SEMESTER-2

10.04.2020

STUDY MATERIAL FOR POST GRADUATE SEMESTER 2 – CC-VIII LECTURE-5-Modern and Contemporary Theory

2020

CC- VIII STUDY MATERIAL FOR POST GRADUATE SEMESTER 2 – CC-VIII Modern and Contemporary Theory UNIT 1-FROM LIBERAL HUMANISM TO THEORY A. FORMALISM B. STRUCTURALISM C. NARRATOLOGY UNIT 2-PSYCHO ANALYSIS,FEMINISM,ECO CRITICISM UNIT-3- MARXISM; THE NEW HISTORISM; POST COLONIALISM; CULTURAL MATERIALSM UNIT-4-POST STRUCTURALISM UNIT-5-POST MODERNISM This is a brief Introduction of what you all have to study for the preparation of CC-VIII paper. STRUCTURALISM

What is known as Structuralism and structuralist literary theory is an intellectual movement that embraces a number of different approaches that have some basic ideas in common.

The fundamental insights of structuralism are rived from or influenced by several streams of thought.

The Linguistic Circles of Prague (among whose leaders were N.S.Trubetzkoy and Roman Jakobson) and copenhagen (where the outstanding figure was Louis Hjelmslev, originator of a Linguistic theory known as glossematics), Ferdinend D, saussure’s seminal ideas on structural linguistics, the french cultural anthropologist Claude Levi – Strauss study of system that under lie different culture, the American School which derived originally from the ideas of Leonard Bloom Field and later from Noam Chomsky, the firthin and neo firthin schools in England, other concepts of sign and system, the assumption that poetics is the “science of literature”- all such ideas contributed to the growth and development of structuralism

This can be broadly shown as in the diagram below

LECTURE-

Although structuralism started as a mode of approach in linguistic and anthropological study, it has influenced all other areas such as sociology, psychoanalysis, philosophy, history, economic theory, political theory, semiotics, myth studies, literary criticism etc.

In Continuation of 1ST Lecture CC-VIII, Modern and Contemporary theory.

STRUCTURALISM

Text – oriented theories can be classified into four categories based on what is broadly labelled as “STRUCTURALISM”.

That is centred around a set of concepts and beliefs like order, pattern, design, form, objectivity, symbolism etc.

The following theories and approaches are basically – text-centred and structuralist.

1. Formalism 2. Practial Criticism. 3. Structuralism 4. Post Structuralism

Structuralism, a parallel development during the same period 1930 – 1970’s considered a text only in terms of language and its system of conventions.

Ferdinand ded Saussure, the Swiss linguist, is the founder of structural linguistic and his ideas influenced structuralism.

In structuralism the focus is the phono/lexico/grammatical constituents of a literary work and the differences between the linguistics signs that create meaning. In other words, it is the systematic sets of signifiers and conventions in the language that help literary texts to the “signify” or “to mean”.

Literary meaning, according to the stucturalist approach, is constructed only by paying attention to the principles of relations and differences. An extreme form of language/code centred , test - oriented criticism, more in the nature of an application of linguistic principles, was also advocated by some linguistically oriented critics in the name of stylistics or linguistic criticism concentrating on the linguistic features of a literary text and taking linguistic beyond sentenced grammar “to text grammar”. This is the basic of structuralism

Saussure (1857-1913) began by defyning the scope and limits of his study.”He preposed a number of distinctions like .

 La langue and la paraole  Synchronic and diachronic analysi  Paradigmatic and syntagmatic relationships  Signifier and signified

Lalangue is the system, the institution called language which is a set of impersonal rules and conventions “Lang is trans individual and abstract. Parole is the actual manifestation of language in speaking, which is taken as primary “Parole is individual/concrete. If the study deals with the description of a language at a given point of time it is called synchronic, and if it deals with changes that occur in the course of time, it is called diachronic.

Those Saussure did not reject the value of the di-chronic studies, he asserted that the diachronic perspective deals with the phenomenon that are un-related to the systems although they do condition them.

Syntagmatic, is the linear arrangement of units as in a chain; units may be sounds, letters, words, sentences etc. Paradigmatic is the vertical arrangement of units as in a ladder; the units may be sounds, letters, words, sentences, etc.

