Contemporary Western Theories and Film Studies - 204

 Derrida & Deconstruction 

Name: Dhruvita Dhameliya

Roll no : 03

Semester: 3

Year:- 2021 to 2023

Subject:- Contemporary Western Theories and Film Studies

Topic :- Derrida & Deconstruction 

Email ID: 

dhameliyadhruvita24@gmail.com

Submitted to: S. B. Gardi Department of English Maharaja Krishnakumarsinhji Bhavnagar University

Jacques Derrida

Jacques Derrida was an Algerian-born French philosopher. He developed a philosophical approach that came to be known as deconstruction, which he utilised in numerous texts, and which was developed through close readings of the linguistics of Ferdinand de Saussure and Husserlian and Heideggerian phenomenology. He is one of the major figures associated with post-structuralism and postmodern philosophy.

During his career, Derrida 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, and political theory.

What is Deconstruction?

Deconstruction doesn't actually mean "demolition" ; instead it means "breaking down" or analysing something, especially the words in a work of fiction or nonfiction to discover its true significance, which is supposedly almost never exactly what the author intended. 

The term deconstruction refers to approaches to understanding the relationship between text and meaning. It was originated by the philosopher Jacques Derrida, who defined it as a turn away from Platonism's ideas of "true" forms and essences which take precedence over appearances, instead considering the constantly changing complex function of language, making static and idealist ideas of it inadequate. 

Deconstruction is a poststructuralist theory, based largely but not exclusively on the writings of Derrida. It is in the first instance a philosophical theory and a theory directed towards the re-reading of philosophical writings. Its impact on literature, mediated in North America largely through the influences of theorists at Yale University, is based

1) On the fact that deconstruction sees all writing as a complex historical, cultural process rooted in the relations of texts to each other and in the institutions and conventions of writing.

2)On the sophistication and intensity of its sense that human knowledge is not as controllable or as convincing as Western thought would have it and that language operates in subtle and often contradictory ways, so that certainty will always elude us.

Darrida denied deconstructing any work. And he asked a question that it is possible to define? Derrida became a very difficult philosopher to read and the one reason is that it is difficult to define.

Deconstruction by its very nature defies institutionalisation in an authoritative definition. The concept was first outlined by Derrida in Of Grammatology where he explored the interplay between language and the construction of meaning. From this early work, and later works in which he has attempted to explain deconstruction to others, most notably the Letter to a Japanese Friend, it is possible to provide a basic explanation of what deconstruction is commonly understood to mean. Three key features emerge from Derrida’s work as making deconstruction possible. These are,

 First, the inherent desire to have a centre, or focal point, to structure understanding- logocentrism

Second, the reduction of meaning to set definitions that are committed to writing- nothing beyond the text; and, 

Finally, how the reduction of meaning to writing captures opposition within that concept itself -différance. These three features found the possibility of deconstruction as an on-going process of questioning the accepted basis of meaning. 

While the concept initially arose in the context of language, it is equally applicable to the study of law. Derrida considered deconstruction to be a ‘problematization of the foundation of law, morality and politics.’

1 - For him it was both ‘foreseeable and desirable that studies of deconstructive style should culminate in the problematic of law and justice.’

2 - Deconstruction is therefore a means of interrogating the relationship between the two.

For Derrida, it is this logocentrism, and the idea of the exteriority of meaning, that opens up the possibility of deconstruction. He examines how the natural ‘origin’ of meaning and its ‘institution’ in writing cannot be so easily separated. Rather than nature justice and institution law existing independently of each other, Derrida suggests that nature itself is constructed only with reference to the institution. So rather than law being a direct embodiment of justice, how we understand both justice and law is determined by the interplay between the two. This is a rejection of the rigid separation that makes the quest for certainty possible — of the very idea that justice exists as a prior objective standard to be discovered. By reading law as reflecting or embodying the natural origin of justice, what is ignored or concealed are all the other possible interpretations of justice that are not embodied or encapsulated in the law. In this way writing defines nature, as well as reflecting it.

3)How deconstruction happen it's own:-

The idea of deconstruction is therefore concerned with countering the idea of a transcendental origin or natural referent. It refutes the notion that it is possible to transgress the institution in order to discover something beyond — the existence of an independent origin. This idea is famously encapsulated in the phrase ‘There is nothing outside of the text’, which is often used to summarise Derrida’s work. 

