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.
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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
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