Some scholar feel that all behaviour patterns show these two types of relationships.

It is also maintained that all linguistic relationship are binary, for example , p/b are the level of sound, statement/question at the level of syntext, human/non-human at the level of meaning, etc.

Language, Saussure said, is a system of signs and the linguistic sign is a two-sided psychological entity, composed of a concept and a sound image.

I propose to retain the word sign to designate the whole and to replace concept and sound image respectively by signified and signifier.

The relationship between the signifier and the signified was arbitrary with respect to nature/object but not with respect to culture. For ex, the word tree in English refer to an object which is identified and excepted by English speaking people it is arbitrary since there is no inherent connection between sounds and there reference.

Concept/Object = Signified

SIGN I propose LECTURE-1 Expression = SignifierLECTURE -1

Language, according to Saussure, is a system of inter related units and the value of the units is determined by their places in the system at a given time and a given state. The stress laid on the synchronic study and the analysis of language as systematic structure in terms of binary contrast of signifiers laid the foundations of modern structural linguistics.

One can find similar sets of assumptions in the structuralist poetics of roman Jakobson, in the cultural and anthropology of Claude Levi-Strauss in the psycho analytic theories of Sigmund freud, in the sociology of Durkheim, in the bloom fieldian and Chomskyan linguistics, in the new criticism and practical cticism, Firthian and Neo Firthian functunal linguistics all of which are essentially structural.

I am Aktar Islam, Research Scholar, L.N.M.U under the supervision of Prof. Punita Jha. I am going to deliver a lecture on Formalism basically on Russian Formalism. I have given you some basic points that will be very easy to understand.

1. Formalism

In 20th century, there arose two formalistic movements namely, a. American New Criticism b. Russian Formalism

Both the movements share a lot of characteristics and are almost similar in nature. Both of these movements talked about Formal aspects of literature and hence, both are kept under the same tag FORMALISM. Russian Formalism

A type of literary theory and analysis that emerged in Moscow and St. Petersberg in the second decade of 20th century is called Formalism. Actually its practitioners focused on the FORM (rather than CONTENT) of any literary work.

Like Structuralism, the Formalists believed in certain key assumptions – a. Literature, especially poetry, was a special function of language. b. It was possible to discover the underlying formulae or structures of literary texts by a study of its devices ( a term they were fond of using to describe literary techniques such as symbolism) c. Literary analysis could be as accurate and precise as science.

There were two schools of Russian Formalism namely, a. The Moscow Linguistic Circle (1915), led by Roman Jakobson, Osip Brik and Boris Tomashevsky. b. The second group, the Society for the Study of Poetic Language (Opoyaz), was founded in 1916, and its leading practitioners included Victor Shklovsky, Boris Eichenbaum, and Yuri Tynyanov. Other important critics associated with these movements included Leo Jakubinsky and the folklorist, Vladimir Propp.

N.B: When these critical modes were suppressed by the Soviets in the early 1930s, the centre of the formal study of literature moved to Czechoslovakia, where it was continued especially by members of the Prague Linguistic Circle, which included Roman Jakobson (emigrated from Russia), Jan Mukarovsky, and Rene Wellek.

Key Terms and concepts of Russian Formalism a. Literariness

It was first introduced by Roman Jakobson in 1921. According to him, ‘the object of literary science is not literature but literariness, i.e. what makes a given work a literary work’. b. Defamiliarization

This concept was introduced by Victor Shklovsky. The main word was ‘ostranenie’ (making strange). To ‘defamiliarize’ is to make fresh, new strange, different what is familiar and known. Through defamiliarization, the writer modifies the reader’s habitual perceptions by drawing attention to the artifice of the text. c. Foregrounding

It was a concept by Jan Mukarovsky. To ‘foreground’ is to bring something into prominence, to make it dominant in perception. It will be right to say something about theories of narrative – ‘story’ and ‘plot’ that were very prominent in Russian Formalism. The formalists indicated that ‘plot’ (sjuzet) is strictly literary, while ‘story’ (fabula) is merely raw material awaiting the organizing hand of the writer.

