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Unit 2 Beginning Deconstruction UNIT 2 BEGINNING DECONSTRUCTION Structure Objectives Introduction Defining Deconstruction 2.2.1 Beginning Deconstruction 2.2.2 Nietzsche's Deconstruction of Causality 2.2.3 Why Deconstruct? Deconstructing Definitions Deconstructing Structuralism 2.4.1 The Inaugural Moment 2.4.2 Deconstructing Saussurean Linguistics Some Operative Strategies 2.5.1 Writing versus Speech 2.5.2 Deconstructing Presence 2.5.3 Critiquing Logocentrism Let Us Sum Up Questions Glossary Suggested Readings I 2.0 OBJECTIVES I This unit has three objectives. The first is to bridge the gap between Structuralism and Poststructuralism, the second to give you a working awareness of Deconstruction and the third to outline some of the common strategies used in a deconstructive analysis. 2.1 INTRODUCTION Structuralism flourished for aklatively short periohbout two decades or so. 11.1 the late 1960s, another movement, deriving its name from Str~cturalismbegan to emerg&oststructuralism. "After" Structuralism, in terms of time, as the term can be interpreted at one levd, Poststructuralism can be seen carrying forward certain ideas and issues within Structuralism to their supposedly logical end. However when the term 'post' is interpreted as 'after' in the thematic sense, Poststructuralism begins to emerge as a break away from col~ventionalStructuralism. Indeed, the underlying theoretical matrix which supports Poststructuralism has so radically departed from the basic premises of Structuralism that it seems justified to refer to it as an independent movement. Poststructuralism turns certain insights of Structuralism against itself and points to certain fundamental inconsistencies in method, which the structuralist could not correct. In his writings on Saussure, Derrida shows where Saussure failed to grasp the full significance of his own theories. Having said this much, one realizes that it is difficult to catch Poststructuralism in any opening statement--precisely because of its multi-faceted nature. Wliat we have said until now is only one way of entering this diffuse and diverse field. Another one is to begin exploring the topic under discussion: Deconstruction. It is one of tlie main movements within this stream, therefore let's move on to it. Deconstruction Let me begin with an anecdote. A Japanese friend of Jacques Derrida (the man with whom Deconstruction is associated) once asked him to suggest an approximate definition of the term. Derrida replied : "All sentences of the type 'Deconstruction is X or Deconstruction is not X', a priori miss the point, which is to say that they are at least false. As you know one of the principal things at stake in what is called in my texts Deconstruction is precisely "the delimiting of Ontology and. the third person present indicative S is P". Derrida has always resisted attempts to reduce Deconstruction to a concept definable in terms of a method or technique. For it is precisely this idea or assumption that meaning can be grasped in the form of some proper self-identical concept that Derrida is most determinedly out to deconstruct. Yet, if the institution of teaching and more fundamentally, the process of communication, have to continue, I or Derrida, must attempt to say something which gives you a working idea that Deconstruction is about something. It is in this spirit and with all due respect to Derrida's refusal to define Deconstruction that I proceed to give you a glimpse into the phenomenon. 2.2.1 Introducing Deconstruction Deconstruction has been variously presentehs a philosophical position, a political or intellectual stance or just simply as a strategy of reading. As students of literature and literary theory, we should be interested in its power as a mode of reading; therefore most of the points about Deconstruction in this Block will be made through instances of reading literature and philosophy. Let us begin here with a simple reading of Derrida describing a general strategy of Deconstruction: Every philosophical argument is structured in terms of oppositions and in this "traditional philosophical opposition we have not a peaceful co-existence of facing terms but a violent hierarchy. One of the terms dominates the other (axiologically, logically etc.), occupies the commanding position. To deconstruct the opposition is above all, at a particular moment to reverse the hierarchy". Deconstruction, Derrida implies, looks upon a text as inherently riddled with hierarchical oppositions. A deconstructive reading uncovers not only these hierarchical oppositions but also shows that the superior term in the opposition can be seen as inferior. When we put together some other strategies of Deconstruction outlined in Derrida's writings, a working definition begins to emerge. "To deconstruct a discourse is to show how it undermines the philosophy it asserts, or the hierarchical opposition on which it relies, by identifying in the text and then dismantling the rhetorical operations that produce the supposed ground of argument, the key concept or premise." This explanation by Jonathan Culler is comprehensive. So, let us treat it as a companion to the description by Derrida cited above in order to advance our working idea of Deconstruction. Broadly speaking Derrida and Culler are making these points: 1. ' Deconstruction is a "searching out" or dismantling operation conducted on a discourse to show: 2. How the discourse itself undermines the argument (philosophy) it asserts. 