From Structuralism to PostStructuralism Deconstruction Constructions of Meanings

From Structuralism to Post-Structuralism (Deconstruction) Constructions of Meanings and their Radical Uncertainty

Outline n n Structuralism: A Brief Review (two examples) Poststructuralist Views of Language & Reality n n Deconstruction: Practice: n n n Language (Polysemy) and Reality Jacque Derrida: (1) Différance Jacque Derrida: (2) Transcendental Signified e. g. Wordsworth’s “I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud”; Keats’ “Ode on Melancholy” e. g. “Refusal To Mourn The Death, By Fire, Of A Child “ In London” Derrida in Context; Self-Conscious/Deconstructing Texts Assignments

Key words for Structualist and Semiotic approaches: n n I. Following language as a model II. Disclosing the deep/basic structure of a text, which is a (combination or selection) system of meaning composed of basic elements such as: n n n -- binaries, or semiotic rectangles, -- roles/actant and functions, -- mytheme, -- narrator- narratee, -- signs or signification on different levels (signifier and signified). Roland Barthes’ Semiotics

Semiotics –Some Key Concepts n n n Culture is composed of different languages, or systems of signs; Myth (or connotation) is constructed by emptying out or distorting the signs’ original meanings (denotation); Myth is seductive, and its is apparently natural and innocent.

Examples for analysis: gender & identity TOYOTA-VIOS 1. 6 -目光吸引篇 1. Signs? Objectification of the Woman? 2. Myth vs. Reality?

Two More Examples for analysis: gender & identity TOYOTA-VIOS 1. 6 -目光吸引篇 1. Main idea: “What do you want? ” “Vios, it’s everything. ” 2. Signs: 1) the car: Silver gray colors, in a clean but empty city with glass buildings; easy, fast and smooth driving luxury and power (The whole city is emptied out. ) 2) Objectification of the Woman? A woman larger than life (with the power of T. V. wall+glass building) the woman’s flowing hair, gaze and smile are signs of the man’s self-projection of power, ease and desirability. 1. Distorted: city, the woman an ad and its interpellation(召喚) in disguise 2. Symptom Revealed: spectacle/image society; “The

Two More Examples for analysis: gender & identity. 國際VISA組織-VISA在手盡其在我-羅拉(完 整)篇 1. Signs? Connotations? Distortion? 2. Is the woman all powerful?

Two More Examples for analysis: gender & identity. 國際VISA組織-VISA在手盡其在我-羅拉(完整)篇 1. Signs: frame within the frame 1) of the Gothic: woman in a cape; old mansion/computer game parlor; a secret pass; 2) of electronic game -- virtual reality with a woman presented in double; 3) sci-fi: strong woman in black tight-fit dress, 1. Is the woman all powerful? n n 2. 3. Apparently, the two women empower each other; Actually, the visa card is power. Distortion: money = power; game = reality Symptom Revealed: everything is construction, but the power of money and electronic game is stronger than anything else.

Poststructuralism Keywords: constructionism floating signifier -- a major theoretical school in the postmodern age which radicalizes structuralist views of language by seeing signified as signifier, and separating signs from ‘reality. ’ -- in conflict with many other theoretical schools such as Marxism, Feminism and Postcolonialism, but also get to be combined with them; -- the areas of its influences range from arts, politics to popular culture.

Poststructuralism Keywords: constructionism floating signifier

Poststructuralism: Theory Major Questions 1. How does poststructuralism de-center traditional authorities? 2. Why is the author dead? Why is there nothing outside the text? Why is reality ‘textual, ’ and individual, ‘a product of social and linguistic forces. . . ‘a tissue of textualities” (64 -65)? 3. Why is signifier ‘floating, ’ meaning disseminated, and text, “an endless free play of meanings”(66)?

(1) How does poststructuralism decenter traditional authorities? the traditional centers or foundations of our lives -- e. g. Truth, Humanity, Family, Nation, History, Reality, God, Creativity, Author and their stable meanings Physical analogy: the ground beneath our feet; fixed landmark – with which we feel stability and measure the other things; With their views of language’s fluidity, all the above fixed meanings are destabilized. Physical analogy: our perception on a moving train of another moving train//multiple signifying chains intersecting with one another textuality n

(2) Why is the author dead? Why is reality ‘textual, ’ and individual, ‘a product of social and linguistic forces. . . ‘a tissue of textualities” (64 -65)? Self: No longer a unified self; in a system of relations with multiple Subject Positions Our social existence is modeled after language as a system of relations (e. g. kinship; gender) different languages (discourses) provide us with different subject positions. There are meanings in a text which its author is not aware of. polysemy; e. g. 吹皺一池 春水 1.

