Deconstruction

Hello everyone,

This blog is about the theory of deconstruction found by Derrida. This blog is a response to the task assigned by Dilip Barad as part of the syllabus and thinking activity. So in this blog, I would like to share my ideas and understanding of deconstruction, and how to deconstruct the work with the example. 

First of all, I would like to give an introduction of the Founder of the theory,

Who is Derrida?

Jacques Derrida was an Algerian-born French philosopher best known for developing a form of semiotic analysis known as deconstruction, which he analyzed in numerous texts, and developed in the context of phenomenology. He is one of the major figures associated with post-structuralism and postmodern philosophy. During his career, he published more than 40 books, together with hundreds of essays and public presentations. He had a significant influence on the humanities and social sciences, including philosophy, literature, law, anthropology, historiography, applied linguistics, sociolinguistics, psychoanalysis, architecture, political theory etc.

(1)What do you understand by 'Deconstruction'?

The term deconstruction was coined by Jacques Derrida. Deconstruction is one kind of way to find out the structure and gap between the words of the work through the language used in works. The idea of deconstruction started with the idea of language because everything is about language only. Deconstruction is a way of understanding how something was created, usually things like art, books, poems and other writing. Deconstruction is theory to make part of something for the better understanding and find out what is behind the word and meaning given by the World to the thing which we want to deconstruct, but the way writer use to make smaller part which is became the way of criticising and it's became problematic.

It is not always about how writer looking at works but it's about the reader and experience of them, which they gone through. It's may happend that writer doesn't have such ideas which reader may get and understood , because it's not man who speaks but the language speaks. And we can say deconstruction is the Idea about what is between words rather than what is written. For example the word - women , deconstructive look at women means absence of manliness. They are not interested in loom women who have female organs and the structure of women given by society but they look it as absence of manliness and women who is not men. This way of looking at the word called binary oppositions. Because of things like this, deconstruction argues that books and poems never just mean what we think they mean at first. But they always have something else. And it's depends on our knowledge of language because we are limited by language. If we are aware about more languages we get more idea and meaning. For example the word intrest -  attraction, profit and enjoyment , so with the one word intrest we got many words because I had idea about synonyms of interest. So it's all about your vocabularies about knowledge of language otherwise you are limited to read. But when we talked about meaning is never static, it's changes with the passing of the time and the work also. For example the word 'Intrest '  used in arts as enjoyment and in commerce it's about profit. 

Words are made up of 'signifiers', or the sounds/spellings, and the 'signified', or the meaning and concepts they are talking about. However, the meaning of a word is naturally ambiguous, the word in itself and the meaning are not naturally linked. 

So this is the simplified version of Deconstruction. But what Derridian concept of Deconstruction is that text is a "Free play of Meaning".

Derrida says that meaning of a word is usually thought of as something in our mind in such are but Derrida points out that meaning of word is nothing but another word.

What connects a word with it's meaning or as signal with it's meaning is the convention and the convention is always social."

So, he implied that arbitrariness means any word can be used to talk about anything technically but what connects a word with it's meaning or a signal with it's meaning is the convention and convention is always social and it by concious that kind of word and meaning gets connects.

2)Read an ad or TV serial or Film or literary text as post-structuralist critic.

When i was watching the advertisement i thought it was about girl who want to make career and be successful but it was not about that only , then i thought it was about the another girl who sit there and try to calm down her child so i thought advertisement celebrated the motherhood but it was exactly like that then, there is third women who is servent and normal worker there who manage her children and work together, and the fourth women who is doing business only, who thought that it is hard to manage job and children and according to her the other three women are doing one thing only like , one is Mother only because she wearing saree and carry child , another is doing job and third one is focusing on making career but at the end of the advertisement i came to know that the mother who carry child who is handling whole district as she is the SSP. So the advertisement was not about working and business woman but about the motherhood along with job. It's breaking the idea of cloth and appearance.

Another example is that,

When i was watching the advertisement that time I thought it was about the importance of time as she denied to have time, then when they enter in the house of their neighbour and both the men are doing work collaboratively so i thought it celebrated friendship then she said to her husband that how they work that time he replied that we were also doing same during the college days that time we came to know that now they don't. That time I thought that it was about gender equality as men and women both have to help each other as she said that if you are with your friend that time you do, both the boys are doing help of each other then why don't you understand me equal to you so that time we reached at conclusion that the advertisement is about gender equality but it's broke down our assumption as the ad was about Ariel detergent powder.

In this advertisement, when we look at the first sight that time saree became signifiers for us, as we always have an idea of saree with the housewife and mother, jeans or western clothes for the business woman so at first sight this give us idea to understand it according to our experienced but when we look further it deconstruct our Idea and give us another understanding of the things.