Post-Structuralism: Deconstruction Examples & Some Key Concepts

Writing and Différance Two chains of signification: 2. Re-contextualization; traces kept. e.g. 1. Pharmakon: 1). poison, 2). Pharmacy 2. Creole: 1). Native, local, ” pure ” ; 2). Native-born whites; 3). Hybrid 3. 《悲情城市》中的 〈幌馬車之歌〉 ; 《好男好 女》 ︰ 1937 蔣碧玉認識鍾浩東﹐ 1940 赴大陸． － 1949 被捕﹐－ 1950 年十月十四日鍾浩東被殺﹐ 臨刑前〈幌馬車之歌〉響起.

幌馬車之歌 黃昏的時候, 在樹葉散落的馬路上, 目送你的馬車, 在馬路上幌來幌去 地消失在遙遠的彼方。 在充滿回憶的小山上, 遙望故國的天 空, 憶起在夢中消逝的一年, 淚水忍 不住流了下來。 馬車的聲音, 令人懷念, 去年送走你 的馬車, 竟成永別。

Writing and Différance (2) 1. Writing as Différance and the endless play of signs. Différance: 1.To differ; A sign is defined by its binary opposition to another sign. 2. To defer. The signifier (black) that is distinguished from the other one (white) is not completely erased; it is only deferred, bracketed. Black. It can subvert the fixed meaning of the sign.

Writing and Différance The chain of signification: Signifier 1 (rose) Signified 1 (flower) Signified 2 (love) Signified 2 (rose=love) Signified 3 (rose= woman in love)

The other Americans Other Skin colors Other Racial Features What they did Writing and Différance: an Example 1. Signifier Signified 2 Signified 3 Asian PeopleYellow Exotic (Evil or Weak) White Americans White Innocence White Man’s Burden Manifest Destiny God

Writing and Différance 1. Writing as a system of difference, or of Différance. * While structualists had treated binary oppositions as stable terms in a formal structure, Derrida sees them as organized in unstable disequilibrium.  because of the presence/absence of tracestraces

“Spacing”-- Movement from one Signifier to another -- spacing: Meaning changed when the context is further revealed. --The traces of the old meanings are both present and absent.

Questions 1.What is Transcendental Signified? 2.What is presence? 3.What the first step of deconstruction? 1.(Textbook: p. 124) source of meaning and center of existence. e.g. being, unity, truth, the good, reason, progress, identity, continuity, meaning, subjectivity, authenticity, etc.

Questions & Answers 2.What is presence? 3.What the first step of deconstruction? 2. (p. 126) Opposite to absence; presence of god, of meaning, essence, etc.; implies fixed and domineering presence. 3. Reverse the “hierarchical” binary of presence/absence, speech/writing, and allow the latters to supplement the formers. (examples later.)

Critique of Metaphysics: logocentrism, phonocentrism, phallogocentrism Traditional binaries are hierarchical. Should be reversed. Logocentrism: Logo as center, source, or founding presence of knowledge and human beings. Phonocentrism: In the speech/writing binary, speech is supposed to signal presence of the speaker. Phallogocentrism: Man/Woman= sun/moon, reason/emotion, Subject/Object, etc.

Deconstruction: practices 1.(p. 131) 1. Open texts  A text that deconstructs its unity or author Reverse the text’s binaries or expose its undecidability or multiple meanings (131); 3.Study the process of signification of a sign or a text and find out what it tries to erase. 4.Find where the text differs from itself. (critical difference  ambiguity and undecidability) 5.Radical contextualization  to find out its intertextual references and thus undecidability of meanings.