.
He also says that what we understand to be
meaning is really only the mental trace left
behind by the play of signifiers and therefore
he says that there are two important characteristics
of language which we have to understand.
First that it is play of signifiers continually
defer or postpone meaning.
This is the first part of this word difference.
And then he also says that the meaning it
seems to have is the result of the differences
by which we distinguished one signifier from
another.
This idea by Derrida decentered western metaphysics
and philosophy.
Derrida has in a way critiqued the western
philosophy as a logocentric enterprise which
is created by the hierarchies of binary oppositions
influencing every aspect of cognition.
We have already discussed how binaries give
priority to a particular interpretation and
also push the second part of the pool the
second binary into oblivion.
But beyond that Derrida also believes that
the western philosophy has always advocated
some ultimate world presents as since our
truth or reality which according to it acts
as the foundation of all thought language
and experience.
It may be the idea of the God, it may be the
word spirit the self substance matter or whatever
other name may be given to it.
But that it is considered by the western philosophy
as the Derrida claims that each of these concepts
hopes to found our whole system of thought
and language.
And therefore if it is beyond our system of
thought and language then it must also be
beyond the linguistic systems.
It cannot be implicated in the very languages
which it attempts to order in anchor.
Somehow it is beyond these language experiments.
It has to be somehow anterior to these discourses
which is according to the Derrida is not a
possibility and therefore he argues that the
web like complexity of language which is based
on in finite linguistically and difference
reveals that such as search by its very nature
is ultimately a futile exercise.
The idea of deconstruction which has a reason
from these ideas is influenced mainly by Derrida
and it also means that the text is not a unified
and logical whole.
It encourages a close reading of text in order
to demonstrate that any given text has irreconcilably
opposing in different meetings.
It also breaks the structure from within the
structure.
However, the common understanding that deconstruction
is a dismantling of the structure of it text
is not exactly correct.
Infact deconstruction wants to demonstrate
the text is already dismantled itself, it
is apparently solid ground is no rock but
thin air and therefore the binaries which
exist within the text.
The other context which exist within the text
ultimately help us to understand the particular
meaning is being continually dismantled and
it is being continually deconstructed.
So, deconstruction is the name which has been
given to the critical operation.
By which binary oppositions can be partly
undermined or by which they can be shown partly
to undermine each other in the process of
textual reading.
We can say that whereas the structuralist
concept was satisfied if it could look at
the binary oppositions which were present
in a text.
For example, the binaries of high and low,
light and dark, nature verses culture etc.
So the structuralist thinkers was satisfied.
By defining these binary oppositions and exposing
the logical of their working but the idea
of deconstruction has gone a step ahead and
wants to show that how such oppositions in
order to hold themselves in place or sometimes
betrayed into inverting or collapsing themselves.
Derrida who had coined this idea of the deconstruction
as well as the term has argued that the western
culture which is based on binaries is ultimately
to be challenged because whenever we look
at the boundaries set by the binary opposition
our cognition of things and our thinking also
our knowledge also becomes limited.
So by deconstruction he aims to erase the
boundary between binary oppositions and to
do so in such a way
that the hierarchy which is implied by the
oppositions is also thrown into question.
So Derrida concept of deconstruction has opened
up new possibilities of interpretation as
well as far as literary texts are concerned.
There are certain other statements by Derrida
which are sometimes misunderstood for example
when he says that there is no one meaning,
it does not mean that there is no meaning
to a particular text.
According to Derrida the context becomes important
to understand what meaning has been suggested
but it does not mean that we are freed of
responsibility to try as hard as we can to
say that the newer meanings may also be possible.
He also wants to suggest by this a statement
that a sentence or a particular code or a
particular text which is attributed to aristotle
or anybody else, for example, would always
be open to different interpretations.
It does not say anything in a final manner
ever but the newer interpretations are always
possible because the binaries can always be
questioned.
So, in a way deconstructive practices shows
how takes subvert their own ruling systems
of logic.
And here we find that a particular example
which I am a giving over here is given in
the context of how the term woman is to be
understood and deconstructed.
