1. Post-Structuralism: Deconstruction
Theory and Practice

2. Outline -- Q & A -- Jacque Derrida:
1. Prologue: Instability of Meaning
2. Writing as Différance
3. Transcendental Signified and Binarism
4. Deconstruction: Literary Practice
5. Derrida in Context: structuralism, Foucault, etc.
Assignments

3. Q & A What is Différance? What is Transcendental Signified?
How is Western Metaphysics challenged?
How do we do deconstruction in literary criticism? Is deconstruction similar to destruction?

4. Q & A Is deconstruction similar to destruction?
Literary Deconstruction:
--show the hidden gaps in a text’s meaning Textual unity
-- Reverse the “hierarchical” binaries, and allow the latter to supplement the formers.
-- de-stabilize, de-center, but not destroy.

5. Which of the following statements are not ambiguous?
I am 40 years old.
The Republic of China was born on Oct. 10, 1911.
I love you till the end of the world.
The experience of the earthquake yesterday was quite uncanny.

6. Which of the following statements are not ambiguous?
I am 40 years old.  Who is this “I”?
The Republic of China was born on Oct. 10,  born?
I love you till the end of the world (Apocalypse Now
 love?

7. Language/Literature as an enclosed system with two Axes
Paradigmatic/Selection:
Syntagmatic/Combination
(narrative structure:
roles + actions);
metonymy
Thematic structure: Motifs, mythemes, metaphors, etc.

8. Language/Literature as an enclosed system with two Axes
中國人生性刻苦耐勞。
Paradigmatic/Selection:
Syntagmatic/Combination
+ more stereotypical descriptions, or a father’s advice to his son, etc.
－中國人﹐華人Chinaman
－刻苦耐勞／現實／斤斤計較／不懂得人生樂趣

9. Why is language ambiguous?
Why are meanings undecidable & slippery?
1. Polysemy: Traces of other signs, other meanings. (e.g. national “birthday”;; the uncanny)
2. Multiple Context; Reference Undecidable. (e.g. “The end of the world” )
3. Meaning is not “present” in language; it happens “in between” signifiers.
4. (intention and the unconscious)

10. Freud’s “the Uncanny”
= unheimlich, both “homely” and “unhomely”; or both familiar and strange.
According to Freud's description, the uncanny "derives its terror not from something externally alien or unknown but--on the contrary--from something strangely familiar which defeats our efforts to separate ourselves from it" (Morris; source).
e.g. the Gothic tradition, nightmare, castration fear.

11. “Spacing”-- Movement from one Signifier to another
-- polysemy: cultural connotations of
-- spacing: Meaning changed when the context is further revealed.
Comic effects: old traces vs. newly defined meanings.
The traces of the old meanings are both present and absent.

12. Writing and Différance
Language a system of difference  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 traces
* Derrida sees the signified’s also in a relation of difference, and they are turned into signifiers floating signifiers.
(Textbook: p. 123; 28)

13. Writing and Différance (2)
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 or merely “put under erasure.” It can subvert the fixed meaning of the sign.

14. Writing and Différance
The chain of signification:
(1) symbolization or mythologizing
Signifier 1
(rose)
Signified 1
(flower)
Signified 2
(love)
Signified2 (rose=love)
Signified 3
(rose= woman in love)
Signified 4
(rose = weak, vain & dependent woman in love)

15. Writing and Différance: chain of signification (1)
Signifier Signified Signified 3
Asian People
Yellow
Exotic (Evil or Weak)
Other Racial Features
What they did
Other Skin colors
Innocent, Strong
and Civilized
White
White Americans
The other Americans
White Man’s Burden
Manifest Destiny
God

16. Writing and Différance: Chain of Signification (2)
Re-contextualization; traces kept. e.g.
1. Pharmakon: 1). poison, ). Pharmacy
2. 〈幌馬車之歌〉;吹皺一池春水
3. Creole; “Madame Butterfly” in M. Butterfly and in the characters of Song first and then Gallimard; the other parodies.

17. Question
Do you agree that meaning is always uncertain and slippery? What does Derrida’s views of language shed light on our communication?

