Literary Theory and Criticism-2
What is Deconstruction? Explain with the help of Examples.
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Name:- Zankhana .M.Matholiya
Roll.No:-36
Paper No.-7- Literary Theory and Criticism-2
Class :- M.A. Sem-2
Topic:-What is Deconstruction? Explain with the help of Examples.
Enrollment No:- 2069108420180036
College:- Smt.S.B.Gardi Department of English
Email ID :- zankhanamatholiya96@gmail.com
Submitted:-Department of English M.K.University,
Bhavnagar
v Introduction:-
·
Jacques Derrida was a French
philosopher best known for
developing a form of semiotic analysis known as
deconstruction, which he discussed in numerous texts, and developed in the
context of phenomenology. He is one of the major figures associated with post-structuralism
and postmodern philosophy.
·
Derrida presented his basic
views in the three books in 1967.
1)- Grammatology
2)- Writing and difference
3)- Speech and phenomena
·
Derrida was the most
influential philosopher in 70s and 80s of last century. His philosophy is the
further extension of structuralism and is better called as ‘post-
structuralism’. He carries this structuralist movement to its logical extreme
and his reasoning is original and startling.
·
We have seen in this
movement that as in New Criticism, the attention was shifted from the writer to
the work of literary text; consequently textual analysis becomes more important
than extra textual information. Further the author disappeared and only the
text remained. This is what we called the stylistic and structuralist position.
·
Derrida’s view is that we
can never, in any instance of speech or writing, have a demonstrably fixed and
decidable meaning in an utterance on text, but asserts that these are merely
effects and lack a ground that would justify certainly in interpretation.
v What is Deconstruction?
·
Deconstruction, as applied
in the criticism of literature, designates a theory and practice of reading
which questions 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 to dissipate
the seeming definiteness of its structure and meaning into indefinite array of
incompatibility and undecidable possibilities.
·
Deconstruction could not be
understood by anyone properly because Derrida himself denies defining it.
Derrida strongly believe that to define something is to make boundaries around
it. Deconstruction can be taken as a process of inquiring the origin and
construction of the text.
·
Deconstruction does not
destroy the construction of any text but questions it's 'origin of origin', so
one can get the idea of the existence of that text. Deconstruction gives an
idea of free play of words and not believes in dictionary meaning, as
dictionary gives only another word for one word.
·
Deconstruction as a process
happens to its own, by reading the text or watching the movie our mind gets
such symbols and signs and mind works on that, and when it feels or identifies
something not appropriate it attacks the work with arguments and questions the
problem. It is like blasting the text and what survives is the origin of text.
Ø Decentering the centre:
·
Derrida deconstructs the
metaphysics of presence. That is to say that according to Derrida there is no
presence or truth apart from language. He seeks to prove that the structure of
the structure does not indicate a presence above its free play of signs.
·
This presence was earlier
supposed to be the centre of the structure which was paradoxically through to
be within, and outside this structure, it was truth and within, it was
intelligibility.
·
But Derrida contends that,
‘the centre could not be through in the form of a being presence’ and that in
any given text, there is only a free play of an infinite number of sign
substitutions. A word is explained by another word which is only a word not an
existence. Thus a text is all words which are just words, not indicative of any
presence beyond them.
·
In the words of John
Sturrock,“The resort to language or sign entails, we know the loss of all uniqueness
and immediate. The sign is not the thing in itself.”It is utteractive or
repeatable. A sign which was uttered only once would be not sign.
·
It is the types of which each utterance is taken.
There is no a textual origin of a text. The author’s plan of a book is a text.
His realization is no truth, where, the text where summary is third text. A
text kindles a text and text seeks to present or explain.There is no reality
other than texuality. The texuality is the free play of signifies. There is no
signified that is not itself a signifier.
·
In the words of John
Sturrock, Derrida seeks to undermine “a prevailing and generally unconscious
‘idealism’, which asserts that language does not create meanings but reveals
them, thereby implying that meaning, pre- exists their expression.” This for
Derrida is nonsense. For his there can be no meaning which is not formulated,
we cannot reach outside language.
Ø Supplementarity:-
·
The concept of
Supplementarity follows from Decentrring the centre. A literary text is a work
of language and language as such according to Derrida, is like time, ever in a
state of Flux. Just as time has no emergence of man, and will disappear along
with man.