(2) Why is the author dead? Why is reality ‘textual, ’ and individual, ‘a product of social and linguistic forces. . . ‘a tissue of textualities” (64 -65)? 2. Text: From work, to text to (inter)textuality; “There is nothing outside of text” No fixed boundaries; no stable meanings; n e. g. Internet and the world of ads

(2) Why is the author dead? 3. “The death of the author. ” The birth of the Reader 4. Readings of Meaning and Reality: 1) deconstruction – to read against the grain; to find textual undecidability & 2) postmodern self-reflexivity –everything is representation and in need of interpretation (more examples later)

Q 3: -- Why is signifier ‘floating, ’ meaning disseminated, and text, “an endless free play of meanings”(66)? Note: metaphors of dandelion or seeds

Which of the following statements are not ambiguous? n n n n I am 40 years old. The Republic of China was born on Oct. 10, 1911. I love you till the end of the world. 多吃蔬菜� 有益健康。 中國人生性刻苦耐勞。 你要做和事佬� 真是吹縐一池春水。 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”? n The Republic of China was born on Oct. 10, 1911. born? n I love you till the end of the world (現代啟示錄 can be a store name. ) love? n 多吃蔬菜� 有益健康。 insecticide? Vegi with blue cheese? n n 中國人生性刻苦耐勞。 中國人？

Language/Literature as an enclosed system : Paradigmatic/Selection Syntagmatic/Combination (narrative structure: roles + actions); metonymy Thematic structure: Motifs, mythemes, metaphors, etc.

Polysemy caused by context Paradigmatic/Selection + more stereotypical descriptions, or a father’s advice to his son, etc. : 中國人生性刻苦耐勞。 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”; 干卿底 事) 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) n

Derrida: Outline -- Jacque Derrida: 1. Prologue: Instability of Meaning (discussed) 2. Writing as Différance 3. ‘Center’ as Transcendental Signified and Binarism 4. Deconstruction: Literary Practice

Language in movement (1) “Spacing” Movement from one Signifier to another -- Meaning changed when the context is further revealed. Comic effects in 相聲: old traces vs. newly defined meanings. (e. g. 政府 官員，很持久) The traces of the old meanings are both present and absent. n

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: chap 6: 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. n

Writing and Différance The chain of signification: (1) symbolization or mythologizing Signifier 1 (rose) Signified 1 (flower) Signified 2 (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 Yellow Other Skin colors White Americans Signified 3 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

Questions n n n Do you agree that meaning is always uncertain and slippery? What does Derrida’s views of language shed light on our communication? What is wrong with binarism(either. . . or), which structuralism sees as basic to our thinking? Why are poststructuralist views of reality radical or de-stablising? Are they then destructive?

The Transcendental Signified 1. (Textbook: p. 124) transcendental signified: source of meaning and signified: center of existence; foundations; the external point of reference, whose definition should not be changed, should not be relational. 2. The “unmoved mover” e. g. God (transcendental signified) The Bible (transcendental signifier)

The Transcendental Signified and Binaries They are the upper terms in hierarchical binaries: e. g. Man Light Reason Culture Woman Darkness Emotion Nature The Public; West, etc. The Private; East, etc.

Critique of Metaphysics: logocentrism, & phallogocentrism n n n Traditional binaries are hierarchical. Should be reversed or questioned. Logocentrism: Logo as center, source, or founding presence of knowledge and human beings. Phallogocentrism: the hierarchy of Man/Woman= sun/moon, reason/emotion, Subject/Object, etc.

Ways of Questioning the Hierarchical Binaries 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. 1.

Deconstruction: practices (textbook p. 131) 1. 2. 3. Open texts A text that deconstructs its own unity or “author. ” (contemporary self-reflexive texts) Reverse the text’s binaries or expose its undecidability or multiple meanings 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 5. Radical contextualization to find out its intertextual references and thus undecidability of meanings.

Deconstruction: example (1) process of signification Wordsworth’s poems: “I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud”; n I = cloud ([Dorothy]) + daffodils dancing ([daffodils weary]) n Daffodils = milky way ([real flowers]) I saw n Daffofils in glee ([the waves]) I recollect them in my mind’s eye =bliss of solitude ([the actual experience]). n

Deconstruction of Binary Opposition: Example (2) “Ode on Melancholy” Binaries: 1. No to active pursuits of sleep or suicide ( drowns the soul, turns it passive); 2. Savor the contraries and transience in life; 3. 1. “She” (active) dominates where all the senses are quickened; you He ‘burst’ joy’s grape against his palate; ‘hung’ as one of his trophies (passive) When senses are active, the poet seems powerless and passive.

Undecidability: example 3 n n 1. 2. 3. “Refusal To Mourn The Death, By Fire, Of A Child In London” Verbal -- paradoxes; Textual – no fixed context in this poem; Linguistic (contextual) – against ‘a grave truth’ (or all the received ways of mourning) but then the poem still uses its rhetoric

Undecidability: example 4 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 )

“A Undecidability: example 4 slumber did my spirit seal” -Contradictions between past life the human fear present death the cosmic peacefulness 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. Other usages of “différance”: desired object in unattainable, constantly deferred and replaced; colonial mimicry disseminate/de-center colonial authority. 4. “différance” and temporary closure.

Self-Conscious Texts in Contemporary Popular Culture n n Challenge the author e. g. Icicle Thief; Truman Show; Exposing the (TV) frames: “Money for Nothing” (Dire Strait); Ferris Beuler’s Day Off (1, 2); MTV channel’s commercial Reality and illusion: Vanilla Sky, Mulholland Drive Parody: Moulin Rouge, 全民亂講

Assignments "The Blind Man" 2. Chap 6 (123 -33) 3. Into the Woods 1.