John Carroll University Carroll Collected Masters Essays Theses, Essays, and Senior Honors Projects Spring 2015 THE DECONSTRUCTION OF (PARA)TEXT IN ALASDAIR GRAY’S POOR THINGS Lila Ibrahim John Carroll University,
[email protected] Follow this and additional works at: http://collected.jcu.edu/mastersessays Part of the English Language and Literature Commons Recommended Citation Ibrahim, Lila, "THE DECONSTRUCTION OF (PARA)TEXT IN ALASDAIR GRAY’S POOR THINGS" (2015). Masters Essays. 4. http://collected.jcu.edu/mastersessays/4 This Essay is brought to you for free and open access by the Theses, Essays, and Senior Honors Projects at Carroll Collected. It has been accepted for inclusion in Masters Essays by an authorized administrator of Carroll Collected. For more information, please contact
[email protected]. THE DECONSTRUCTION OF (PARA)TEXT IN ALASDAIR GRAY’S POOR THINGS An Essay Submitted to the Office of Graduate Studies College of Arts & Sciences of John Carroll University in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Master of Arts By Lila Ibrahim 2015 In “Archive Fever: A Freudian Impression,” Jacques Derrida asserts that the archive is the place “where things commence ” and “where men and gods command ,” the place “where authority [and] social order are exercised” (9). Alasdair Gray’s Poor Things commences with the fictional discovery of potential archival matter and a desire to “preserve evidence of local culture that was being hustled into the past” (Gray vii).1 Wisam Mansour observes that “for ages the archive has been regarded as the major distinguishing feature for the construction of history, especially for those who work in the academic arena” (41).