Derrida's Theory of Deconstruction

DERRIDA’S THEORY of Deconstruction

Brief Biography
Jacques Derrida was born in 1930 as the son of Aime and George Derrida, a Jewish family in El-Priar, Algeria. Derrida began emerging in the late 1960s as an increasing influential figure across a wide range of fields, including philosophy, literary theory, architecture and its theory, and art and its theory.


“In 1966, Jacques Derrida gave a lecture at Johns Hopkins University that cast the entire history of western philosophy in doubt. The following year Derrida published three brilliant but mystifying books that convinced the pollsters that he was the most important philosopher at the late 20th century. Unfortunately, no body was sure whether the intellectual movement he spawned -Deconstruction -advanced philosophy or murdered it.

The truth? Derrida is one of those annoying geniuses you can take a class on, read a half a dozen books by and still have no idea what he is talking about. Derrida’s writing confusing doesn’t begin to describe it. (Its like he is pulling rug out from under the rug that he pulled out from under philosophy. But beneath the confusion, like the heartbeat at a bird in your hand, you can feel Derrida’s electrical genius. It draws you to it. You want to understand it but it’s so confusing.”
(From the back cover page, ‘Derrida, for beginners’).

Introduction
Deconstruction is considered to be the part of post structuralism. Now, post structuralism is the movement that derived its name from structuralism. ‘Post’ means ‘after’. So, it is apparent that it was a break away from ‘Structuralism’. Though it carried certain ideas and issues from the structuralism, it was an individual movement in itself.

Post structuralism turns certain insights of structuralism against itself and points out to certain fundamental inconsistencies in method, which the structuralists could not correct. Having said this much one realizes that it is difficult to catch post structuralism in any opening statement. What we have said until now is only one way of entering the diffuse and diverse field. Another one is to begin exploring the topic under discussion: Deconstruction. As I said earlier it is one of the main movements within this stream, therefore let’s move on to it.

What is Deconstruction?
Derrida always resisted attempts to reduce deconstruction to a concept definable in terms of method or technique, because it can also be deconstructed by his theory.

Deconstruction has been variously presented as a philosophical position, a political or intellectual stance or just simply as a strategy of reading. As the students of literary theory we should be interested in its power as a mode of reading.

Let us begin here with a simple reading of Derrida describing a general strategy of deconstruction.

“Every philosophical argument is structured in terms of oppositions and in this traditional philosophical opposition we have not a peaceful co-existence of facing terms but a violent hierarchy. One of the terms dominates the other, occupies the commanding position. To deconstruct the opposition is above all, at a particular moment to reverse the hierarchy.”

What Derrida wants to say is:
1) Deconstruction is a searching out or dismantling operation conducted on a discourse to show
2) How the discourse undermines the argument it asserts.
3) One way of doing it is to see how the argument is structured / constructed, that is, investigate its rhetorical status and argumentative strategy. As Derrida argues, this structure is often the product of hierarchy in which two opposed terms are presented as superior and inferior. Deconstruction then pulls the carpet from below the superior by showing the limited basis of its superiority and thus reverses the hierarchy, making, superior, inferior.
4) This reversed hierarchy is again open to the same deconstructive operation. In a way deconstruction is a permanent act of destabilization.

In short it is a way of understanding the structure of a discourse, locating the structure of a discourse, locating its controlling centre and identifying the unfounded assumptions on which it relies to function as discourse.



Let us try to understand deconstruction through Nietzsche’s deconstruction of causality.
Causality is an accepted fact of our life. In our routine life we believe that one event causes another, it means effect is the production of any cause. We give priority to cause in terms of time and reason; it means we think that cause comes before the effect. But Nietzsche says that the principle of causality is not given but a product of rhetorical operation, which effects the chronological reversal.