Post – Structuralism: Deconstruction In order to understand Post Structurism, we have to have a clear concept of Post modernism and Modernism. So I have started my lecture with the introduction of post modernism and post structurism which is basically the condition of mind and a way of life, be it textual which is concerned with text and since both are theories, a clear conception of modernism and Structurism is given below Post- Modernism If modernism and postmodernism are ways of looking at things a condition of the mind and a way of life, structuralism and post structuralism are generally used with reference to literary and language studies I.e. textual or mostly to academic areas.as in structure anthropology, structural linguistics, structuralist poetics, Structuralist narratology and post structuralist criticism. The terms Post modernism and Post structuralism are partners in the same paradigm and there is bound to be some overlap between the two; some people use them even inter changeably but it may be better to make some distinction in their use. The overlap and the distinction may be shown as follows: World-View a.theory/conditon/ Modernism b.Vision/a state of mind Post c.a way of life d.Culture Structuralism

Textualism/min ute reading or anti reading

Both Modernism and Post Structuralism share the view of ontological uncertainty, offer a critique of ideas regarding order and unity in language, art and subjectivity; both repudiate convictions and question wholeness, autonomy, grand theories and grand narratives; both affirm the notion of relativity and negate reality; both believe that everything is fiction and that there is no realism; politics, history, sociology, psychology and even science are all fiction according to both these points of view. Post Structuralism is more language based where Post Modernism presents a vision and a way of life.

Other Approaches within Post Modernism within varying degree of Post Structurist orientation, like reader response theory, Feminist criticism, Post colonialism and new Historicism are considered in later units.

Re-presentation of the representation Deconstruction Psychoanalysis Social DIscourse a) French Jacques Derrida Jacques Lacan Michelle Foucault Roland Barthes b) American Harold Bloom Julia Kristeva Mikhail Bakhtin Hillis Miller Paul de Man Joffery Hartman

Deconstruction The most influential of all the Post Modernist /Post Structuralist theories is deconstruction, propounded by Jacques Derrida. He is the single most influential intellectual in current philosophy and anglo American literary theory. French Intellectuals have highly developed a taste for attacking intellectual dwarfs. Derrida represents the French mocking tradition combined with his Jewish background. And in France he experienced a degree of rigidity and conservatism in French universities where, in spite of all revolutions, the education system remains unchanged; and most ‘isms’rarely touched higher education – even the importance of Saussure’s theory of language was not realised.

Derridean Deconstruction simply problematizes all habits of thought in any discipline (the word “discipline” itself shows how our thinking itself is disciplined) by demonstrating how impossible it is draw a clear cut line between reality and representation; this, in turn, will involve a sustained and rigorous attention to the ways in which certain notion of ‘language’ or ‘text’ have been taken for granted though the focus of study in Deconstruction is ‘language/text’, ultimately, Deconstruction a rigorous attempt to (re)think the limits of that principle of reason which has shaped the emergence of Western Philosophy, Science and Technology at large and its search for its answer to the question: Is the reason for reason rational?

Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, who translated Derrida’s of Grammatology in English (published in 1976) says: A certain view of the world, of consciousness and of language has been accepted as the correct one, and if the minute particulars of that view are examined a rather different picture emerges.

Language and writing are two distinct systems of science; the second exists for the sole purpose of representation the first. The linguistic object is not both written and spoken forms of word; the spoken form alone constitutes the object. But the spoken word is so intimately connected to the written image that the latter manages to usurp the main role. People attach more importance to the sign itself (course in general linguistics: 1916, pp.23-24).

Derrida argues that Saussure, like Aristotle, Plato and Rousseau takes speech as privileged because of its self-presence; he says that it is not speech alone that is privileged but presence is privileged over absence.

Derrida says ‘voice becomes metaphor of truth and authenticity…Writing, on the contrary, destroys the ideal of pure self-presence. Rousseau glorifies speech to such an extent affirming it as pure, spontaneous, authentic, original and natural that writing becomes secondary and lifeless. Privileging speech over writing is called phonocentrism; through privileging the spoken word, meaning and truth, reason and logic, the phonocentric tradition becomes really logocentric; what is actually privileged through phoncentrism is logocentrism (the greek word ‘Logos’: meaning word, reason, truth). The phonocentric/logocentric tradition spans from Plato and Aristotle to Heidegger, Saussure, Levi-Strauss and Structuralism. As portrayed by Derrida, the logocentric system always assigns the truth to Logos- to the spoken word, to the voice, reason and the word of God.

