Thinking Activity

Thinking Activity: Derrida and Deconstruction

Hello readers, I am Nidhi Dave a student of Department of English MK Bhavnagar University. This blog given by professor Dr. Dilip Barad sir. In this blog I am going to discuss some of the interesting questions about Derrida and Deconstruction. 

Derrida and Deconstruction.

Jacques Darrida:

"If this work seems so threatening, 

this is because it isn't simply eccentric or strange,

but competent, rigorously argued, and carrying conviction."

                          - Jacques Derrida

Jacques Derrida (1930-2004) was the founder of “deconstruction,” a way of criticizing not only both literary and philosophical texts but also political institutions. Although Derrida at times expressed regret concerning the fate of the word “deconstruction,” its popularity indicates the wide-ranging influence of his thought, in philosophy, in literary criticism and theory, in art and, in particular, architectural theory, and in political theory. Indeed, Derrida's fame nearly reached the status of a media star, with hundreds of people filling auditoriums to hear him speak, with films and televisions programs devoted to him, with countless books and articles devoted to his thinking. Beside critique, Derridean deconstruction consists in an attempt to re-conceive the difference that divides self-reflection (or self-consciousness). But even more than the re-conception of difference, and perhaps more importantly, deconstruction works towards preventing the worst violence. It attempts to render justice. Indeed, deconstruction is relentless in this pursuit since justice is impossible to achieve. 

What do you understand by 'Deconstruction? 

Ans, Deconstruction, form of philosophical and literary analysis, derived mainly from work begun in the 1960s by the French philosopher Jacques Derrida, that questions the fundamental conceptual distinctions, or “oppositions,” in Western philosophy through a close examination of the language and logic of philosophical and literary texts. In the 1970s the term was applied to work by Derrida, Paul de Man, J. Hillis Miller, and Barbara Johnson, among other scholars. 

Derrida use the deconstruction he refuses to define it saying that like all other terms that we use in philosophy or literary Criticism for that matter even deconstruction cannot be once and for all for finally difine. Derrida deconstructs the metaphysics of presence and there is no presence of truth is prove that the structurality of the structure does not indicate a presence above its free play of signs.The relationship between word and its meaning is not natural and it conventional.According to Derrida the Deconstructive philosophy is an " event." Deconstruction of Derrida is not a reconstruction or a redefinition or replacement of the past. If Philosophers like Nietzsche, Freud and Heidegger have instigated Derrida to think outside the box. According to Derrida what we do is differentiating one thing from the other. And for this he gave word DifferAnce. DiffreAnce = Differ +defere. DiffreAnce is not an idea or a concept but a force which makes differentiation possible which makes postponing possible.This is we understand about the Deconstruction. 

2, How to Deconstruct  a text?

Ans,  

A Deconstructive Criticism Of A Poem – Jayanta Mahapatra’s “Hunger”

Learning a theory is one thing and applying it is another thing. Therefore before telling about the step-by-step approach to the matter I shall give a brief idea of Deconstruction theory as it is applicable to literature. Actually, Deconstruction is a philosophy and so is applicable to all fields of life so to say. The Deconstruction theory in literature finds written manifestation in “Of Grammatology” written by the philosopher Jaques Derrida (translated in English by Gayatri Chakraborty Spivak) and it opposes the linguistic theory of Saussure, as enunciated in “Course in General Linguistics”.

Saussure shows how the theory of a ‘sign’ (object/ thing) as the sum of a ‘signifier’ (sound/ image) and several ‘signifieds’ (mental concepts) provides a unified meaning to a literary text.

It is upon this Saussurean principle that the theory of Structuralism is based. Applied to a literary text, the theory of deconstruction opposes the foundation of Structuralism by showing how a ‘sign’ becomes the sum of several ‘signifiers’ because the supposed ‘signified’ is actually “transcendental signified”. The ‘sign’ is the key idea of a literary text. This idea is projected by the Structuralist critics in terms of binary opposition as the one privileged in a literary text.

The Deconstruction of a text lays bare the binary-based hierarchy embedded in it and establishes the elements of instability in this hierarchy by bringing into focus the warring forces in the text itself. In “The Critical Difference” Barbara Johnson wisely says:

“If anything is destroyed in a deconstructive reading, it is … … … the claim to unequivocal domination of one mode of signifying over another.”

