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Post-structuralism I Jacques Derrida

Prof. Dr. Philipp Schweighauser

Jacques Derrida
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Structure of This Lecture

1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. Post-structuralism & Deconstruction Jacques Derridas Central Texts Derrida on Language From Saussure to Derrida: Diffrance Derrida vs. The Metaphysics of Presence Deconstruction Deconstruction & Literature The Politics of Deconstruction
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1. Post-structuralism & Deconstruction

post-structuralism is a European-based theoretical movement that departs from and radicalizes structuralist methods of analysis Jacques Lacan (psychoanalysis) Michel Foucault (history) Derrida (philosophy) deconstruction is a U.S.-based method of literary and cultural analysis influenced by the work of Jacques Derrida J. Hillis Miller Geoffrey Hartman Paul De Man Barbara Johnson

2. Jacques Derridas Central Texts

Three Early Classics Of Grammatology (1967) Speech and Phenomena (1967) Writing and Difference (1967) Further Interests: Politics, Literature, Ethics Spectres of Marx (1993) Acts of Literature (1992) Of Hospitality (1997) Two Entry Points Structure, Sign, and Play in the Discourse of the Human Sciences (1966) [also in Writing and Difference] Signature, Event, Context (1977)
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3. Derrida on Language
language is not a vehicle for the communication of thoughts an instrument or tool in mans hands (J. Hillis Miller) a transparent window onto the world

Derrida on Language
language is unreliable differential e.g. novelnovellashort story performative: it constructs the world and us

archi-criture
writing as the model for all language no immediacy context-independence openness: text (vs. Book)

there is nothing outside of the text

we can never get access to the world through language cf. Fredric Jameson: the prison-house of language language constructs the world textuality of the world (note: very broad notion of text)

4. From Saussure to Derrida: Diffrance

Saussure: signs are differential yelloworangered

in language there are no positive terms, only differences (Ferdinand de Saussure, Course in General Linguistics) 10

Derrida on Diffrance
language characterized by diffrance to differ to defer (postpone, delay) we always remain at the level of signifiers the trace e.g. Blackness and the white supremacist

5. Derrida vs. The Metaphysics of Presence

DEF 1: metaphysics of presence = belief in a fixed reference point outside of language to which we owe respect: God, Man, Truth, Reality DEF 2: metaphysics of presence = belief in a transcendental signified (God, Man, Truth, Reality) transcendental signified = fixed reference point / concept / presence that exists outside of (transcends) language grounds language legitimates whole systems of thought can be made present by language e.g. God as transcendental signified

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More Examples of Transcendental Signifieds

Man as transcendental signified (Enlightenment) reference to the people in U.S. Constitution: We the people of the United States, in order to form a more perfect union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America Telos / goal / end as transcendental signified (F. W. Hegels and Francis Fukuyamas accounts of history) Hegel: 19th century bourgeois society as telos of history Fukuyama: liberal Westen democracies as telos of history

Derrida vs. logocentrism

logos = the word by which the inward thought is expressed, reason itself logocentrism = belief that language is grounded by a fixed reference point outside language whose truth or meaning language conveys logocentrism in the Bible: In the beginning was the Word [logos], and the Word was with God, and the Word was God [...] And the Word was made flesh and dwelt among us. (John I: 1, 14)
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Derrida vs. phonocentrism

phonocentrism = the privileging of speech over writing Saussure: speech possesses greater immediacy than writing phonocentrism as a specific instance of logocentrism

Decentering
critique of logocentrism as one instance of decentering religion, Western philosophy, structuralism, and teleological historiography need a center: It would be possible to show that all the names related to fundamentals, to principles, or to the center have alwavs designated the constant of a presence--eidos, arch, telos, energeia, ousia (essence, existence, substance, subject) aletheia, transcendentality, consciousness, or conscience, God, man, and so forth. (Derrida, "Structure") Derrida: there is no center but only an endless play of differences
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6. Deconstruction
Q: What does deconstruction deconstruct? A: Binary oppositions / dichotomies e.g. nature vs. culture e.g. woman vs. man e.g. believer vs. heathen Q: What is wrong with dichotomies? A1: hierarchy A2: exclusion A3: reduction of complexity

2 Forms of Deconstruction
1. deconstruction of binary opposites / dichotomies. 2 steps: a) reversal of hierarchy: women > men b) undoing of binary system: (wo)men