There is a distinction between historical and conceptual priority. For eg, in mathematics, historically, counting was done with sticks or stones or beads but they have now been discarded for more abstract forms and formulae. We do not bring in historical priority to decide conceptual importance. (Human beings were in natural undressed state but the dress state is considered more fashionable now.!)

Derrida uses writing in its narrow sense as well as in its broader sense to indicate all systems that show traces (like impressions or footprints where the object is absent), thinking, interior speech, or anything (i.e arche-before) precedes exterior/actual speech. In the broader sense arche-writing ‘supplements perception before perception even appears to itself’; so, in Derridean Deconstruction, writing, in the sense of ‘traces’, exists always already before perception and its presence alone is what we understand as speech. Trace is writing in general and it serves as the foundation of speech. Thus, Derrida reverses the speech/writing hierarchy and privileges writing. After pointing out that he concept of writing cannot be reduced to a graphic or inscriptional sense, Derrida proceeds to deconstruct another important Saussurean statement that says: In language there are only difference without positive (i.e fixed) terms. Saussurean differences operate at two level - signifiers (form/expression) as well as signified (concepts ). Signifiers are sound images, expressions, audible sounds in speech and visible marks in writing; signifieds are concepts. Both signifiers and signifieds are purely differential.

Derrida is not against term signified, he puts it under erasure (a device used to show that it exists but needs close/critical examination); Signified, since the word is put under scrutiny it is crossed out; since it exists it remains legible but crossed. Derrida argues that “Difference” will mean presence, both entities are present. But not everything is present in the language system; secondly, what is present is elusive. There are no entities or relations of absences. For example, look up the dictionary for the meaning of the word ‘meaning’. The Concise Oxford Dictionary tries to define the word as follows in a circular manner:

Meaning: what is meant; significance

Meant: what it means

Mean: Signify; have in mind, intend

Significance: being significant; meaning;

Significant: having or conveying a meaning

In an attempt to capture the signified (i.e. the concept or the meaning of word), we keep moving from one signifier (word/form) to another signifier; we never got to the signified; the signified got lost in the search, and we keep going round and round. One can mark the circularity of ‘Signifiers’ and how the ‘signified’ or meaning slips beneath the circularity of signifiers.

If there is no signified or entity or thing which is present, what we are left with the postprints, impressions or traces of what is absent. No sign is complete in itself; it depends on another sign and that sign in turn depends on another.in other words, each sign is only a trace of another/another and, without the one that supplements it, no sign is complete. For every sign, a half of it is ‘not that’ and the other half not ‘there’. This means that there are no clear cut for and no entities; there ae only formations, indications, impressions, imprints, traces where each sign supplements the ‘other’.

The notions circulatory, plurality, indeterminacy, free-play, difference and supplementarity are very crucial to the understanding of deconstruction. The summary given below may be useful & below.

Trace Difference Supplement - No fixed or finished entities- - to differ and not to differ- - one thing defined through only indications, impressions, only transcience and no the other- addition and imprints, footprint of the transcendental signified- only substitution- to supplement is object (i.e. word) that is movement and delay- endless to add what is missing; to absent – only formation and deferral from signifier to supply a necessary lack in the not forms. (something like signifier- a state of other; to substitute perpetual sanskara) dissemination. (Something like dependency on that which is leela) required to complete some existing lack- nothing is complete in itself. (something like the ardhanareshwar (half and half) principle)

These are the important features of writing before speech and conventional writing; it is implied here that any system that exhibits the three features mentioned above is ‘writing in the Derridean sense.

If a sign is a sign of another sign, a text must be a text of another text, No single element- a word/sentence/discourse-may be present in and of itself referring only to itself without referring to another element which is not present, whether spoken or written discourse.

Derrida argues the essence of a rose is its non-essence; is its odour as it evaporates-the effluvium- what is thrown out –a belch , a fart , the excrements ,its dissipation –effluvium designates, in general , decomposing organic substances, “the text is thus a gas’. Etymologically the text is a cloth and ‘textus’ is the form from which ‘text’ is derived’ and it means ‘woven’ according to Lacan a ‘text’ ia like a dream; you can never say what it means.