Hence the application of the theory of Deconstruction to Jayanta Mahapatra’s “Hunger” will focus on how its binary-based hierarchy becomes subject to question.

Example of poem: Hunger by Jayanta Mahapatra.

   

In the first stanza, the speaker confesses that one day he was consumed with fleshly desires. A fisherman whom he meets by chance offers him his daughter for his sensual enjoyment in exchange for a few rupees. The fisherman speaks very casually to the speaker while making the bargain. Being poor he is in need of money. He has no other way but to sacrifice the youth of his daughter to serve his purpose. In the next stanza the bargain being finalized, the speaker follows the fisherman across the vast sandy shore. Though the speaker is aware of the enormity of his crime that he is going to commit, his body is torn with sexual hunger 

the poem “Hunger” is between two types of ‘hunger’ —- the speaker’s ‘hunger’ (for sex) and the fisherman’s ‘hunger’ (for food). From a cursory reading of the text, one can say that the speaker’s ‘hunger’ privileges the fisherman’s ‘hunger’. So if ‘hunger’ is looked upon as the Saussurean ‘sign’, the fisherman’s ‘hunger’ is the ‘signifier’ and the ‘signifieds’ are feelings like sensual gratification, satisfaction, etc.

“I saw his white bone thrash his eyes”

my mind thumping at the flesh’s sling”

the speaker discovers his own mental struggle between action and passivity in the fisherman. The same internal conflict perturbs the speaker even when he thinks of burning the house as a gesture of self-repentance but not of postponing the call of his ‘flesh’. The pressure of the conflict is so much that the speaker seems to lose his identity:

“… … … I felt the hunger there/ The other one, the fish slithering, turning inside”.

Here “the other one” refers to the hunger for food on the part of the speaker and this hunger is symbolized by ‘fish. Derrida speaks of ‘difference’ as conveying two ideas —- deference and difference. 

“… …: my daughter, she’s just turned fifteen …/ Feel her. I’ll be back soon, your bus leaves at nine.”

In last stanza, very cleverly he suggests the youth of his daughter and shows his time-sense so that he can give his customer all-round service. Thus the fisherman’s ‘hunger’ for food has no claim as the ‘signifier’. This poem say about the story of Hunger and we can easily connect the poem with deconstruction. 

Thank you 

Thinking Activity

Thinking Activity: Short stories - R. K. Narayan 

An Astrologer's Day 

 Hello readers, I am Nidhi Dave a student of Department of English MK Bhavnagar University.  This blog given by professor Yesha Ma'am. In this blog I am going to discuss some of the interesting questions about 'An Astrologer's Day 

An Astrologer's Day

  

 An Astrologer’s Day’ is a story from the Indian author R. K. Narayan’s 1943 collection Malgudi Days. The Malgudi of the collection’s title is a fictional city in India, where all of the stories in the collection take place. The opening story in the book, ‘An Astrologer’s Day’ is about an unnamed astrologer who is confronted by a stranger who questions his abilities.

The story is about revenge, the past, and the reasons why we make the decisions we make in our lives. 

1, How faithful is the movie to the original short story? 

  

Ans,  An Astrologer's Day by R. K. Narayan we are studying as part of our syllabus. First we study whole story then we watch movie of this story so we can find many similarities between movie and story. In both are plot is going the same way as it is in the story. Both are match many things. And represent the some situations of the original story. But original story and film adaptation, Just two scenes are there which are not in the original test. One is the astrologer’s wife at the initial part and his reveal of his crime through the story of money. so now we can say that movie is mort related to story.

2, After watching the movie, have your perception about the short story, characters or situations changed?

Ans,  After watching the film My perception is changed towards the character of astrologer’s wife.Because in the original story she is quite silent and here we seen in movie that she speaks about his work and other things also.

3, Do you feel ‘aesthetic delight’ while watching the movie? If yes, exactly when did it happen? If no, can you explain with reasons? 

Ans, yes, i feel aesthetic delight while watching the movie. in the last seen the end of the story when astrologer revealed her past about the Guru Nayak and then that night he sleep well. Like new morning are come.  

4, Does screening of movie help you in better understanding of the short story?