3. One way of doing it is to see how the argument is structured/construc@, that is investigate its rhetorical status or argumentative strategy. As Derrida argues, this struchkis often the product of a hierarchy in which two opposed terms are presented as superior and inferior. Deconstruction then pulls the carpet from below the superior by showing the limited basis of its superiority and thus reverses the hierarchy, making the superior, inferior. 4. This reversed hierarchy is again open to the same deconstructive operadon. In a way, Deconstruction is a permanent act of destabilization. .So, Deconstruction points to a fallacy not in.the way the first or second hierarchy is constructed but in the very process of creating hierarchies in human thought (which as I have stated earlier, is indispensable to most if not all human arguments or thought.). Deconstruction does not lead us from a faulty to a correct way of thinking I or writing. Rather it shows us the limitations of human thought operating through I language even while harboring the same limitations itself. Every deconstructive I1 operation relies on the same principle it sets out to deconstruct and is thus open to deconstruction itself. Yet, Deconstruction is not simply about reversing hierarchieMough it is one of the I things a deconstructive analysis achieves. Fundamentally, it is a way of I understanding the structure of a discourse, locating its controlling centre and identifying the unfounded assumptions on which it relies to function as a discourse. It may be compared to a probing operation that uncovers fault lines in a discourse, I which may include ideological assumptions and suppositions . i 2.2.2 Nietzsche's Deconstruction of Causality I Let us consider a brief exposition of this principle in Nietzsche's deconstruction of causality. Causality is an accepted fact of our life. In our day-to-day life we take it for granted that one event causes another, that causes produce effects. This is the principle of causality and it asserts that cause comes before effect in tern of time and reason. That is when we think, cause always gets a priority in creating and existing before an effect. Yet, Nietzsche argues that this principle of causality is not given hut the product of a rhetorical operation, which effects a chronological reversal. Suppose one sits and feels a pain. This leads one to look for a cause and noticing a pin discovers the cause for the pain. In the process of explaining the pain one reverses the order in which perception took placmnstead of 'pain to pin"one thinks: pin to pain. "The fragment of the outside world of which we become conscious comes after the effect has been produced on us and is projected a posteriori as its 'cause' ". On the contrary, continues NiRtzsche "the basic fact of experience is that the cause gets imagined [established?] after the effect has occurred". The principle of causality leads us to substitute the cause for the effect as the originating term. Let us investigatkfurther what this simple example implies. First, it does not lead to the conclusion that the principle of causality is faulty and should be done away with. On the contrary, the deconstruction itself relies on the notion of cause: the experience of pain causes us to discover the pin and thus causes the production of a cause. To deconstruct causality one must operate with the principle of causation itself. To repeat what has been said earlier4e deconstruction operates through the very . principle it deconstructs. It attacks a rational structure from the inside. Second, Deconstruction reverses the hierarchical opposition of the causal scheme. In our normal distinctions between cause and effect, the cause becomes the origin of the effect, producing it in some way. The effect is derived, secondary and dependent upon the cause. Deconstruction exchanges these properties and upsets the hierarchy. If the effect (i.e. pain) causes the cause (i.e. pin) to become a cause, then the effect and not the cause should be treated as the origin. We have already seen that the effect ( pain ) cannot be treated as the origin. If neither cause nor eflect can unproblematically occupy the position of origin, then origin is no longer originary, it loses its privileged status. 2.2.3 Why Deconstruct? Now that you have had some idea of Deconstruction, let us pose ourselves a basic question - why deconstruct? What use does this strategy have for us? We have already said that it neither explains a text nor leads us from a faulty to a correct way of thinking.
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