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Our Western philosophy adopted the name: logocentric
Logocentric: A method of literary analysis in which words and language are regarded as a fundamental expression of external reality
There are risks and necessities of Deconstructive criticism
Phase of Reversal- identify the binary opposition, identify the hierarchy and then show how the text reverses the hierarchy
Phase of Reinscription- Readers show how the text carries a new meaning by its displacement of the hierarchy
Two roads diverged in a yellow wood
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;
Then took the other, as just as fair;
And having perhaps the better claim
Because it was grassy and wanted wear,
Though as for the passing there
Had worn them really about the same
And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black
Oh, I marked the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way
I doubted if I should ever come back
I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I,
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.
There is a binary opposition between conformity and non-conformity
1. Identify the binary oppositions in the text
2. Identify the privileged of the pair
3. Identify ways the privileged term is conflicted by the other term
1. Identify the various interpretations
2. How do these interpretations contradict each other?
3. Conflicts = more interpretations = even more conflicts
Most of us take language for granted.
We blame ourselves when there's an error in communication when it could be the language that we're using.
Deconstruction's theory of language: more ambiguous than we realize.
Time flies like an arrow.
Time (verb) flies (obj.) like an arrow (adv. clause)
Time flies (noun) like (verb) an arrow (obj)
Without changing a word, this one sentence can have many meanings.
"Language is not the reliable tool of communication we believe it to be, but rather, a fluid, ambiguous domain of complex experience in which ideologies program us without being aware of them"
Language is the "ground of being"
Ground of Being: The foundation from which our experiences and knowledge of the world are generated (dictionary.com)
Thus
People who speak different languages think differently
Someone who is bilingual even thinks differently based on which language they are speaking at a particular moment.
We can think critically
Shows us that our experience is shaped by ideaologies.
Introduced by Jacques Deridda in the 1960's
but mainly used in the 1970's.
Described as: "superficial analysis of wordplay that destroys our appreciation of literature and our ability to interpret it."
This is why people are hesitant about deconstructionism.
SYDNEY says I do not have to go to the mall
Sydney SAYS I do not have to go to the mall
Sydney says I do not have to go to the mall
Sydney says I do NOT have to go to the mall
Sydney says I do not HAVE to go to the mall Sydney says I do not have to GO to the mall
Sydney says I do not have to go to the MALL
Example: Asian Immigrant
A word is a sign.
Combining the symbols b-e-a-r spells out the word "bear"
This could mean more than one thing.
Recall the Radio Lab from the beginning of the semester. What are some examples of how language shapes the way we think?
Imagine a night's sky with a moon in the middle. When describing the sky to a friend, you say
All systems of Western philosophy were based on a common "ground of being", but there were really three main "grounds of being"
A sentence is not as clear as we think it is.
1. Based on form, organization and harmony
2. Based on personal reflections and rational ideas
3. Based on our consciousness
You cannot make assumptions about what a text is implying
People constantly change
The world constantly changes
Derrida says, "first, that no particular sign can be regarded as referring to any particular signified and, second, that we are unable to escape the system of signifiers"
Unlike structuralism, deconstructionism does not consist of a union of "signifiers" and "signified", rather a "chain of signifiers"
Language stays the same
Risks: Changing the "ground of being"
When you change the meaning, you must apply it to the original meaning
Necessities: Changing the "ground of being"
Derrida says, "A new writing must weave and intertwine the two motifs. That is, several languages must be spoken and several texts produced at the same time"
Deconstruction claims that language is "non referential"
Language is a "fleeting and continual change of signifiers"
Aftershocks
We are not in the same place after all.
The only evidence of the disaster,
Mapping out across the bedroom wall,
Tiny cracks still fissuring the plaster –
A new cartography for us to master,In whose legend we read where we are bound:
Terra infirma, a stranger land, and vaster.
Or have we always stood on shaky ground?
The moment keeps on happening: a sound.
The floor beneath us swings, a pendulum
That clocks the heart, the heart so tightly wound,
We fall mute, as when two lovers come
To the brink of the apology, and halt,
Each standing on the wrong side of the fault.
A. E. Stallings
Language is ambiguous and constantly changing
Humans are ambiguous and constantly changing
Language is still a "ground of being", but it DOES change constantly as the world changes
No one has a single identity, because the meaning of "identity" implies that humans are singular
“what we take to be meaning is really only the mental trace left behind by the play of signifiers, and that trace consists of the differences by which we define a word”
Discourse: The idea that each of the vantage points in which an idea can be viewed as has a language of its own
Deconstruction emerged after structuralism and rejected the central view of language which western philosophers called LOGOCENTRISM
Crank: Ellen Hopkins
1. it’s play of signifiers continually defers, or postpones meanings
2. the meaning it seems to have is the result of the differences by which we distinguish one signifier from another.
Mirrors: Sylvia Plath
I am silver and exact. I have no preconceptions.
What ever you see I swallow immediately
Just as it is, unmisted by love or dislike.
I am not cruel, only truthful---The eye of a little god, four-cornered.
Most of the time I meditate on the opposite wall.
It is pink, with speckles. I have looked at it so long
I think it is a part of my heart. But it flickers.
Faces and darkness separate us over and over.
Now I am a lake. A woman bends over me,
Searching my reaches for what she really is.
Then she turns to those liars, the candles or the moon.
I see her back, and reflect it faithfully.
She rewards me with tears and an agitation of hands.
I am important to her. She comes and goes.
Each morning it is her face that replaces the darkness.
In me she has drowned a young girl, and in me an old woman
Rises toward her day after day, like a terrible fish
We are taught words mean certain things.
Language is idealogical.
Birth control in a technologically underdeveloped country
You know how you
stand and stand and stand
in line for the most
gigantic incredible roller
coaster
you've ever dared attempt
anticipation swelling,
minute by minute by minute
you choose to wait even
long to ride in the front
car
They buckle you in, lock the
safety bar with a jolting clunk!
Hook engaged, the chain jerks
you forward
You start to
climb
crank-crank-crank
Cresting on the top, time
moves into overtime
as you wait for that scant
hesitation, just before you
drop
yo know how you feel
at that instant? well, thats
exactly how it feels when you
shake hands with the
monster
Paul de Man states; “Literature as well as criticism is condemned (or privileged) to be forever the most rigorous and consequently, the most unrealiable language in terms of which man names and transforms himself”
“Deconstruction is the active antithesis of everything that criticism ought to be if one accepts its traditional values and concepts”
Challenges the idea of criticism
Interpretation of a text is to appreciate what constitutes it.
A text is a galaxy of signifiers.
-Has no beginning
-Reversible
-"Indeterminable"
-Can read it from "many entrances" and nothing will be considered the "beginning"