Chapter 3: Post Structuralism and Deconstruction

1. Structuralism claimed to be objective and scientific and that by being systematic, it would yield answers . However there were never any answers.
2. Roland Barthes' 'The Death of the Author' became the turning point in structuralism. Death here is figurative - when the book is complete and published and the author no longer has any control over the book and how it is read and what meanings are drawn from his/her text. "The death of the author is the birth of the reader."
3. Post-structuralism reveals that everything has a centre except for language. A centre is basically the structure, a point of reference - the Sun in the Solar System, Jupiter for all its moons, for instance. Language cannot have a centre. It is fluid and dynamic. This is the reason that one word may have more than one meaning.

In structuralism:

1. A specific domain of culture understood through a structure
2. Modelled on language
3. Relates literary texts to a larger structure (a particular genre)
4. Experienced readers interpret a text more easily than non-experienced readers.

Now, post-structuralism:

1. Rejection of self-sufficiency of structures. (So far nobody looked at context; the text itself, the larger structures it fit into, literary devices etc. were their primary concerns)
2. A literary text has no single purpose or meaning.
3. The author's intended meaning is secondary to the reader's perceived meaning (as in a preference for readerly over writerly texts - a text that gives the reader scope for interpretation and imagination is more reader-friendly than a descriptive text that fills in every detail so the reader is not as engaged)
4. Is post-structuralism a reaction to structuralism? No - more like a rebellion, since it addresses structuralism's discrepancies. Structuralism was incoherent, incomplete, and self-contradictory.
5. "Language does not merely record or reflect, but constitutes the world for us." Well in that case it can never give us a definite reality. Post-structuralists critique this statement coz there are multiple realities as created by language and structuralists never once said anything about that.
6. We live in a world of uncertainty because of indefinite reality. There is no fixed reference point beyond language. In the train example, our perception is altered every time the point of reference moves; likewise our understanding of reality shifts constantly because what it is constituted by (i.e. language) has no one centre or point of reference. This creates for us a decentred universe.
7. The linguistic skepticism typical of post-structuralist critics arises from the realization that language can't give you everything (meaning clarity/peace of mind/understanding/meaning) since there is no single meaning.
8. Structuralism vs. Post-structuralism:

Origin: linguistics vs. philosophy
Focus: objective knowledge, logical deduction, reliable conclusions; vs difficulty of obtaining secure knowledge, and no facts-only interpretation
Outlook: Structuralism claims a systematic, scientific outlook whereas post-structuralism creates a habit of skepticism, and questions common sense

AFTER MID-SEMS:

"I celebrate myself", " the pear industry is blossoming", "the smitten are dense this time of year", and any 'that's what she said' joke are all examples of play in language.
Ref: Jacques Derrida - Structure, Sign and Play in the Discourse of Human Science

In post-structuralism, there is no certainty - only assumptions and possibilities, like in the definition, "there is perhaps in the history of literature a certain event.."

Reality is not static - it is open to permutations, combinations* and instability
*--language does not represent everything as is, like a mirror; it is more like a refractive prism, in that there are many meanings to any text. One must read between the lines and see what is not obvious.

Deconstruction is not the same as post-structuralism. It is a way of reading a text, not a theory. A post-structuralist critic deconstructs a text. Deconstruction is applied post-structuralism. Deconstruction is a reading of the text against itself.

Deconstruction is not destruction. Ever.

As in structuralist criticism, deconstruction assumes the presence of a center that holds units in place. These units are organized as binary opposites*, with the culturally considered positive half placed first and close to the center.

The center, however, is within and outside the structure. Take the example of a teacher (as the center of the structure that is a class) - she may impose rules upon the units (students) but is free to defy these rules, herself. For instance, Arya ma'am informed us that our textbooks would be mandatory for class one day but was free to walk in without one. Therefore Arya ma'am was the center of the structure but not governed by the rules that apply to the units. The center is, then, not the center. It escapes structurality.

The term différance consists of two verbs: to differ and to defer, in that the meaning of a concept rests on its difference from other concepts, and that part of any meaning is deferred (incomplete, absent). This is in relation with binary opposites. Every word has the absent presence of its opposite - the notion of evil is an absent presence in the notion of 'good'. Thus everything present has a trace of différance.

Now that you have a few background concepts down, here is How to Deconstruct: Part 1

1. Locate the center (for example, patriarchal society)
2. How is meaning constructed in the text (examine binary opposites w.r.t. center (*))
3. Where does the text contradict itself (observe the effects of removing the center or reversing the binary)
4. Find where there is play, ambiguity of meaning

Here are Arya ma'am's ppt points for this lecture on deconstruction:

• practical method of criticism
• reading against the grain
• uncover unconscious aspect of text
• unmask inconsistencies in the text
• inconsistencies - gaps, breaks, fissures and discontinuities

How to Deconstruct: Part 2

1. Must have contradictions compatible with deconstruction - anything can be a text, but choose a text with many contradictions
2. Determine what the text says - how it constructs characters, presents situations, what is obvious in terms of explicit themes
3. Identify binary opposites (not everything possible - only the few chief (or obvious) ones)
4. Attempt to reverse these binaries mentally. Observe what happens to them, and identify why one is privileged over the other.

Here is a link to part of a deconstruction of Nadine Gordimer's 'Once Upon a Time', as reference for reversing the binary without glorifying the villain and making him the hero,as warned against. https://docs.google.com/document/d/13clpEnv4n-j3NqCVffPrOp7wyDqYIrARuXDzp31N6kY/edit?usp=sharing

Last random points under deconstruction:
⦁ why is light associated with good and darkness with evil? because of convention
⦁ consider if the other way were possible.
⦁ whenever you flip the hero/villain binary, you will only examine the social context wherein the hero is even a heroic figure
⦁ aporia is an impasse
⦁ in the speech vs writing binary, speech has a presence and writing an absence; speech is privileged because there is a present speaker. The metaphysics of presence are at play in this binary
⦁ ambiguity is of three kinds: verbal (contradictions, paradoxes), textual (breaks in continuity) and linguistic (dealing with the unreliability and inadequacy of language)