Derrida’s structure, sign & play

Assignment

Derrida’s structure, sign & play

Vanita P. Tadha

MA Sem: 2        Roll No. : 30

Year: 2014-15        Enrolment No. : pg14101029

Sub: Literary Theory & Criticism (paper: 7)

Email ID: tadhavanita90@gmail.com

Guided By: Department of English [Dr.Dilip Barad]

Derrida’s structure, sign & play

Introduction

“Structure, sing and play in the discourse of Human science (1966)” at the John Hopkins International Colloquium on “The Language of Criticism and the Science of Man” in October 1966 articulating for the first time a post structuralist theoretical paradigm.

Derrida wrote “Structure, Sing and Play” to present at a conference in Baltimore at John Hopkins University in 1966. He wrote it very quickly (it took him 15 days) and as a result it presents an almost the previous seven years of philosophical activity.

The conference was described by Richard Mackey and Eugenio Donata to be “the first time in United States when structuralism had been thought of as an interdisciplinary phenomenon”. Derrida begins the essay by referring to ‘an event’ which has ‘perhas’ occurred in the history of the concept of structure. He described distinction between what are called “classical” or “classic” ways of thinking, and on the other hand “post structuralist” ways of thinking.

In his essay he (Derrida) describes the idea of free play, which is a decentering of systems within the systems themselves. Center of system means limitation, yet this centering of systems, designed to give coherence to the system because it is force of desire, not by any fundamental principle. The basis of a structure comprise of historic patterns and repetition that can be observed through historical records. The moment of substitutions which Derrida called “rupture”, is the moment when the pattern or repetition reasserts itself through decentering and re-centering the structure, an example of freeplay disrupting history.

The three major critiques of de-centering use the language of metaphysics to breakdown / critique / deconstruct the principle of metaphysics itself. This paradox is relevant as it applies to the dislocation of culture, where historically, philosophically economically, politically, etc.  The development of concepts births their opposing sides.

Derrida then moves into the discussion of Levi; Strauss bricolage – the necessity of borrowing concept from other texts. This bricolage leads to the idea of myth, and while it is assumed that all myths have an engineering that creates concepts “out of whole cloth” the idea of the engineer is impossible since it would mean that a system is created from concepts from outside the system.

Bricolage is not just an intellectual concept, it is also mythopoetical. Yet for a myth – based concept it seems to command respect as an absolute source. Myth has no author, therefore determining that it illusion, which brings up the questions: does this principle also apply to other field of discourse?

Derrida suggest that to go beyond philosophy it has to be read in “a certain way”, not assume there is something beyond it. It informs the language and information base we have to center our systems around, menaces scientific discourse by constantly challenging it, yet it is based in scientific discourse. Paradoxically, structuralism – the school of critique that emphasizes a system of binaries – claims to critique empiricism, and Derrida points out that Levi –Strauss’ books and essays are all empirical stuff that can challenge as the concept of science calls for the concept of history, as history records information / data and enables science to have a center for reference in empirical principles.

Derrida next considers the theme of decentering with respect to French structuralist Levi – Strauss’s ethnology.

Deconstruction

A post – structuralist term referring to the new way texts are read and interpreted. It is a view of literature derived from Jacques Derrida’s theory of writing and the linguistics of Saussure. Traditional interpretation of author and suppressed the kind of subjectivity, which is often interfered with it. Traditional interpretation also assumed that it is possible to get at the meaning of the text because it is universal.

This is based on a language philosophy which stress the relativity of meaning in as much as ‘language is a system of differences without positive terms.’

It was Saussure who showed that signs differ from each other and they become meaningful through their difference which often taken the form of opposition.

 For ex: The red is a traffic signal it means stop while green means go. The connection between the signifier red and the signified stop is arbitrary, conventional; It is defined not by its essential properties but by the difference that distinguishes it from green or other signs.

This feature made Saussure describe language as a system of difference without any positive terms.

This interdependence leads Derrida to the hypothesis that we cannot say what any sign means without reference to its relation to other signs. In other words signifiers differ from each other and from what they signify. The differences that make them meaningful keep them from meaning anything definite. He employs terms like trace / difference / differance/ supplement to explain this interminacy or play. He also shows by the same logic that logocentrism or phonocentrism or ‘privileging’ speech over writing has no validity.

