Poststructuralism

Post- structuralism and deconstruction

Post- structuralism emerged in France in the late 1960s, particularly associated with the work of Jacques Derrida and his followers. It originated as a reaction against structuralism, which first emerged in Ferdinand de Saussure’s work on linguistics. Post-structuralism critiques of structuralism typically challenged the assumption that systems are self-sufficient structures and question the possibility of the precise definitions on which systems of knowledge must be based. The two figures most closely associated with this emergence are Ronald Barthes and Jacques Derrida. It is often said that Ronald Barthes’s 1968 essay ‘The Death of the Author’ marks the transition from structuralism from post- structuralism. In this essay, he announces the death of the author and makes a declaration of radical textual independence: the work is not determined by intention, or context. The text is free by its very nature of all such restraints. It marks a shift of attention from the text seen as something produced by the author to the text seen as something produced by the reader, and as it were, by language itself.

This early phase of post- structuralism seems to license and revel in the endless free play of meanings and the escape from all forms of textual authority. The another key figure in the development of post-structuralism in the late 1960s is a philosopher Jacques Derrida. Indeed, the starting point of post-structuralism may be taken as his 1966 lecture “Structure, Sign and Play”.

In this paper, Derrida sees in modern times a particular intellectual ‘event’ which constitutes a radical break from past ways of thought, loosely associating this break with the philosophy of Nietzsche and Heidegger and the psychoanalysis of Freud. The event concerns the decentring of our intellectual universe. The post-structural approach is known for its efforts to offer a critical review of normative concepts in classical philosophy. Derrida’s theory of deconstruction was inspired by what Heidegger calls the “destruction” of philosophy’s tradition.

Derrida embraces this decentered universe of free play as liberating just as Barthes in the Death of the Author celebrates the demise of the author as ushering in an era of joyous freedom. The consequences of this new decentred universe are impossible to predict. Its implication is that we will enter this new universe, where there are no guaranteed facts, only interpretations, none of which has the stamp of authority upon it, since there is no longer any authoritative centre to which to appeal for validation of our interpretations. Essentially, the deconstructive reading of literary texts tends to make them emblems of the decentred universe. Texts previously regarded as unified artistic artifacts are now shown to be fragmented, self-divided, disunified and centre-less.

Deconstruction

The poststructuralist literary critic is engaged in the task of ‘deconstructing’ the text. This process is given the name, “Deconstruction”, which can roughly be defined as applied Post structuralism. It is often referred to as ‘reading the text against itself’, with the purpose of ‘knowing the text as it cannot know itself’. A way of describing this would be to say that deconstructive reading uncovers the unconscious of the text rather than the conscious dimension of the text.

When it comes to definition, J. A. Cuddon in his Dictionary of Literary Terms asserts that in deconstruction:

“A text can be read as saying something quite different from what it appears to be saying… it may be read as carrying a plurality of significance or as saying many different things which are fundamentally at variance with, contradictory to and subversive of what may be seen by criticism as single ‘stable’ meaning. Thus, a text may betray “itself”.

Derrida’s translated book “of Grammatology” explores the main theme of deconstruction. This text is concerned with logocentrism and its impact on the western philosophical Canon. Derrida criticized Western philosophy as privileging the concept of presence and logos, as opposed to absence and markings or writings. Derrida believed that the fields of philosophy, literature, anthropology, and linguistics had become highly phonocentric. He argued that phonocentrism was an important example of what he saw as Western philosophy's logocentrism.

Logocentrism y Phonocentrism Phonocentrism is a belief that says that the sounds and speech are inherently superior to, or more primary than, written language. Those who espouse phonocentric views maintain that spoken language is the primary and most fundamental method of communication

Derrida believed that the binary opposition between speech and writing is a form of logocentrism. According to him, “logocentrism” is the attitude that logos (the Greek term for speech, thought, law, or reason) is the central principle of language and philosophy. Derrida argues that logocentrism may be seen in the theory that a linguistic sign consists of a signifier which derives its meaning from a signified idea or concept. Logocentrism asserts the exteriority of the signifier to the signified. Thus, according to logocentrist theory, writing is merely

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