Post-Structuralism:
Deconstruction
Theory and Practice
Outline
-- Q & A
-- Jacque Derrida:
1. Prologue: Instability of Meaning
2. Writing as Différance
3. Transcendental Signified and
Binarism
4. Deconstruction: Literary Practice
5. Derrida in Context: structuralism,
Foucault, etc.
Assignments
Q&A
1. What is Différance? What is
Transcendental Signified?
2. How is Western Metaphysics
challenged?
3. How do we do deconstruction
in literary criticism? Is
deconstruction similar to
destruction?
Q&A
Is deconstruction similar to
destruction?
Literary Deconstruction:
--show the hidden gaps in a text’s
meaning.
Textual unity
-- Reverse the “hierarchical”
binaries, and allow the latter to
supplement the formers.
-- de-stabilize, de-center, but not
destroy.
Which of the following
statements are not ambiguous?
• I am 40 years old.
• The Republic of China was born on
Oct. 10, 1911.
• I love you till the end of the world.
• The experience of the earthquake
yesterday was quite uncanny.
Which of the following
statements are not ambiguous?
• I am 40 years old.  Who is this
“I”?
• The Republic of China was born
on Oct. 10, 1911.  born?
• I love you till the end of the world
(Apocalypse Now
 love?
Paradigmatic/Selection:
Language/Literature as an enclosed system
with two Axes
Syntagmatic/Combination
(narrative structure:
roles + actions);
metonymy
Thematic structure:
Motifs, mythemes,
metaphors, etc.
中國人生性刻苦耐勞。
+ more stereotypical
descriptions, or a father’s
advice to his son, etc.
Paradigmatic/Selection:
Language/Literature as an enclosed system
with two Axes
Syntagmatic/Combination
－中國人﹐華人
Chinaman
－刻苦耐勞／現實
／斤斤計較／不懂
得人生樂趣
Why is language ambiguous?
•
Why are meanings undecidable &
slippery?
1. Polysemy: Traces of other signs, other
meanings. (e.g. national “birthday”;;
the uncanny)
2. Multiple Context; Reference
Undecidable. (e.g. “The end of the
world” )
3. Meaning is not “present” in language;
it happens “in between” signifiers.
4. (intention and the unconscious)
Freud’s “the Uncanny”
• = unheimlich, both “homely” and
“unhomely”; or both familiar and
strange.
• According to Freud's description, the
uncanny "derives its terror not from
something externally alien or unknown
but--on the contrary--from something
strangely familiar which defeats our
efforts to separate ourselves from it"
(Morris; source).
• e.g. the Gothic tradition, nightmare,
castration fear.
“Spacing”-• Movement from one Signifier to another
-- polysemy: cultural connotations of
-- spacing: Meaning changed when the
context is further revealed.
Comic effects: old traces vs. newly
defined meanings.
 The traces of the old meanings are
both present and absent.
Writing and Différance
Language a system of difference  of
Différance.
* While structualists had treated binary
oppositions as stable terms in a formal
structure, Derrida sees them as
organized in unstable disequilibrium.
 because of the presence/absence of
traces
* Derrida sees the signified’s also in a
relation of difference, and they are
turned into signifiers floating
signifiers.
(Textbook: p. 123; 28)
Writing and Différance (2)
Différance:
• To differ;
A sign is defined by its binary
opposition to another sign.
2. To defer.
The signifier (black) that is
distinguished from the other one
(white) is not completely erased; it
is only deferred, bracketed or
merely “put under erasure.” It
can subvert the fixed meaning of
the sign.
Writing and Différance
The chain of signification:
(1) symbolization or mythologizing
Signifier 1
(rose)
Signified 1
(flower)
Signified 2 Signified2
(rose=love)
(love)
Signified 3
(rose=
woman in
love)
Signified 4
(rose = weak,
vain &
dependent
woman in
love)
Writing and Différance: chain of
signification (1)
1.
Signifier
Signified 2
Asian People
Signified 3
Yellow
Other Skin colors
White Americans
Exotic (Evil or Weak)
Other Racial Features
What they did
White
The other Americans
White Man’s Burden
Innocent, Strong
and Civilized
Manifest Destiny
God
Writing and Différance: Chain
of Signification (2)
Re-contextualization; traces kept. e.g.
1. Pharmakon: 1). poison,
2). Pharmacy
2. 〈幌馬車之歌〉;吹皺一池春水
3. Creole; “Madame Butterfly” in M.
Butterfly and in the characters of Song
first and then Gallimard; the other
parodies.