He says suppose one sits and feels a pain. This leads one to look for a cause and noticing ‘a pin’, discovers the cause for the pain. Actually in the process of explaining we reverse the order and instead of describing the event in ‘pain to pin’ manner, we describe in ‘pin to pain’ manner. It means the principle of causality leads us to substitute the cause for the effect as the originating term.

Now let us see how Nietzsche deconstructs this principle. But it doesn’t means that the principle of causality is faulty, because deconstruction itself relies on it to deconstruct it. The experience of pain causes us to discover the pin and thus causes the production of ‘cause’. Thus deconstruction also reverses the hierarchical opposition of the causal scheme. In normal conditions cause is taken as the origin of the effect and effect is derived at the secondary level and dependent upon the cause. But deconstruction reverses this sequence. If the effect (pain) is the cause for cause (pin) to become a cause, then the effect should be considered as the origin. But we know that the effect cannot be considered as the origin. Now when neither of the two can be taken unproblematically as the origin, then the origin is no longer remains origin and loses its privileged status.
On deconstructing Structuralism
Structuralism, took its cue from Saussurean linguistics, held out the hope of achieving a scientific account of the structure of a wide range of cultural phenomena. Derrida starts opposing structuralism observing that all such analyses are based on some secure ground, a centre that is outside the system under investigation and guarantees its intelligibility. Such a secure ground, for Derrida, is a philosophical fiction, created by the structuralists in the hope of discovering that scientific account. That is to say, there is no fixed or definite structure of myth. One has to decide the idea or centre around which one would want to study the structure of the myth.

To understand this difficult statement let us consider the structure of your ‘pen’. Pen is made up of say, mass of plastic, steel and ink. But these elements will take the shape as ‘a pen’ only when we put them together according to an idea of ‘a pen’. These things can not assume a shape of a pen without any idea that is the structure of a pen.

Therefore, Derrida comments, “How can one perceive an organized whole except by starting with its end or purpose!” and this is the same case with literature. Unless one has postulated a definite meaning for a work one cannot discover its structure, for the structure is that by which the end or that meaning, is made present. A different meaning would entail a different structure. So, the structuralists know the entity in advance, whose structure they are going to analyse. This knowledge is necessary if the structure has to be presented as coherent. And this knowledge is the centre Derrida refers to.

When one speaks of structure of a literary work, one starts with the meanings or effects of the work and tries to identify the structure responsible for those effects. That is to say, an (intuitive) understanding of the work’s meaning, functions as the centre governing its play. If we take this notion to the hierarchy in binary oppositions, the centre would refer to the controlling intent that constructs the hierarchy and ensures that it stays in place.

But to grant any principle, intuitive understanding or primary knowledge, this privileged status is an ideological step. Notions of meaning of the particular work are determined by the facts of the reader’s contingent history and the critical and ideological concepts current at that time.

Therefore the status of such centers came to be seriously questioned “at the moment when theory began to consider the structured nature of structures”, writes Derrida. Implicitly, the statement also claims that structural thought had shown, a blindness towards its controlling ‘centre’ and was deluded that it was discovering structures when it was actually constructing them from the textual matter, under the control of a centre. Post structuralism corrected this blindness of structuralism and opened the possibility of displacing the ‘centre’ during an analysis of the system itself. Though one could not start without an implicit / explicit centre, post structuralism hopes to displace the centre from its role of an unexamined postulate by its rigorous deconstructive analysis. This is commonly referred to as the de-centering of a system. It implies that there is no centre that cannot be replaced by another one, which itself would be equally vulnerable.

Deconstructing Saussurean Linguistics
Langue / Parole: Saussure conceived of language as a stable system and shifted the focus of linguistics from a study of parole to its langue. He postulated the sign theory according to which the word ‘cat’ is ‘cat’ because it is not ‘cap’ or ‘bat’. But how far is one to press this process of difference? ‘Cat’ is also what it is because it is not ‘bat’, ‘mat’ or so on. Where is one supposed to stop? It would seem that this process of difference in language could be traced round infinitely. But if this is so, what has become of Saussure’s idea that language forms a stable system whose langue he was out to study. Saussure’s langue suggested a delimited structure but it appears impossible that in language we can draw a line. In other words langue comes to harbour some of the key characteristics of parole.