18. The Transcendental Signified and Binaries
The “unmoved mover” e.g.
God (transcendental signified)
The Bible (transcendental signifier)
(Textbook: p. 124) source/closure of meaning and center of existence. e.g. being, unity, truth, the good, reason, progress, identity, continuity, meaning, subjectivity, authenticity, etc. = foundations

19. The Transcendental Signified and Binaries
They are the upper terms in hierarchical binaries: e.g.
Man
Light
Reason
Culture
The Public;
West, etc.
Woman
Dark-ness
Emotion
Nature
The Private;
East, etc.

20. Critique of Metaphysics: logocentrism, & phallogocentrism
Traditional binaries are hierarchical. Should be reversed or questioned.
Logocentrism: Logo as center, source, or founding presence of knowledge and human beings.
Phallogocentrism: Man/Woman= sun/moon, reason/emotion, Subject/Object, etc.

21. Ways of Questioning the Hierarchical Binaries
The two terms are actually mutually determinant. e.g. The West has to define itself by having/rejecting an “Other” which is different.
2. The weak term is not really weak.
3. Mutually implicated: One term implies its opposite term. examples

22. Deconstruction: practices
(textbook p. 131)
1. Open texts  A text that deconstructs its own unity or “author.” (examples; also M. Butterfly, its ending)
2. Reverse the text’s binaries or expose its undecidability or multiple meanings (example M. Butterfly  Madame Butterfly; another);
3. Study the process of signification of a sign or a text and find out what it tries to erase. (e.g. Scarlet Letter; Barthesian studies of commercials)

23. Deconstruction: practices (2)
4. Find where the text differs from itself. (critical difference) ambiguity and undecidability (example)
5. Radical contextualization  to find out its intertextual references and thus undecidability of meanings.

24. Reasons for the Disappearance of the river:
-- My departure; growth
-- The cartographer; urban development
-- The river itself;  Nature is betrayed and then changes itself;
-- “Nobody’s fault.”

25. The original hierarchy subverted by the last line
River-Childhood-personified
River-
Mapped; unchanged I?
My growth; I
Human error; Urban development
Childhood’s memory?
wrong

26. Deconstruction of Binary Opposition: Example
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn Society vs. Nature, with Huck in between
Nature (River)
Jim
H:“Then I’ll go to hell.”
"light out for the Territory"
Society (towns)
H: doubt and practical jokes
"born again" as Tom ; use T’s intricate plan to rescue Jim

27. Undecidability: example 1
Billy Budd: Billy Budd (a young sailor), Claggart (master-at-arms), Vere (the captain).
Billy Budd innocent) vs. Claggart (evil)
B. Claggart accuses B of planning mutiny.  B’s blow
B killer vs.
C victim
Vere responsible and just 
Allows an innocent man to be hanged.

28. Undecidability: example 2
A slumber did my spirit seal;
I had no human fears:
She seemed a thing that could not feel
The touch of earthly years.
 <Gap>
No motion has she now, no force;
She neither hears nor sees;
Rolled round in earth's diurnal course,
With rocks, and stones, and trees.
(William Wordsworth )

29. Undecidability: example 2
“A slumber did my spirit seal” -- Contradictions between
present
death
the cosmic
peacefulness and regularity
past
life
the human
fear
Gap: What happened in between the present and the past?
Whose peacefulness is it? Whose death and when?

30. Derridian Deconstruction in Context
1. Anti-Foundationalist & de-centering;
2. Like New Critics, deconstructionists read closely to find out the contradictions and gaps in a text, but without reconstructing them back to a unity.
3. Like Foucault, D thinks that we are in language and are conditioned by its structure, polysemy and fluidity.

31. Derridian Deconstruction in Context (2)
4. Other usages of “différance”: desired object in unattainable, constantly deferred and replaced; colonial mimicry disseminate/de-center colonial authority.
5. “différance” and temporary closure.

32. Assignments "The Blind Man" 2. Review “The Purloined Letter”
3. Review the whole unit and bring with you at least one question.