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2 Forms of Deconstruction
2. self-deconstruction of texts e.g. Rousseaus retour a la nature: nature vs. culture speech vs. writing e.g. Austin: parasitic vs. normal performative constative (Sylvia married Frank) vs. performative (I do) (I hereby promise...) Austin: performatives on stage as parasitic (wrong context; speakers intention absent) Derrida: all performatives must function in completely different contexts and irrespective of the speakers intention

Aporia
aporia = an impasse, a textual knot, a passage that cannot be explained by means of the concepts and distinctions of that text e.g. the incest prohibition in Lvi-Strausss Tristes Tropiques

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Deconstructing Thoreaus Walden

Thoreau seeks to lead a simple life and get to the root of things:
I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived. I did not wish to live what was not life, living is so dear; nor did I wish to practise resignation, unless it was quite necessary. I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life, to live so sturdily and Spartan-like as to put to rout all that was not life, to cut a broad swath and shave close, to drive life into a corner, and reduce it to its lowest terms [...] Simplicity, simplicity, simplicity! I say, let your affairs be as two or three, and not a hundred or a thousand. (Henry David Thoreau, Walden)

Deconstructing Thoreaus Walden

If the engine whistles, let it whistle till it is hoarse for its pains. If the bell rings, why should we run? We will consider what kind of music they are like. Let us settle ourselves, and work and wedge our feet downward through the mud and slush of opinion, and prejudice, and tradition, and delusion, and appearance, that alluvion which covers the globe, through Paris and London, through New York and Boston and Concord, through church and state, through poetry and philosophy and religion, till we come to a hard bottom and rocks in place, which we can call reality, and say, This is, and no mistake; and then begin (Henry David Thoreau, Walden)

Thoreau privileges nature over culture

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Deconstructing Thoreaus Walden

Thoreaus binary oppositions: nature reality
aporia:

Deconstructing Sophie Jewetts Entre Nous (1882)

I talk with you of foolish things and wise, Of persons, places, books, desires and aims, Yet all our words a silence underlies, an earnest, vivid thought that neither names. Ah! what to us were foolish talk or wise? Were persons, places, books, desires or aims, Without the deeper sense that underlies, The sweet encircling thought that neither names?
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vs. vs.

culture appearance

the mud and slush of opinion, and prejudice, and tradition, and delusion, and appearance

7. Deconstruction & Literature

literature is, like language, not referential literature can be read and enjoyed without reference to context (authors life, time, etc.) literature in its fictionality escapes logocentrism literature plays with language rather than communicating a definite meaning in literature, aporias, discrepancies and contradictions are the norm some literature problematizes its own status and so invites deconstruction
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A Deconstructive Reading of The Scarlet Letter

Chillingworth = The husband of the adulteress Hester Prynne, who returns to the Puritan community to find out who the father of his wifes child is. He is a physician who attends to the needs of the sickly priest Arthur Dimmesdale, whom he suspects to be the father of the child. Hawthornes treatment of Chillingworth sharply illustrates the narratives general inclination to withhold or unsettle all the bases for absolute moral, social, or ontological judgments. As he first appears, Chillingworth is a classic outsider: old, deformed, oddly dressed, unnaturally intelligent []. Soon, however, he has become an agent of social power and justice. [] On his moral function and ontological status Hawthorne provides conflicting indications. [] The narrator, on the one hand, tends to encourage the reader to view Chillingworth as a demon, a devil, the Black Man, but deftly undercuts such a view each time it seems on the verge of confirmation. (Evan Carton, The Rhetoric of American Romance)

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Pair Work: Chillingworth

passage: Hawthorne, The Scarlet Letter, chapter 9 (The Leech), 4th paragraph (Such was the young clergymans condition...) Q1: what words or phrases are used to categorize Chillingworth as good evil Q3: What or who is the transcendental signified that could guarantee the good-evil distinction? Q4: Does this passage support Cartons argument?
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8. The Politics of Deconstruction

deconstruction apolitical? again: what is wrong with dichotomies? Political uses of deconstruction: Postcolonial Theory colonizer/colonized rational/irrational master/servant culture/nature Feminism man/woman active/passive reason/feeling sun/moon competitive/cooperative
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