Signified/Signifier: In Saussure’s theory of sign these two words play important role. Signified is compared with the meaning or concept of the word and signifier is associated with the material form of the word, that is its look. According Saussure’s theory, the signifier, exists to give access to the already existing signified. But Derrida finds it problematic. That is to say if you want to know the meaning (signified) of a signifier, you look it up in the dictionary but all you find are more signifiers and so on. This process is infinite and circular that is, at a particular point in your search you may end up on the same signifier from which you started. So, every signified is a signifier in itself. So, the concept of signified may be theoretically valid but does not exist in practice. There is not apparent distinction between signified and signifier and for this reason primacy given to Signified is in doubt. And the hierarchy has to be reversed.

An important implication of the earlier argument is that meaning is not immediately present in sign. For this Derrida coined a new word ‘differance’. And says that meaning is not only the product of ‘difference’ but ‘differance.’ It only means that in the production of meaning ‘differance’ implies a process in which the signifier differs as well as continues to differ from infinite number of signifiers, creating a store of meaning by the differences already achieved and anticipating, differences about to be achieved.

Another sense in which meaning is never stable, identical with itself, is that signs must be repeatable and reproducible. In simple words we can say, the meaning of the word changes as its context changes. For ex. ‘A cat drinking milk’ and ‘A cat licking cream’ evoke different ideas in our mind even when we are referring to the same cat.

Yet another aspect contributing the instability of meaning is the concept of trace. Every word has its history, in which it continues to add new meanings as the time passes. Thus, a word instead of giving access to a meaning becomes a “vibratory suspension” of equally likely meanings, which may include incompatible or even contradictory meaning.

Some operative strategies and deconstruction
Derrida finds something wrong with the human mind while operating strategies of philosophy and the sciences. Let’s make Saussure’s view on writing and speech the first site of investigation.
Writing versus Speech
Saussure says, “The object of linguistic analysis is not defined by a combination of written word and spoken word, the spoken word alone constitutes its object”. This is because writing is considered simply as a means of representing speech, a technical device or external accessory that need not be taken into consideration when studying language. Plato is also of the same opinion. He says that separated from the Father or communicative intent, writing can give rise to all sorts of misunderstandings since the speaker is not there to explain to the listener what s/he has in mind.

They further say that though one uses signifiers in speech, there is no danger of corruption, because the words fly away as soon as they are spoken. While this is not the case with writing, because, there may be chances for the alteration of the meaning of the written word. Since writing is durable in nature it can pass through time and place and can be taken in different ways. This is the case which Saussure and others make against the writing.

Derrida opposes this view saying that the disappearance of signifier in speech that creates the impression of direct presence of thought is illusory. However swiftly the spoken word vanishes, it is still a material form, which like the written word works through its differences from other forms. If the vocal signifier is preserved for examination, as in a tape recording, so that we can hear ourselves speak, we find that speech too is a sequence of signifiers, which works through differences. It is precisely this work of difference that the privileging of speech seeks to suppress.
Derrida goes on to show that this view is based on to show that this view is based on a ‘metaphysics of presence’, which originates in the ‘suppression of difference’. This inability to see the differing and deferring nature of meaning leads to the illusion of the presence of meaning behind a word.

Deconstructing Presence
Like Saussure’s privileging of speech over writing, most western philosophy too relies on the metaphysics of presence. Among the familiar concepts that depend on the value of presence are:

· The immediacy of sensation: It is widely accepted that on touching something hot we experience its heat on pre-linguistic plane and then it takes its form of word as ‘hot’. On the contrary, deconstruction would assert that nothing exists on the pre-linguistic plane and the sensation is recognized as ‘hot’ only via language.
· The presence of ultimate truths to divine consciousness: Plato says that the artist is three times removed from divine idea or essence since it copies the idea or reality itself. But deconstruction would show that the essence or idea of a chair is a construct deriving from the carpenter’s or the artist’s creation.

