“Everyday Use”
Critical Theory: Deconstruction
A brief introduction…
• In order to understand Deconstruction, we
must understand the major points of
Structuralism, which claims…
– Every word/idea only gets its significance from its
relationship to other words/ideas.
– This complex web of relationship creates a stable,
structure that can be described and understood.
Key Ideas from Structuralism that
Will be Important Later
Ferdinand de Saussure’s concepts of sign, signifier, and
signified are at the core of Structuralism and
Deconstruction. These are words Saussure used to
explain how language makes meaning out of abstract
concepts.
• The signified is the concept or idea that a word refers
to.
• The signifier is the word itself.
• The sign is the combination of the two – the word
applied to the concept.
• The study of signs, and how this whole process works,
is called semiotics.
Examples of Signified, Signifier, and
Sign:
• Example 1: “Desk”
– Signified: The concept of a place where people
(possibly students, possibly office workers or
others doing tasks that involve paper or study) sit.
– Signifier: The word “desk.” (The actual sound you
make when you say it, or the written word.)
– Sign: The word “desk” when it is used to refer to
the concept of a place where students/workers sit.
Examples of Signified, Signifier, and
Sign:
• Signs are not always word-idea combinations!
Objects can function as signs, too.
• Example 2: A Box of Chocolates on Valentine’s
Day (Thank you, Donald Hall, for this example).
– Signified: The concept of affection, specifically,
romantic love.
– Signifier: The object: in this case, a physical box of
chocolates.
– Sign: The box of chocolates as an expression of
affection.
What do These Two Examples Tell
Us?
• Signifiers (the words or objects themselves)
are dependent on the concepts they signify
for meaning. Without the concept of
love/affection, the box of chocolates is just
food. Without the concept of a place where
students/workers sit, the word “desk” is just a
nonsense word.
Signs in Relationship to Each Other
• Structuralists believed that “signs are intelligible
through the way they relate to each other” (Hall 136).
In other words, signs can be understood by examining
them in relationship to other related signs.
• The binary was one relationship that Structuralists
explored. A binary is a relationship of opposites that
often depend on each other for meaning.
–
–
–
–
Love/Hate
Hot/Cold
Heaven/Hell
Notice how one half of each of these binaries is “better”?
That is the privileged half of the binary.
So… Why did this make
Structuralists so excited?
• Because signs are everywhere in our daily lives –
our language is built on them, but so is our
artistic and cultural expression.
• Because they thought that if they could just
understand how signs work completely, they
would be able to understand everything about
human existence. This may seem arrogant, but
Saussure really thought that he, and those who
came after him, were feeling their way towards a
“Theory of Everything.”
Deconstruction Rains on Our
Parade a Little…
• Deconstruction is a rejection of some of the central claims of
structuralism.
• Deconstruction claims that the relationship between sign, signifier, and
signified is not stable.
• Going back to our examples of the desk and the box of chocolates…
• One signifier can have a whole range of meanings (it can have more than
one signified with which to make more than one sign). Is a desk always a
place where a student/worker sits? What about a CEO’s desk? What
about the President’s desk? Does a box of chocolates always signify
romantic love? (To “signify” is “to be a signifier of” a concept/idea.)
• Deconstructionist critics believe that we could keep going like this forever
and never arrive at any stable, certain meaning for either of these signs.
Assumptions that Deconstruction
Makes:
• There is no “universal truth” (Derrida called it a
“transcendental signified”) that is waiting to be
discovered within a text, or within a “sign system.” All
a literary critic can do is critique, analyze, and invite
others to critique what he or she has said.
• Relationships between signs exist, and they can even
produce meaning, but neither relationships nor
meaning are ever certain or stable.
• Texts (including works of literature) contain evidence of
this instability and uncertainty if you look close
enough. (Deconstructionist critics tend to be very close
readers.)
What is Deconstruction as a
Literary Theory?
• In terms of literary theory, Deconstruction rejects the
Structuralist idea that any literary work has a stable,
closed meaning, or a “center” around which the rest
of the work revolves.
• Deconstructive critics look at the way that plural,
multiple meanings occur in works of literature, and
how those multiple meanings interact with one
another.
• Deconstructive critics also look for ways in which
either/or readings (usually about pairs of opposites
called binaries) in a given text break down or become
unstable.
What questions might Deconstructive
Critics ask?
• What ideas or characters seem to be in
opposition in this work, and how does the
work avoid privileging (seeming to give
preference to) one of them? In other words,
how does the work create ambiguity?
• What interpretive possibilities are presented
by this ambiguity?
• How do various possible meanings
presented by the text play off of each other?
Questions to Begin Our Discussion
• What ideas/characters
seem to be opposed to
each other in this story?
Where is there conflict
between opposites?
• What similarities do you
notice between this
story and Death of a
Salesman?
When Dee says she wants to take the “dasher,”
that’s the part of the butter churn with a handle.
Examples of the Quilts
Lone Star Quilt
Walk Around the Mountain
Quilt
Questions for “Everyday Use” p. 312
• What are some of the ideas that seem to be in
opposition in this short story?
• Does the text (not the narrator…) “take sides”? Why
or why not?
• How does this story deal with the “everyday use” vs.
“reverence and preservation” binary (remember, a
binary is a pair of opposites)? Does it privilege one
over the other?
• What multiple meanings does this story produce?
• Were there points in the story when your sympathy
was with the narrator? With Wangero/Dee?
• Who should have gotten the quilts? I know who gets
them in the end, but who should have gotten them?
Why?