Ans, Yes movie became helpful for better understanding of the story. Because first we read whole story but we not anderstand the story but after watching a film we anderstand about whole story and what message the story give. so that way we can say that film are always help to understand literature.

5,Was there any particular scene or moment in the story that you think was perfect?.

Ans, Yes, I think the scene of Gurunayak coming to an astrologer is quite perfect and appropriat. And also That scene that he talk about his wife about his crime it was the perfect scene which I find.

6, If you are director, what changes would you like to make in the remaking of the movie based on the short story “An Astrologer’s Day” by R.K.Narayan?

Ans, If i am director, i would like to chenge about the place and time of the astrologer and also add some more dailogs and some entertaining part.

Thank you 

Thinking Activity

Thinking Activity: Wide Sargasso Sea

This blog is response of thinking Activity given by professor Yesha Ma'am. Here I discuss about The Madwomen in the Attic : Annette - Antoinette. 

Wide Sargasso Sea

Wide Sargasso Sea is a postcolonial novel by Jean Rhys, published in 1966. It gives readers an alternative view of Charlotte Brönte’s Jane Eyre, written from the perspective of Bertha (or Antoinette, as she is known in this novel) – Rochester’s ‘mad’ wife who lives in the attic of Thornfield Hall. It can be seen as a prequel, as it depicts Antoinette’s upbringing in Jamaica as a white Creole heiress, her difficult relationship with Rochester, and the events that contribute to her decline.

THE WIDE SARGASSO SEA”, a multi-layered and complex novella by the Caribbean writer Jean Rhys is specifically written from the perspective of a ‘creole’ women (a mixed breed of the black slaves from Africa and the early French settlers, forming half of the West Indian population), Set in wild, magical Jamaican scenery, in the aftermath of emancipation. Anoinette Mason, the woman in the novella is a small supporting character in “JANE EYRE” by Charlotte Bronte.

The title of the novel refers to the Sargasso Sea, a vast area of the northern Atlantic Ocean which is home to sargassum, a kind of sea weed. The Sargasso Sea is legendary for being an oceanic black hole, where ships get ensnared by huge forests of floating seaweed, or drift helplessly when the wind ceases to blow.The title invites the reader to consider how the characters can be thought of as trapped in their own Sargasso Seas. They may be suspended in the murky passage between two worlds of England and Jamaica or between racial identities.

The Madwomen in the Attic : Annette - Antoinette

What about Mrs. Rochester, the madwoman in the attic, who was she really?

The novel is written in three parts: Antoinette’s childhood in first person, the courtship and marriage with Rochester as narrator, and their return to England. Rochester’s name is not mentioned, though Rhys does use the name and character Grace Poole in Part Three, Antoinette’s guard and keeper in the classic. Grace Poole is the connection between both books, and she is a gate keeper of sorts to the English life downstairs and the Jamaican wife, walled in with her memories. Maybe the author’s decision to keep Rochester nameless has to do with the abuses of everyman or any man, the power and control he may have over another, especially a woman.

This novel is popular on reading lists for Third World Women Studies. It also explores post colonial life in the Caribbean after the Slavery Abolition Act of 1833, so there are racial themes as well as feminist ones. Rochester is flawed and complicated but his position is not an easy one as the second son sent to the Caribbean to bring home his fortune through his marriage to Antoinette, a local heiress and a woman of dubious heritage.

Jean Rhys’s idea was both original and brilliantly simple: to write the “prequel” to Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre and to uncover the secret of Mrs Rochester, the mad woman in the attic. In Brontë’s classic novel of 1847, little is known about Rochester’s first wife other than her Creole background and the tragic lunacy which culminates in the burning of Thornfield Hall. Rhys resolved to reconstruct this personality and to examine the events and emotions which led to her madness.

Wide Sargasso Sea is thus the story of Antoinette Cosway and her relationship with an unnamed Englishman who we realise to be Rochester through an elaborate web of allusions and clues. The novel could, of course, have run the risk of seeming contrived or of reading like a deliberate pastiche. Nothing, however, could be further from the truth, as Rhys’s own preoccupations and extraordinary technical skill make the book entirely distinctive in imagination.

