Name:- Pandya Riva M.
Roll no:-25
Paper:-7
Topic:- Derrida and Deconstruction
Derrida is a French philosopher, born in Algiers in 1930. He is
perhaps best known for developing the analytical technique of
deconstruction. He was a founding father of deconstruction, a
controversial system of analyses which challenges the basis of
traditional western thought. Derrida evolves deconstruction as a
strategy of critical questioning directed towards exposing
unquestionable metaphysical assumsions and literary language. In his
celebrated work of grammatology, Derrida unravels in details his main
philosophical contention on deconstruction.
Deconstruction
Deconstruction means a way of reading that concern itself with
decentering with unmasking the problematic nature of all centres.or
it is a critical outlook concerned with the relationship between text
and meaning. A close and critical reading of a written text to
uncover the ways of thinking that constrain our impressions or
conceptualization of the world.
This idea has been extended to other forms of text - for example,
visual art and architecture.
The technique may often be (miss)used in a destructive manner.
However, Derrida's original aim was not to destroy, merely to point
out hidden assumptions and contradictions that shape a text.
Derrida himself is often viewed with deep suspicion, if not hatred,
by many academics. It seems that deconstruction has a nasty habit of
biting hard into people's pet ideas and theories.
What does this mean for us?
Derrida disputes the idea that a text (or for us, a communication)
has an unchanging, unified meaning. He challenges the author's
intentions, and shows there may be numerous legitimate
interpretations of a text. This is where the idea of "the author
is dead" arises: once the text is written, the author's input is
finished. The meaning (any meaning) is up for grabs, in other words.
Notice what a particular text or school of thought takes to be
natural, normal, self-evident, originary, immediately apparent, or
worthy of pursuit or emulation. Or, notice those places where a text
is most insistent that there is a firm and fast distinction between
two things. It is the most important part of deconstruction .Binary
opposition means to look at what is not in a story. There are two
part of it,
1) Dominant, 2) Oppressed or no dominant.
For Saussure The binary opposition was the means by which the unit
of language have value of meaning..Each unit is defined against
which it is not. With the categorization terms and concept tend to be
associated with a positive or negative. For e.g.: Man-woman,
presence-absence, Reading-writing etc..
Derrida argued that this oppositions were arbitrary and inheritantly
unstable. Deconstruction is regarded as a forum of
anti-structuralism. It rejects most of assumsions of structuralism
and more vehemently binary opposition on the grounds that such
oppositions always privilege one term over the other that is
signified over the signifier. For e.g.:- The words Light and Dark.
Many of us associate light with goodness or positive thing. The same
with up and downs with up having the more positive condition.
Differance is a French word coined by the French philosopher and
deconstructionist, Jacques Derrida. The word is a play on several
other words that illustrate Derrida’s
meaning. The concept of differance is a complex theory that tries to
illuminate the way words are used and how their specific meaning is
derived. Derrida called difference a "neographism," meaning
a term that is neither a word nor a concept and is used to describe a
literary idea. So one word leads to another word and that word leads
to other and finally we cannot come out of the dictionary so there is
no final meaning to any word ,.for example:- the word, interest if we
look at the dictionary it has various meanings like, hobby, money, a
group of people etc..2) Bat one meaning of it is cricket bat another
is flying animal.
Saussurian sign is equal to signifier which signifies something
but Derridian sign is free play of signifiers, signifying nothing.
This is a chain of signifiers which is never stop.(we assume that we
understand), So meaning is always postponed and you can never reach
the final meaning.
Logocentricism and Phonocentricism
Logocenricism means logo as centre, source of knowledge or
human beings, while Phonocenricism means the speech or writing
binary, speech is supposed to single presence of the speaker.
.
To speak a little bit of Derrida, it might be said that like the
logocentrics of old we anal-retentive, logo-phallo-centric
philosophers privilege logos –
that is, meaning, reason, spirit and we take speech to be prior, in
the order of signification, to writing. And by privileging speech
over writing, we privilege presence over absence. So speech is
practice of presence while writing is absence it means that when
writer write something, the reader is not present at that time.
Language is speaking rather than writing.
Metaphysics of Presence
Derrida borrows this phrase “Metaphysics
of Presence” from
heideggar.By logos or presence, derrida signifies “ultimate
referent” a
self-certifying and self-sufficient ground or foundation available to
us totally outside the play of language itself that serves to be a
“center”
to guarantee the structure of a linguistic system.
For instance,
-Hut
-House
-Palace
Its relationship to the other words (a house is bigger than a hut but
smaller than a palace.) Derrida focuses on the center of it and then
tries to deconstruct that center.
Decentring the center
According to derrida, the center also closes off the play which it
opens up. As center it is the point at which the substitution of
contents, elements or terms is no longer possible.Futher says that
center is paradoxically “within
the structure and outside it”
or even “the center is
not the center”
Structure, Sign and play:
This essay was read at the John Hopkins international
colloquium “The language of criticism and the science of man”
Derrida demonstrates how structuralism as represented by the
anthropologist Claude Levi Strasuss which sets out as a criticism or
rejection of science and metaphysics can be read as embodying
precisely those aspects of science and metaphysics which it seeks to
challenge. “There are thus two interpretations of interpretation of
structure, sign of free play. The one seeks to decipher, dreams of
deciphering a truth or an origin which is free from free play and
from the order of sign, and lives like an exile the necessary of
interpretation. The other which is no longer turned toward the
origin, affirms free play and tries to pass beyond man and humanism.”
Derrida in this essay notes that language bears within itself the
necessity of its own critique. The essay is considered as
inauguration of poststructuralist as a theoretical movement.So
Structuralism began as a criticism or attack on metaphysics or
science is another.
The centre is paradoxically within the structure and outside it;
the totality has its centre elsewhere. The centre is not the centre.
As we know that meaning is always postponed. So criticism also can
never go outside of the tradition It uses the same assumption that
tradition is using .Darrida says that its happens because of a
language. Language has always lack of something. So the final meaning
can never be grasped its postponed. Whenever we make a philosophical
statement the ultimate meaning is already postponed. So the language
demands critique. And derrida says that Deconstructive writing is
most of the time auto critical, it means that it questions itself.
Finally, Derrida points out the two reasons for schools of
interpretations which are irreconcilable yet exist simultaneously: 1)
the interpretation which seeks to decipher an original Truth that is
uncluttered by free play, and 2) the interpretation which affirms the
role of free play within the system.
His philosophy of not being centered in a single one philosophy has
validity. Derrida, as taught in the school of deconstruction,
encourages the use of several perspectives (several centers, so to
speak) to view a concept. This does not help to affirm any holistic
view, but it enables a chance to find common ground between
perspectives even though the idea seems impossible. To me, if the
purpose of free play is to de-center within a system, then it is
perhaps possible to use the idea of free play to develop and enlargen
the system in order to accommodate new centers for thought. This
seems to be the point of the post-modern spirit: finding new ways of
viewing the world that is not set in any specific system, but
constantly moving around with the principles of free play in order to
participate in the world better.
