PostStructuralism Deconstruction Examples Some Key Concepts Writing and

Post-Structuralism: Deconstruction Examples & Some Key Concepts

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〉; 《好男好女 》 ︰ 1937 蔣碧玉認識鍾浩東� 1940 赴大陸． －1949 被捕� －1950 年十月十四日鍾浩東被 殺� 臨刑前〈幌馬車之歌〉響起.

Writing and Différance (2) 1. Writing as Différance and the endless play of signs. Différance: 1. 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. Black. It can subvert the fixed meaning of the sign.

Writing and Différance The chain of signification: Signifier 1 Signified 1 (rose) (flower) Signified 2 (love) Signified 2 (rose=love) Signified 3 (rose= woman in love)

Writing and Différance: an Example 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 Innocence Manifest Destiny God

Writing and Différance 1. Writing as a system of difference, or 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

“Spacing”- • Movement from one Signifier to another -- spacing: Meaning changed when the context is further revealed. --The traces of the old meanings are both present and absent.

Questions 1. What is Transcendental Signified? 2. What is presence? 3. What the first step of deconstruction? 4. (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. What is presence? 3. 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 1. (p. 131) 1. Open texts A text that deconstructs its unity or author. 2. 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.