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Post-Structuralism & Postmodern Texts. Post-Structuralism Defined & Marxism vs. Post-Structuralism Fiction and Reality Deconstruction Subject and Power. Major Concepts of Derrida ’ s Deconstruction Theory. language as a system of difference, the transcendental signified
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Post-Structuralism & Postmodern Texts Post-Structuralism Defined & Marxism vs. Post-Structuralism Fiction and Reality Deconstruction Subject and Power
Major Concepts of Derrida’s Deconstruction Theory • language as a system of difference, the transcendental signified • Critique of Metaphysics: logocentrism, phonocentrism, phalogocentrism • Deconstruction: practices
Writing and Différance • binary opposition and supplement *While structualists had treated binary oppositions as stable terms in a formal structure, Derrida sees them as organized in unstable disequilibrium. • Différance: 1. To defer, 2. To differ
Writing and Différance Two chains of signification: 1. symbolization Signified 1 • Signifier Signified 2 Signified 2 Signifier Signified 3
Writing and Différance: an Example • Signified 1 Signified 2 Signified 3 African People Black Evil and dirty Other Skin colors Other Racial Features What they did Innocence White White Americans The other Americans Manifest Destiny American Innocence God
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〉
Questions • What is Transcendental Signified? • What is presence? • What the first step of deconstruction? • (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 • What is presence? • 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 (p. 131) • Open texts A text that deconstructs its unity or author. • Reverse the text’s binaries or expose its undecidability or multiple meanings (131); • Study the process of signification of a sign or a text and find out what it tries to erase. • Find where the text differs from itself. (critical difference ambiguity and undecidability) • Radical contextualization to find out its intertextual references and thus undecidability of meanings.
Deconstruction: practices (2) 2. Reverse the text’s binaries or expose its undecidability or multiple meanings (131) e.g. “Araby”– Man Religious Quest ? ------ ------ ------ Woman Object of Quest Bazaar & Money/Vanity Refuse to be understood, critical, “That’s a fib”
Deconstruction: practices (3) 2. Study the process of signification of a sign or a text and find out what it tries to erase. e.g. The Scarlet Letter, “I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud”
Deconstruction: practices (3)process of signification in “The Purloined Letter” Letter – 信﹐字母﹐The Letter as a Floating Signifier. A pure signifier or the Phallus
Deconstruction: practices (4) 2. Find where the text differs from itself. (critical difference ambiguity and undecidability e.g. “The Winter Palace” “One Art”
The Winter PalacePhilip Larkin Most people know more as they get older: I give all that the cold shoulder. I spent my second quarter-century Losing what I had learnt at university And refusing to take in what had happened since. Now I know none of the names in the public prints,
The Winter Palace (2) Philip Larkin And am starting to give offence by forgetting faces And swearing I've never been in certain places. It will be worth it, if in the end I manage To blank out whatever it is that is doing the damage. Then there will be nothing I know My mind will fold into itself, like fields, like snow.