Question
• Do you agree that meaning is
always uncertain and slippery?
What does Derrida’s views of
language shed light on our
communication?
The Transcendental Signified
and Binaries
1. The “unmoved mover” e.g.
God (transcendental signified)
The Bible (transcendental signifier)
1. (Textbook: p. 124) source/closure of
meaning and center of existence.
e.g. being, unity, truth, the good,
reason, progress, identity,
continuity, meaning, subjectivity,
authenticity, etc. = foundations
The Transcendental Signified
and Binaries
They are the upper terms in hierarchical
binaries: e.g.
Man
Light Reason
Culture
Woman Dark- Emotion Nature
ness
The
Public;
West,
etc.
The
Private;
East, etc.
Critique of Metaphysics: logocentrism,
& phallogocentrism
• Traditional binaries are hierarchical.
Should be reversed or questioned.
• Logocentrism: Logo as center,
source, or founding presence of
knowledge and human beings.
• Phallogocentrism: Man/Woman=
sun/moon, reason/emotion,
Subject/Object, etc.
Ways of Questioning the
Hierarchical Binaries
1. The two terms are actually
mutually determinant. e.g.
The West has to define itself
by having/rejecting an “Other”
which is different.
2. The weak term is not really
weak.
3. Mutually implicated: One term
implies its opposite term.
examples
Deconstruction: practices
(textbook p. 131)
1. Open texts  A text that deconstructs
its own unity or “author.” (examples;
also M. Butterfly, its ending)
2. Reverse the text’s binaries or expose
its undecidability or multiple meanings
(example M. Butterfly  Madame Butterfly;
another);
3. Study the process of signification of a
sign or a text and find out what it tries
to erase. (e.g. Scarlet Letter; Barthesian
studies of commercials)
Deconstruction: practices (2)
4. Find where the text differs from itself.
(critical difference) ambiguity and
undecidability (example)
5. Radical contextualization  to find
out its intertextual references and
thus undecidability of meanings.
Reasons for the Disappearance of
the river:
-- My departure; growth
-- The cartographer; urban
development
-- The river itself;  Nature is
betrayed and then changes itself;
-- “Nobody’s fault.”
The original hierarchy subverted by
the last line
RiverChildhoodpersonified
RiverMapped;
unchanged
I?
My growth; I Human error; Childhood’s
Urban
memory?
development
wrong
Deconstruction of
Binary Opposition: Example
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn Society
vs. Nature, with Huck in between
H:“Then I’ll go "light out
to hell.”
for the
Territory"
H:
"born again"
as Tom ; use
Society doubt
T’s intricate
(towns) and
practical plan to rescue
jokes
Jim
Nature
(River)
Jim
Undecidability: example 1
Billy Budd: Billy Budd (a young sailor),
Claggart (master-at-arms), Vere (the captain).
A. Billy Budd
innocent) vs.
Claggart (evil)
Vere responsible
and just 
Allows an innocent
man to be hanged.
B. Claggart
accuses B of
planning mutiny.
 B’s blow
B killer vs.
C victim
Undecidability: example 2
A slumber did my spirit seal;
I had no human fears:
She seemed a thing that could not feel
The touch of earthly years.
<Gap>
No motion has she now, no force;
She neither hears nor sees;
Rolled round in earth's diurnal course,
With rocks, and stones, and trees.
(William Wordsworth )
Undecidability: example 2
“A slumber
did my spirit seal” -Contradictions between
present
past
death
life
the cosmic
the human
peacefulness
fear
and regularity
Gap: What happened in between the
present and the past?
Whose peacefulness is it? Whose death
and when?
Derridian Deconstruction
in Context
1. Anti-Foundationalist & de-centering;
2. Like New Critics, deconstructionists
read closely to find out the
contradictions and gaps in a text,
but without reconstructing them
back to a unity.
3. Like Foucault, D thinks that we are
in language and are conditioned by
its structure, polysemy and fluidity.
Derridian Deconstruction
in Context (2)
4. Other usages of “différance”:
desired object in unattainable,
constantly deferred and
replaced; colonial mimicry
disseminate/de-center colonial
authority.
5. “différance” and temporary
closure.
Assignments
1. "The Blind Man"
2. Review “The Purloined Letter”
3. Review the whole unit and
bring with you at least one
question.