What is lacking in Brontë’s novel fills that of Rhys: a real sense of the Caribbean as a place both real and symbolic. This is not the sun-kissed idyll of popular legend, however, but a mysterious and often sinister world in which reason and love are condemned to disintegration.

From the outset, Antoinette’s initial narrative describes an uneasy childhood set in post-emancipation Jamaica, in which the genteel poverty of the former slave-owners only inspires the hatred and derision of the former slaves. The society which Rhys evokes is decadent and fragile, an idea reinforced by her descriptions of the garden at the run-down Coulibri estate, where the vegetation is over-lush and threatening.

Antoinette’s childhood is abruptly ended by an arson attack which destroys the house, and her mother’s ensuing madness (both events ironically prefigure her own destiny). Her stepfather is only too happy to marry her to an Englishman, who, it is clear, is attracted by a large dowry. In return, Antoinette is to be provided with a husband “of good race”. Not surprisingly perhaps, the marriage is blighted from the beginning by suspicion and paranoia. Is she also “of good race”? What truth lies behind whispers of inherited madness?

For Rochester, who narrates the second part of the novel, the island where the couple spend their honeymoon is oppressive and menacing rather than exotic. By place names we know it to be Dominica, Rhys’s native island of volcanic mountains and dense rain forest, but Rochester sees it as a place which is paradoxically too beautiful and equally cruel:

. . . I hated the mountains and the hills, the rivers and the rain. I hated the sunsets of whatever colour. I hated its beauty and its magic and the secret I would never know. I hated its indifference and the cruelty which was part of its loveliness. Above all I hated her.

His initial erotic attraction to Antoinette turns to revulsion. Surrounded by conflicting rumours and deep-seated fears of this unknown world, Rochester adopts the cruelty which he thinks he sees in the landscape. A mix of jealousy and sadism poisons the marriage. As the couple leave their honeymoon home, madness is already apparent in Antoinette’s “blank lovely eyes”.

The brief final section is set in England. A virtual prisoner in Thornfield Hall, Antoinette shivers in the cold and fantasises about fire. The scene is set for the Gothic horror of Jane Eyre. And by now it is abundantly clear why the mad Mrs Rochester came to die in Brontë’s terrifying inferno.The sexual repression, social isolation and emotional trauma that Bertha undergoes after being betrayed and cheated on by Rochester are shown by Jean Rhys in Wide Sargasso Sea as reasons responsible for Bertha’s (supposed) madness.

She wasn’t always mad; (if at all) her containment had made it so. 

Thank you 

Thinking Activity

Flipped learning: Derrida and Deconstruction 

This blog is response to flipped Learning task given by Professor Dr. dilip Barad sir here I discuss about my understanding of every videos about Derrida and Deconstruction.

 

1, Derrida and Deconstruction Definition:

Definition of term deconstruction one very important question.one very important question which Derrida is asking throughout his entire career.

He is whether it is possible to define something once and for all rigorously and

Whether and what are its limits to what extent can you define something.

Derrida use the deconstruction he refuses to define it saying that like all other terms that we use in philosophy or literary Criticism for that matter even deconstruction cannot be once and for all for finally difine. 

2, Derrida and Deconstruction: Heidegger:

The seeds of Deconstruction sprouted from Martin Heidegger (1889 - 1976)

Freud and Nietzsche are three important thinkers which Derrida acknowledges in his very famous as a structure sign and play as the ideas in these philosophers are in many way continued by dairy down Heidegger and his philosophy deals with some very important themes which Derrida continues in his own philosophy. One of the themes is the question of deconstruction when the term destruction in German is translated as deconstruction into French so that is a direct connection between Heidegger and Derrida.

Heidegger wanted to destroy or dismantle the entire tradition of western philosophy by pressing the question of Being of Being.

3, Derrida and Deconstruction: Ferdinand de saussure:

Ferdinand's  saussure writing is that the relationship between word and its meaning is not natural but it's a conventional one for example the word sister has no natural relationship with the person human being but it's just a convention that connects the word sister with the person so that is what he implies by arbitrariness means any word can be used to talk about anything technically but what connects a word with its meaning or a signal with its meaning is the convention and convention is almost social and it is always by consensus that kind of word and meaning gets connected now what Derrida reads into this and he constructs this idea further by saying that meaning of a word is usually thought of as something in our mind.That is idea of arbitrariness.

