Post-Structuralism &
Postmodern Texts
1.
Post-Structuralism Defined &
Marxism vs. Post-Structuralism
2. Fiction and Reality
3. Deconstruction
4. Subject and Power
Major Concepts of Derrida’s
Deconstruction Theory
1.
2.
3.
language as a system of difference, the
transcendental signified
Critique of Metaphysics: logocentrism,
phonocentrism, phalogocentrism
Deconstruction: practices
Writing and Différance
1.
1.
binary opposition and supplement
*While structualists had treated binary
oppositions as stable terms in a formal
structure, Derrida sees them as
organized in unstable disequilibrium.
Différance: 1. To defer, 2. To differ
Writing and Différance
Two chains of signification: 1. symbolization
Signified 1

Signifier  Signified 2 Signified 2
Signifier  Signified 3
Writing and Différance: an
Example
1.
Signified 1
Signified 2
African People
Signified 3
Black
Other Skin colors
White Americans
Evil and dirty
Other Racial Features
What they did
White
The other Americans
Innocence
Manifest Destiny
American Innocence
God
Writing and Différance
Two chains of signification:
2. Re-contextualization; traces kept.
e.g. 1. Pharmakon: 1). poison,
2). Pharmacy
2. Creole: 1). Native, local,”pure”;
2). Native-born whites;
3). Hybrid
3.《悲情城市》中的 〈幌馬車之歌〉
Questions
1.
2.
3.
1.
What is Transcendental Signified?
What is presence?
What the first step of deconstruction?
(Textbook: p. 124) source of meaning and
center of existence. e.g. being, unity, truth, the
good, reason, progress, identity, continuity,
meaning, subjectivity, authenticity, etc.
Questions & Answers
2.
3.
What is presence?
What the first step of deconstruction?
2. (p. 126) Opposite to absence; presence of god,
of meaning, essence, etc.; implies fixed and
domineering presence.
3. Reverse the “hierarchical” binary of
presence/absence, speech/writing, and allow
the latters to supplement the formers.
(examples later.)
Critique of Metaphysics: logocentrism,
phonocentrism, phallogocentrism

Traditional binaries are hierarchical.
Should be reversed.

Logocentrism: Logo as center, source, or founding

presence of knowledge and human beings.
Phonocentrism: In the speech/writing binary, speech
is supposed to signal presence of the speaker.

Phallogocentrism: Man/Woman=
sun/moon,
reason/emotion, Subject/Object, etc.
Deconstruction: practices
(p. 131)
1.
Open texts  A text that deconstructs its unity
or author.
2.
Reverse the text’s binaries or expose its
undecidability or multiple meanings (131);
3.
Study the process of signification of a sign or a
text and find out what it tries to erase.
4.
Find where the text differs from itself. (critical
difference ambiguity and undecidability)
5.
Radical contextualization  to find out its
intertextual references and thus undecidability
of meanings.
Deconstruction: practices (2)
2. Reverse the text’s binaries or expose its
undecidability or multiple meanings (131)
e.g. “Araby” –
Man
Religious Quest
?
------ 
----- -----Woman Object of Quest Bazaar & Money/Vanity
Refuse to be understood, critical, “That’s a fib”
Deconstruction: practices (3)
2. Study the process of signification of a
sign or a text and find out what it tries to
erase.
e.g. The Scarlet Letter, “I Wandered Lonely
as a Cloud”
Deconstruction: practices (3)
process of signification in “The Purloined Letter”
Letter – 信﹐字母﹐The Letter as a Floating
Signifier. A pure signifier or the Phallus
Scene 1
[the blind]
Scene 2
The King The
Queen
[the
The
complacent Queen
seer]
[the robber] The
Minister
Scene 3
The
Minister
The
Minister
Dupin
Dupin
Lacan
Deconstruction: practices (4)
2. Find where the text differs from itself.
(critical difference ambiguity and
undecidability
e.g. “The Winter Palace” “One Art”
The Winter Palace
Philip Larkin
Most people know more as they get older:
I give all that the cold shoulder.
I spent my second quarter-century
Losing what I had learnt at university
And refusing to take in what had happened since.
Now I know none of the names in the public prints,
The Winter Palace (2)
Philip Larkin
And am starting to give offence by forgetting faces
And swearing I've never been in certain places.
It will be worth it, if in the end I manage
To blank out whatever it is that is doing the damage.
Then there will be nothing I know
My mind will fold into itself, like fields, like snow.