Deconstructive criticism in practice derives from this notion of the infinite regress of signifiers: and the acceptance of interminacy of meaning or freeplay. The critic or the interpreter ‘dismantles’ analyses, turns something unified back into detached fragments or part and reassembles them. He coauthors the text; constructs in a different from what he has deconstructed. Deconstructive readings show scant respect for the wholeness or integrity of individual works. He concentrates on parts relating them to material of diverse sort and may not even consider the relation of any part to the whole.

Stanley Fish does not call himself a deconstructionist but when he says ‘no reading however outlandish it might appear is inherently an impossible one’ he talks like a deconstructionist. Interpretive strategy can make noticeable what is noticed. But he sets a limit to indeterminacy by binging in the interpretive community.

Miller accepts the omnipotence of language and defuses criticism as ‘a human activity which depends for its validity on never being at ease within a fixed method’. It must constantly put its own grounds in question.

Paul de man is concerned with the inexorable working of language, while Bloom would examine the relation of a text to its precursor text.

It is interesting to contrast this skeptical language philosophy with the one which we, in India, know. We had our own skeptical and atheistic philosopher who held the same vie as Derrida. But a more ancient philosophy which accepted ‘presence’ ‘Truth’ and ‘Meaning’ while granting the impossibility or embodying it in human language except negative (neti – Not this) – by mind or by logic – still maintained the importance of Vok, as capable of expressing the truth. There is a verse which says:

‘Speech is measured out in four steps. The Brahmins who have the understanding (the wise who have the knowledge of the Mantras), Three do not move, only the speech in the fourth step, Vakbari (the last from above) me speak.’

An ‘event’ has occurred     

The ‘event’ involves changes in structuralism, structure, and particular “the struclurality of structure”, which has hitherto been limited, writes Derrida through the process of being assigned a stabilizing “center”. The “center” is that element of a structure which appears given or fixed, thereby anchoring the rest of the structure all allowing it to play.

The ‘event’ under discussion is the opening of the structure, which became inevitable “when the struclurality of structure had to being to be thought” and the contradictory role of the center expose. The result of the event, according to Derrida must be the full version of structural “freeplay”, a mode in which all terms are truly subject to the openness and mutability promised by structuralism.

Reciprocal destroyers

Derrida depicts Nietzsche, Freud, and Heidegger, three of his greatest influence, as ultimately trapped within a destructive spiral of denunciation. Nietzsche questioned the power of representation and concepts to really convey truth; Freud challenged the idea that mind was limited to consciousness; and Heidegger criticized the idea of “being as presence”. Derrida argues that these theoretical moves share a command.

Levi – Strauss

Having described a pattern – denouncing metaphysics, Derrida suggests consideration of the same pattern within the “human science”, whose subjection to the “critique of ethnocentrism” parallels the “destruction of the history of metaphysics” in philosophy. He concerns “the opposition between nature and culture”, as his case study and primary focus for the essay.

Bricolage

Derrida highlights Levi – Strauss’s use of the term bricolage, the activity of a bricoleur. Bricolage becomes a metaphor for philosophical and literary critiques exemplifying Derrida’s previous argument about the necessity of using the language available. The bricoleur’s foil is the engineer, who creates out of whole cloth without the need for bricolage – however, the engineer is merely a myth since all physical and intellectual production is really bricolage.

Structure and myth

Derrida praises Levi – Strauss for his insight into the complexities, limitations, and circularities of examining ‘a culture’ from the outside in Oder to classify its mythological systems. In particular he praises Levi – Strauss’s recognition that a mythological system cannot be studied as though it was

some finite portion of physical reality to be scientifically divided and conquered. Derrida quotes Levi – Strauss explicitly describes a limit to tantalization.

Conclusion

Thus, Derrida still remain ambiguous and interesting face in literary theory. He suggests that to go beyond philosophy, it has to be read I “a certain way” not assume there is something beyond it. We cannot say what any sing means without reference to its relations to other signs. He employs term like trace / difference / differance / supplement to explain this indeterminacy or play. He also shows by the same logic that logocentrism or phonocentrism or ‘privileging speech over writing has no validity. Stanley Fish, Miller and Paul de man also gives their view to prove the idea of deconstruction.