Derrida says that western philosophy is again built on the difference binary oppositions just like human language.

4, Derrida and Deconstruction: DifferAnce:

Derrida is questioning is, what do you mean by understand. If meaning of word like interest is a group of another words. One word leads to another Word and that word leads to yet another and finally we never come out of the dictionary.

Saussurean sign is equal to signifier which signifies something but Derridean sign is free play of signifiers.

Derrida combine two term' differ' and 'defer'. Pun it means to differ is also mean differentiate. Derrida is drawing attention towards different between speech and writing. He questions privilege of speech over writing. 'DefferAnce' - difference is not an idea or a concept but a force which makes differentiate possible.

5, Derrida and Deconstruction: Structure, sign and play.

Language bears  within itself the necessity of its own critique. discussing your structure sign and play is one of the very important documents of contemporary literary theory as it inaugurates what is known as post structuralism in 1967 by post structuralism we mean not outright rejection or criticism of structuralism but going beyond by critiquing structuralism so the essay is actually a critic of and who are very famous anthropologist who made structuralism very popular. The centre is paradoxically within the structure and outside it. The totality has its centre as where the centre is not the centre. Derrida pushes the destabilisednotion of the Centre to the point or a 'Rupture' in the history of thought in structuality.

6, Derrida and Deconstruction: Yale school

 During 1870s the Yale school has been the hub if the practitioners of deconstruction in the Literary Theories.

Yale school very important role propagation of Derridas idea. Paul de Man, J.Hillis Miller, Harol Bloom, Geoffrey Hartman these four people actually made deconstruction. Yale school is responsible for bringing deconstruction in the Literary criticism.

7, Derrida and Deconstruction: Influence on other critical theories:

Yale school as against that the other critical approaches like cultural materialism or feminism, gender theory, post colonial studies, new Historicism and Marxism psychoanalysis.

1,Postcolonial theories: fascinated by its ability to show that the texts or the discourse of the colonizers can be deconstructed from within the narrative.

2,Feminist theories: interested because it deals with how to subvert the binaries between male and female. By its ability to subvert patriarchal discourse.

3,Cultural Materialism: interested in it emphasize the materiality of language - Language is material construct and it has got ability to unmask hidden ideological agendas.

4, Historicism: By its ability to see historicity of text and textuality of history. History is textual and text is historical.

Questions:

1,Why feminist theories are important in Derrida and Deconstruction?

2, what is concept of western philosophy?

3, why we read deconstruction as positive term?

Thinking Activity

Thinking Activity: Cultural Studies 

 This blog is response of my thinking Activity. In this blog, l have discussed the importants of media and power .

What is Cultural Studies:

Cultural studies, interdisciplinary field concerned with the role of social institutions in the shaping of culture. It is nearly impossible to define Cultural Studies in definite terms. It is difficult because the concept of Culture itself has been made ambiguous. The pendulum of the definition of Culture ranges from Matthew Arnold's idea of "perfecting what was best thought and said" on one extreme to Raymond Williams and the likes of poststructuralist who would love to define it as "everyday life as really lived by one and all, including common-men".The second problem with Cultural Studies is its scope of study. As it aims to transcend all disciplines and breaks the difference between the high and the low, the elite and the popular culture, it encompasses almost everything under its umbrella. This makes it confusing and the student / teacher with lesser ability to dig deeper in the artefacts to connect it with the 'discourse', sometimes, fails Cultural Studies.

1, your understanding of Power in Cultural Studies (you can write about Michel Foucault's 'Knowledge and Power' also)

Ans, Michel Foucault, the French postmodernist, has been hugely influential in shaping understandings of power, leading away from the analysis of actors who use power as an instrument of coercion, and even away from the discreet structures in which those actors operate, toward the idea that ‘power is everywhere’, diffused and embodied in discourse, knowledge and ‘regimes of truth.Foucault uses the term ‘power/knowledge’ to signify that power is constituted through accepted forms of knowledge, scientific understanding and ‘truth’: ‘Truth is a thing of this world: it is produced only by virtue of multiple forms of constraint. And it induces regular effects of power. 

Power is the ability to make others do what would have then do.