·
Derrida quotes and approves
Levi-Strauss who writes:
“Whatever may have been the moment and the circumstances of its appearance
in the scale of animal life, language could only have been in one full swoop.
Things could not have set about signifying progressively but rather of biology
and psychology a crossing over came about from a stage where nothing had a
meaning to another where everything possessed.”
·
In the system of symbols
constitute by all cosmologies, ‘mana’ would simply be a zero symbolic value,
that is to say, a sign marking the necessity of a symbolic context
‘supplementary’ to that with which the signifies is already loaded, but which
can take on any value required, provided only that this value still remains
part of the available reserve and is not, as phonologies put it, a group-term.
·
Derrida, by deconstruction
subverts that idea itself that a text has an unchanging or consolidated
meaning. He challenges the author’s intention and proves that there is a vast
place for numerous interpretations of a text. There never can be one meaning in
any work of art. The theory of deconstruction is now applied to visual art and
architecture also.
There are two main things for deconstruction:
1.- Identify binary opposition:-
·
It notices what a particular
text takes some thought to be natural, acceptable, normal, self evident,
immediately apparent or originary. This shows which one is privileged upon
another one and most importantly ‘why’? This is Derrida’s concern (mainly in
the field of politics). Binary opposition notices those places where a text is
more insistent that there is a firm and fast distinction between two things.
2.- Deconstruct the opposition:-
·
To do this we should show
how something shown as primary, original and complete is composite or derived.
Then how something shown as completely different from something else. In short
somehow it depends on that thing. And then we should show how something
represented as normal in a special case.
v Examples of "Deconstruction"
·
The process of
'deconstruction' is like this.
If
majority of the people accept anything then it's became reality for the everyone. Even if it's so.
For example:-
1.) White-Black
2.) Men women
3.) Day -Night
·
We can see that all words
like white, Men, Day comes in the category of the superiority while Black,
women, Night comes in the category of the inferiority or in the category of
object. But, if many people accept Black, Women and Night as a superiority then
the idea of superiority is changed. That is the process of 'Deconstruction' .
Ø A Deconstructive Study in Robert Frost's Poem:
The Road not Taken
Ø "The Road not Taken," is, no doubt, one of Robert Frost's major
poems. Any critic of the poem can go so far as to say that the poem is one of
the World's masterpieces. The text gives itself to reading and speculation by
its power of generating new meanings, everlasting sweetness, and aesthetic
value. Critics wrote controversial essays on the poem and its meanings, yet, no
particular reading can be considered inclusive.
·
All the readings lead one to
the other, but no critic can say that this particular reading is better.This
study tries to come, as close as it can, to the text in order to deconstruct it
and come up with a new reading of the poem by applying the principles of the
theory of Deconstruction,
Meaning and Difference
·
"The Road not
Taken," is a text which rises over multiple differences; some of them are:
The title itself supplies the major difference in the text. There are two
roads: the road not taken and the road taken. This intended ambiguity suggests
two meanings:
1. It can mean that the poem is about the road which the speaker did not take.
2. It can also mean that the poem is about the road which the speaker took
which was not taken by others.
·
The speaker himself makes of
the clause controversial:
Two roads diverged
in a yellow wood, 1
And sorry I could
not travel both 2
And be one traveler,
long I stood 3
And looked down one
as far as I could 4
To where it bent
into the undergrowth; 5
Then took the other
as just as fair, 6
And having perhaps
the better claim, 7
Because it was
grassy and wanted wear; 8
Though as for that
the passing there, 9
Had warn them really
about the same, 10
·
The difference which
controls stanza one, will soon germinate itself in stanza two to stress the ambiguity
of meanings. By talking about one road, the poet will lead the readers to
speculate on the other; so as to know, from the poet, or even by their own
speculation, which one is better, or whether both of them are the same.
·
The poet, of course, could
not give the readers a better claim. He does not identify the exact road
intended by the speaker. Two hints help readers reach this conclusion. The
speaker took the new road because it was "grassy "and" wanted
wear." However, the speaker soon hesitates again in lines 9-10 to make the
two roads appear similar.
