DECONSTRUCTION

Jacques Derrida
 The term deconstruction first emerged on
the American Literary stage in 1966 when
Derrida read his paper and thus
inaugurated what many critics believe to be
the most intricate and challenging method of Beginnings of
textual analysis.
Deconstruction
NOT
Theory
Philosophy
A rule for reading, interpreting, and writing.
The signified cannot orient or make
permanent the meaning of the signifier
because the relationship between the
signifier and the signified is both arbitrary
and conventional.
Jacques Derrida’s
interpretation of
I filled the glass with milk.
Saussure’s Sign
The container was filled with glass.
 The great error in Western Philosophy is in
searching for what Derrida calls a
transcendental signified, an external point of
reference upon which one may build a
concept or philosophy.
Transcendental
 A concept that is universally true, across Signified
cultures, that we can build a philosophy or
an intellectual system upon.
 The belief that an ultimate reality or center
of truth exists and can serve as the basis for
all our thoughts and actions.
 Thanks to Aristotle, maintains Derrida,
Western metaphysics has developed an
"either/or" mentality or logic that inevitably
leads to dualistic thinking and to the
Logocentrism
centering and decentering of transcendental
signifieds.
A system of binary oppositions or
conceptual oppositions is established when
one center of unity automatically makes the
other decentered.
Binary
 One concept is superior and defines itself by Oppositions
its opposite or inferior center.
 The privileging of speech over writing.
 We value, says Derrida, a speaker's words
more than the speaker's writing because Phonocentrism
words imply presence.
 By equating writing with the free play or the
element of undecidability at the center of all
systems of communication, Derrida declares
that writing actually governs language.
Arche-writing
Writing now becomes privileged and speech
unprivileged.
Derived from
 “defferer” meaning to defer, postpone, delay
 “differ” meaning to be different from

Basically, difference is Derrida’s “What if?”.

 What if no transcendental signified exists? DIFFERANCE
 What is there is no essence in the universe?
 What if there is no presence in whom we can find
ultimate truth?
 The reversal of presence (privileged) and
absence (unprivileged) established by
transcendental signified.
With the reversal, there can no longer be a DIFFERANCE
transcendental signified. No longer is there an
absolute standard. All human knowledge and self-
identity must now spring from difference, not
sameness.
 Two results follow the reversal of primary
binary oppositions:
a. Knowledge becomes referential
(knowledge is based on difference, not
on an absolute standard)
b. We must forgo closure
DIFFERANCE
(all interpretation concerning life,
self, and knowledge, are possible &
probable)
 Discover the binary operations that govern a
text.
 Comment on the values, concepts, and ideas
beyond these operations.
 Reverse these present binary operations.
 Dismantle previously held worldviews. Applying the
 Accept the possibility of various perspectives or
levels of meaning in a text based on the new
Strategy
binary inversions.
 Allow meaning of the text to be undecidable.
The Road Not Taken
Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;
Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,
And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.
I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.