There are six main sources of civil power:

    

1.Physical Force:

Physical force is a kind of group and community of people. Which we find in the army and police of any country. Which is given a special power. Which also frightens people.

2, wealth:

Money creates the ability to buy results and to buy almost any other kind of power.

3, State Action:

This is the use of law and bureaucracy to compel people to do or not do certain things. In a democracy, for example, we the people, theoretically, give government its power through elections.

4, Social Norms:

Norms don't have the centralized machinery of government. They operate in a softer way, peer to peer. They can certainly make people change behavior and even change laws. Think about how norms around marriage equality today are evolving.

5, Ideas:

An idea, individual liberties, say, or racial equality, can generate boundless amounts of power if it motivates enough people to change their thinking and actions

6, Numbers:

The sixth source of power is numbers, lots of humans.A vocal mass of people creates power by expressing collective intensity of interest and by asserting legitimacy.

 There are three laws of Power:-

1, Power is never static:

power is never static. It's always either accumulating or decaying in a civic arena. So if you aren't taking action, you're being acted upon.

2,Power is like water:

power is like water.It flows like a current through everyday life.Politics is the work of harnessing that flow in a direction you prefer. Policymaking is an effort to freeze and perpetuate a particular flow of power.

3,Power compounds:

Power begets more power, and so does powerlessness. The only thing that keeps law number three from leading to a situation where only one person has all the power is how we apply laws one and two.What rules do we set up so that a few people don't accumulate too much power,and so that they can't enshrine their privilege in policy? That's the question of democracy,

2,Why Media Studies is so important in our digital culture? 

Ans, The Media and Cultural Studies (MCS) program emphasizes the study of media in their historical, economic, social, and political context. We examine the cultural forms created and disseminated by media industries and the ways in which they resonate in everyday life, on the individual, national, and global level. Focusing primarily on sound and screen media — television, new media, film, popular music, radio, video games — but reaching out across boundaries, MCS encourages interdisciplinary and transmedia research. 

 Instead, Chomsky argues in Manufacturing Consent—his 1988 critique of “the political economy of the mass media” with Edward S. Herman—that the mass media sells us the idea that we have political agency. Their “primary function… in the United States is to mobilize support for the special interests that dominate the government and the private sector.” Those interests may have changed or evolved quite a bit since 1988, but the mechanisms of what Chomsky and Herman identify as “effective and powerful ideological institutions that carry out a system-supportive propaganda function” might work in the age of Twitter just as they did in one dominated by network and cable news.

Those mechanisms largely divide into what the authors called the “Five Filters.” 

1. Media Ownership :

The endgame of all mass media orgs is profit. “It is in their interest to push for whatever guarantees that profit.”

2. Advertising:

Media costs more than consumers will pay: Advertisers fill the gap. What do advertisers pay for? Access to audiences. “It isn’t just that the media is selling you a product. They’re also selling advertisers a product: you.”

3. Media Elite:

“Journalism cannot be a check on power, because the very system encourages complicity. Governments, corporations, and big institutions know how to influence the media. They feed it scoops and interviews with supposed experts. They make themselves crucial to the process of journalism. If you want to challenge power, you’ll be pushed to the margins…. You won’t be getting in. You’ll have lost your access.”

4. Flack:

“When the story is inconvenient for the powers that be, you’ll see the flack machine in action: discrediting sources, trashing stories, and diverting the conversation.”

5. The Common Enemy:

“To manufacture consent, you need an enemy, a target: Communism, terrorists, immigrants… a boogeyman to fear helps corral public opinion.” 

Chomsky and Herman’s book offers a surgical analysis of the ways corporate mass media “manufactures consent” for a status quo the majority of people do not actually want. Yet for all of the recent agonizing over mass media failure and complicity, we don’t often hear references to Manufacturing Consent these days.

3, Who can be considered as "truly educated person? 

Ans, word as expression of inbuilt perfection of oneself. Similarly, according to Aristotle education is “the creation of a sound mind in a sound body”

Thus, a person may be considered to be educated if he develops his knowledge and skills in such a way which ultimately results into his positive contribution in community life. Acquiring knowledge and using it for the happiness and goodness of the society really makes a person educated. It is because of this reason that knowledge acquired through education is essential for any prosperous society.