This example I have taken from Terry Eagleton
for example a woman is the opposite.
The other of man she is non- man defective
man assigned a chiefly negative value in relation
to the male first principle but equally as
Eagleton has written
“Men is what he is only by virtue of shutting
out this other opposite defining himself as
an antithesis to it and his whole identity
therefore is caught up and put at risk in
the very gesture by which he seeks to assert
his unique existence, his autonomous existence”.
At the same time, we would have to understand
that in this game plan woman is not just another
in the sense of something beyond his skin.
But in other intimately related to him as
the image of what he is not and therefore
as an essential reminder of what he is.
So, as post - structuralists theory deconstruction
sees all rating is a complex historical cultural.
Process which is rooted in the relations of
takes to each other as well as in the institutions
and conventions of writing.
It has also suggested that human knowledge
is neither as controllable not as convincing
as western thought has always suggested it
to be and it also suggests that language operates
in a very subtle manner.
It can also be acting in a very contradictory
manner and therefore the certainty of meaning
would always elude us and the text would always
be open to different in your interpretations.
Thus post-structuralism is a style of thought
which embraces the deconstructive operations
of Derrida, the work of the French historian
Michel Foucault, the writings of the French
psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan, and the feminist
philosopher and critic Julia Kristeva.
When we have to deconstruct the text we have
to look at certain aspects as we have discussed
earlier deconstruction is not denial of a
meaning.
But let us say it has to see how the binaries
are placed so that the text is open to different
interpretations and within the texts these
binaries are acting against each other so
when we have to deconstruct the text we have
to begin from a position of scepticism.
Instead of searching for an authorial intention
or for a cultural interpretation as it was
routinely done we have to begin with a sense
of skepticism and also look at this possibility
of finding multiplicity of meanings.
One should not be guided by the common logic
or the most significant interpretation or
the interpretation which has always been accepted
by people to be there.
But we have to be open to the possibility
of multiplicity of meanings.
At the same time while we are aware that multiple
meetings are there we are not to privilege
one particular meaning over the other.
We have to identify the biases which may be
there for example the cultural biases the
political biases or at the same time the hierarchical
oppositions which are at work in the given
text.
Deconstruction also involves questioning the
logical binary oppositions.
At the same time, we have to look at the sentence
structure to find out in which ways the text
has betrayed its own logic.
We have to look for the gaps and the aporias
which may be there.
We have to analyze the tone the sentence structure
and the stylistics in combination with each
other to find out how within the text the
logic is being betrayed and challenged.
So, in a way a deconstructive reading would
involve playing with the possible meanings.
And looking for alternate interpretations.
We also have to remember that deconstruction
is not about destroying meaning.
It is about accepting that meaning is a function
of both difference and deference.
So, one has to adopt a reading strategy that
treats meaning as contingent and fluid and
one also has to avoid the fallacy of looking
for transcendental signifier and signified.
So, in a way the text becomes a wave of signifiers
which is open to immense possibilities
of interpretations and in which no particular
interpretation has to be given more significance
in comparison to the other.
In the next 2 slides I have given a deconstructive
reading of Hilda Doolittle poem ‘Oread’.
Hilda doolittle poem is a very popular example
and you would find it quoted in different
places in different sources also.
So, this is a poem which is often understood
as one which is already deconstructed itself.
The title itself contains and creates a certain
expectation as far as the reader are concerned
but the poem immediately parts this expectation.
As far as the meaning is concerned.
We find that the meanings can also become
problematic we do not understand whether the
language of the poem reveals and precarity
violence and destructive power of nature.
So, these aspects become important because
the reader does not become clear
whether the poem wants to invoke the sea or
the forest in the detailing of these slides
you will find how the meaning has been deconstructed
as a part of the poem.
So, this particular illustration is helpful
whenever we have to look at a particular passage
from any literary text to find out the possible
ways in which the deconstruction of meeting
can be traced.
So, in this week we have covered different
aspects related with postmodernist philosophy.
In the next week, we will begin with a discussion
of feminist and gender theories with you.
Thank you.
