Jacques Derrida (2)

In structuralism (and as demonsrated in the previous webpage showing the logocentrism of metaphysics), language is a stable structure and binary oppositions are treated in stable terms in a formal structure. At the centre of structuralism is the notion that an objective, universal cultural system 'structures' our mental processes and that such a structure is evident in human language and social institutions (Spretnak in Grenz, 1996). However, structuralism is beyond the humanist stance of Western metaphysics. That is, structuralism asserts that 'language speaks us' rather than we speak language because authors inhabit pre-existing structures (i.e., language system) as Klages (2004) puts it:

Structuralists believe that literature provides categories so we can organise and understand our experience of reality (Grenz, 1996). They also assume that all societies and cultures possess a common, invariant structure. Post-structuralism rejects this last tenet of structuralism. Meaning is not inherent in a text itself, poststructuralism argues, but comes about only as the interpreter enters into dialogue with the text. A text has multiple meanings as it has its readers and readings given that post-structural assertion that the meaning of a text is dependent on the perspective of one who comes into dialogue with it.

Post-structuralism does have commonalities with structuralism. They made attacks on the human subject (the self, or the 'I'), they attacked the notion that the self is an autonomous centre, and they both examined meaning although structuralism used semiotics (the study of signs, symbols, and thus language) (Bicket, 2004).

However, Derridian post-structuralism took semiotics further and used it to critique meaning. In particular, Derrida critiqued the stable sign. In structuralism, a sign is a combination of a signifier and a signified, but Derridia asserted that there can never be a signified because it is being constantly turning into signifiers. For example, if the signifier 'dog' is to be interpreted in Päkehä, it turns out to be a signified 'dog', which in turn becomes a signifier, as it is interpreted by another such as a 'kuri' by Mäori, or a mutt by another, or a mongrel by another, or a golden retriever by another, and so on. When language tries to deal with society as a whole, signifiers slide into other signifiers without reaching a signified (Bicket, 2004). This is called the chain of signification, and, if you can imagine, it is infinite. There can never be no stable, fixed, and structured meaning because how can it when the signified are continuously being turned into signifiers? Thus, meaning is not 'present' in language; it happens in between signifiers. That is, it is produced between signifiers in a language chain (Grenz, 1996). Derrida coined the term différance as the product of a restless play within language that cannot be fixed or pinned down (Norris, 1987). Derrida sees language as a system of difference. Quite fitting to Derridian logic, it is rather difficult to pin down what exactly is différance, and Derrida argued that people should learn the hard way (as he did via countless argument over many years) through a comprehensive reading and re-reading of texts, including his texts (Norris, 1987). However, to get a basic conceptual grasp of what différance is about, Shawver (2004) explains it by using a picture analogy:

Imagine observing a quilt on the wall with patches of yellow, blue and white. If you notice the yellow and the non-yellow, you see a pattern of concentric boxes. If you notice the blue and the non-blue you see a checkered design. Each pattern is a play of differences, but it is a different set of differences when yellow is differentiated from non-yellow than when blue is differentiated from non-blue, a different set of differences that shows us different patterns. What is interesting about this shift from one pattern to the other is that it not only calls our attention to a new pattern, but that it suppresses our awareness of the other pattern. Différance, defers a pattern of differences (say the pattern of differences between the blue and the not-blue). That is, one pattern of differences pushes into the background another possible play of patterns. You cannot study the pattern of yellows and the pattern of blues at the same time because différance causes one or the other patterns to be "deferred". Différance is the hidden way of seeing things that is deferred out of awareness by our distraction with the imagery that captures our attention. Because it contains this other way to see things "Différance is the...formation of form."(Derrida, 1976, p. 63).

Différance has many meanings: to differ, to defer, differentiation, difference, and differing (Howells, 1999). In taking the 'to differ' part, as mentioned above, a word does not possess a fixed meaning within itself but derives meaning from its relations within the language system, and meaning is produced between signifiers in the language chain. However, 'to defer' means that the signifier that is distinguished from one another is not completely erased; it is only deferred, bracketed, or merely 'put under erasure,' and so this also overthrows any fixed meaning of a sign (because a sign = signifier + signified) (Norris, 1987; Grenz, 1996). In other words, the meaning of a sign is constantly changing, as well as the sign itself, leaving traces which may also influence the meaning as well.

Let us turn to a demonstration of the chain of signification: click here.

Following on from différance, deconstruction is a Derridian poststructuralist critique of some of the ideas underlying structuralism. Derridian deconstruction asserts that there is an instability of language. According to Derrida, if meaning arises only out of a word's difference from other words in a system, and every word is dependent on every other word for its meaning, we can never pin it down: there is no fixed centre to the structure. Thus, meaning is constantly in play, always in motion, and resistant to closure. Basically, deconstructionism does not like a true-false dichotomy, and for someone to say that something is clearly false implies that they know ‘the truth,' a claim that social constructionists find closed-minded and authoritarian (Maze, 2001). It should be pointed out here that Maze did not like Derrida's anti-foundationalist stance or Kenneth Gergen, the social constructionist, but Maze made a good point about deconstruction and binaries. We do seem to have these binaries, but they are treated in mainstream Western language as if they are stable and generally do not change spatially or temporally, and there seems to be nothing in between them, at least on the surface of things (from a structuralist perspective).

To illustrate a deconstructionist stance, we now turn to Maze's apparent hatred of deconstruction. Maze is a foundationalist and therefore likes to play by a set of language rules (i.e., most probably the seemingly concrete language rules of a modernist scientific establishment). However, what if we don't want to play by Maze's rules? Deconstruction borrows from existing Western language to test its boundaries. In other words, it uses and abuses what might be called foundationalist language and rips it apart in anti-foundationalist fashion:

Derrida plays with the rules of Western language in order to demonstrate its limits. It is to pound on the walls of the house of language in hopes that we may find our way outside. Yet it is this very language that must serve as the resource for the effort. If we accept Maze’s position, if one doesn’t not play by the established rules, one is simply banished from the communities of scholarship and science—scolded and sent home. But this is precisely the issue of totalitarianism and parochialism... (Gergen, 2001, p. 429)

This comes back the apparent binary oppositions in mainstream language. Derrida asserted that a binary opposition is algebraic (a equals NOT-b), and that two terms cannot exist without reference to the other. He doesn't seek to reverse the hierarchies implied in binary pairs (e.g., feminine over masculine), but deconstruction wants to erase the boundaries between oppositions to show that the values and order implied by the opposition are also not rigid. (Klages, 2004).

To sum up Derridian deconstruction, it identifies logocentric paradigms (e.g., dichotomies), shows that meaning in any language is in constantly in 'play', and that the meaning in language 'differs' continuously in relation to other meanings. Consequently, only a 'trace' of the sign(s) exist. Deconstruction rejects the assumptions of structuralism and its highly systematic approach to texts and methodical forms of analysis (Huang, 2004). It rejects binary opposition in structuralism on the basis that such oppositions always privilege one term over the other, and rejects the notion that such oppositions are truthful.