·
Differences are so clear in
both readings of the title. Though the title suggests that the poem is about
the road not taken but the poem is about both roads.
·
The Meaning of the text is
blurred at this moment of reading. It is clearly hinted in the text that the speaker
is taking a new road which was not previously taken by him.
2- Signs and difference
·
Different signs are used in
the text in order to suggest rich meanings. The road itself is a main sign.
Roads are used in life and culture to stand for lifeline, its crises and
decisions. The road in the text suggests a shift in the way of life for the
speaker and shows his decision to make a new turn in it.
·
The moral indication in this
sign is clear: man must keep on developing his manner of thinking: he / she
must be creative and genuine in action and thinking. One must discover truth by
himself.This idea can be generalized to stand for the American thinking and way
of life. Americans are always to find out realities by themselves. They never
imitate others. Frost is speaking the traditions of his country and summarizing
the search for novelty which he finds in the people of his nation.
·
This is the reason why this poem
became one of the major landmarks of American literature for the Americans
themselves and for all readers as the poet urges them never to imitate the
others but to be all the time. In this respect: the road not taken becomes a
symbol for the call of novelty in life and newness in thinking.
·
The poet also uses color
signs of yellow and black in the poem:
Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
·
According to the theory of
deconstruction; reality is known by opposition. Earlier, structuralists talked about
"binary oppositions" to argue that opposition between two things
regenerates one clear idea.
·
Deconstruction critics, on
the other hand, claimed that such oppositions open the door in front of
continuously changing ideas which replace each other.
·
The color yellow is known to
the readers because it is different from black. Yellow (in the poem) stands for
the newly fallen leaves from Autumn trees.
While black, stands for the passing of time for these leaves. This idea suggests that realities change and replace as time passes. Being very sensitive, the poet uses every possible element of nature to recreate his ideas in the minds of the readers. this is why he uses this Autumnal setting to cover the rich ideas of the poem.
While black, stands for the passing of time for these leaves. This idea suggests that realities change and replace as time passes. Being very sensitive, the poet uses every possible element of nature to recreate his ideas in the minds of the readers. this is why he uses this Autumnal setting to cover the rich ideas of the poem.
·
According to Derridra's
deconstruction nothing is valid or taken for granted. The same happens in our
poem; nothing is concrete. As it is argued before, the poet was very happy with
his choice of the new road.
·
However, such happiness will
soon collapse when a reader comes across the following line in the text:
I doubted if I should ever come back
The matter here becomes clear. The speaker has
already decided from the beginning that he will not come once again to try the
road not taken. This indicates a sort of opposition with all the previously
discussed ideas. Here ideas no more replace each other. The speaker declares
that he is not going to try new roads. He creates a sort of presence to one
idea, but once this idea is present it cannot achieve its existence unless it
calls its absence. Presence cannot be felt without absence. Like death and life
or day and night.will come up with new suggestions.
·
Previous criticism insisted
on the cultural side of the poem. It examined the traditional meanings of roads
as used symbolically to stand for man's choices in life and his future.
·
The Deconstructive critical
approach; however, proves that such rich poems, as our text, will come up with
new meanings with each reading. Hence, this study is but a new reading of the
poem which reflects one side of its richness.
v Conclusion:-
·
In such a case Derrida's
ideas will prove that they are valid, though he himself argued that he could
not suggest a fixed critical approach to literature. Yet his ideas on modern
philosophy are used by many critics to criticize literary texts and they proved
to be successful. The reading of the poem proves that Derrida's critical ideas
can be fruitful. The text is a sort of discourse, and discourses keep producing
new meanings. Nothing, then,is better than deconstruction in analyzing literary
texts. The deconstructive theory encourages critics to take roads not taken
before!
·
This theory can be applied
in many ways and one can only try to complete it, because it's a kind of a
process which never ends what you have deconstructed, it can also be
deconstructed by another person and it's never ending chain.
·
“Derrida emphasizes that to
deconstruct is not to destroy; that his task is to ‘dismantle the metaphysical
and rhetorical structures’ operative in a text ‘not in order to reject or discard
them, but to reconstitute them in another way.’-that he puts into question the
‘search for the signified not annual it, but to understand it within a system
to which such a reading is blind.’
-M.H. Abram
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