Critiquing Logocentrism
In ancient Greek philosophy, ‘logos’ referred to as cosmic reason, regarded as the source of world order. Derrida says that philosophy has always been centered on reason, which gives validity to all operations, acts as an unexamined center. If we examine the operations of this reason closely, it can be seen to create some ultimate presence, truth or reality to act as an unassailable foundation on which whole discourse can be built. A great number of candidates for this role-God, the Idea, the world spirit, have been thrust from time to time. This unexamined centre then creates a hierarchy, assumes the priority of the first term and conceives the second as a complication, negation or a deficient form of the first. For eg. Religion as discourse relies on the unquestioned primary status of God and arbitrarily devalues man as complication, negation or deficient form of God.

That any such supreme entity is a fiction is one consequence of the deconstructive theory. There is no concept that is not shot with traces and fragments of other ideas. It is just that out of this play of signifiers, certain meanings are elevated by ideologies to a privileged position, around which, other meanings are forced to turn.

child teaching and upbringing

Do we really care for our Children?

“Children are the future of the nation”. This is the most quoted sentence ever when it comes to the speaking on the issue of the upbringing and teaching of the children. But think for while “do we really concerned about the issue and take the above quotation into consideration when we bring up our children?” I think, till now you must have got an idea of what I am going to talk about.

Few days back Amir Khan released his new movie ‘Tare Zamin Par’ which came with the same issue. I think he did the commendable job. He put the mirror before the society and also put the entire system of education in question. He aptly raises the issue that “do we really take the issue, of nurturing and educating the children, in the way it should be taken?” Think for a while what are we doing? The answer may not be in our favour. You may say that we provide our child with every facility that he or she deserve. Do you really think that this is enough for your little ones? Here I would like to quote an example of the scene from the film ‘Tare Zamin Par’.

The father of the child (ISHAN) comes to the boarding school only to show the teacher that as parents, they too care about their child. He said that his wife had explored all the details about their child’s problem on the internet. To this the teacher gives very penetrating reply to the father. He says that is it only enough to cater to the material needs of the child? Have you ever patted the child on his failures and condoled him that it is likely to fail, don’t worry I will be there with you in every failure.

This is very true for many of us. Many of us take their children as something like the weapons or the product and thereby launching them into the battlefield or the market of the world so as to win the glory or profit for us. Actually what we want from them is to achieve what we failed to do in our past. Some of us force these newly arrived eyes on the earth to dream the dreams for us without thinking that they have not started dreaming for themselves, yet. They even don’t know the meaning of their arrival on this strange place, where everyone speaks one thing and does the other. To fail for the child is considered something like the taboo in our society. Actually one should think that when we like to be forgiven even for our biggest mistakes, why should we punish these little wonders on their mistakes that are actually the mechanical part of their learning process? Why don’t we let their process of growing in a natural way? Why do we forget that they are individual beings too?

I know that every one wants to secure the better future for their children. But often when we become too careful, we actually damage their personal thinking. We should try to know what they really want to learn. Then and then we should try to mould them according to what is good for them. To acquire any higher degree is not only the goal of life, if it was so necessary then god already would have provided man with it. Degrees are part of life but many a times in its pursuit we loose the art of the life. Though we see plenty of examples of the successful persons who don’t have any so called degrees, we force our children to go and achieve the degrees that we have selected for them. In this chaos we miss the opportunity to be the witness of the gift/s sent the by the Almighty in the beautiful wrapper that we know as Child.

I would humbly request to all the parents and the teachers all over the world that be the helper and not the sculptor in the process of learning to these un-carved marbles so that they can meet the shape they want to achieve for their life.