For Derrida the origin does not exist independently of its institution, but exists only ‘through its functioning within a classification and therefore within a system of differences…’ In his own words, Derrida terms this phenomenon ‘différance’, and it is this idea that forms the basis of deconstruction. Différance refers to the fact that meaning cannot be regarded as fixed or static, but is constantly evolving. It arises from the constant process of negotiation between competing concepts. Rather than pursuing the truth of a natural origin, what deconstruction requires is the interrogation of these competing interpretations that combine to produce meaning.

The act of institution—or writing —itself captures this constant competition between the differing possible interpretations of meaning within the institution. The effect of the translation of thought into language is therefore to inscribe différance into the structure of meaning. It simultaneously embodies the desired meaning as intended by the author, and the constraints placed on that meaning through the act of interpretation of the text. In this regard, meaning is defined equally by what is included in the institution and what is not. At any one time, one concept will be dominant over the other, thus excluding the other. However while the idea of exclusion suggests the absence of any presence of that which is excluded, in fact that which is instituted depends for its existence on what has been excluded. The two exist in a relationship of hierarchy in which one will always be dominant over the other. The dominant concept is the one that manages to legitimise itself as the reflection of the natural order thereby squeezing out competing interpretations that remain trapped as the excluded trace within the dominant meaning.

When we read something, say a short story, a novel, or a philosophy book, we tend to think of it as a whole, we think of it as a-novel a dramatic history, a funny story, a mysterious story etc..., as a philosophy currently, be it historical materialism, rationalism, utilitarianism etc... and so on. This notion of understanding of the written word isn't quite right to Derrida, he thinks that even the smallest and simplest texts are filled with something that Derrida calls aporias that comes from the Greek, which means 'non pass' or 'difficulty of passing'. Derrida insists that these aporias appear all over the texts through the reading method of deconstruction and that no degree of analysis can eliminate them.

Now, this deconstruction method and its implications in various fields like ethics, cannot be understood without the understanding of some concepts that Derrida introduced in his book Of Grammatology, being one of the most important and the one I am going to explain here, the concept of différance.

In French, différance is pronounced the same as 'différence', the latter is French for the English word 'difference'. Before Derrida the term différance lacked meaning, or, in other words, meant nothing; An anecdote says that Derrida's mother once apprehended him for writing it wrong. The reason behind his creation of this neologism is that it allowed him to express a series of senses that were useful for him to express something complex about language.

For a deep understanding of the term and in general, the notion of deconstruction.

The notion of différance pretends to account for the three senses that are contained in the verb 'différer' in english 'to differ' that are: postpone, being different, and disagree. Derrida considers these respectively as a sense of: temporization, spacing, and controversy. Since the sustantive 'différence' didn't expressed any of these senses, he created the new term from différant 'that is differing'; different which both are pronounced the same in french; and différend -discrepancy, to achieve a term that unified the triple meaning. to understand in practice the function of temporization and spacing of différance, let's imagine that someone enounces something like "The race..." and then enounces "...that saw my friend..." and after a pause he/she continues "on the stadium that was crowded..." etc. The meaning of 'race' differs the more information is added and results are different in every moment.

Considering these two senses of différance a new perspective about language is formed: the meaning of anything that is said, it's always differed, because it depends on the next thing that it's said, and then that too depends on the next thing etc; And another consequence is that, the meaning of every term that we use depends on its differences with the terms we haven't used. Therefore, the meaning isn't self contained in the text, at the same time that, being all the text, there is nothing outside of it.

Differance, that in French is pronounced the same as 'difference' but it's written with an alteration in one vocal, it's an aspect of language that only writing gives account for.

Since ancient Greece, philosophers have suspected the written language, for example in the platonic dialogue Phaedrus, Socrates tells a myth about writing and says that it just gives an "appearance of wisdom", but not real wisdom. Derrida proposes to invert this concept: according to him, the written word allows us to see something about language that the spoken word hides. Plato in his critique of writing, thinks about the idea that, without the author, the father of the text, the reader can't explain or clarify the apologies that the text may contain. This way, we believe that the meaning of the text depends on the presence of its author that can help us clarify it; the same way that we suppose that the meaning of 'race' (in our little example above) depends on the presence of a race.

That said, Derrida remind us that the habitual definition of sign is that what is in place of the thing itself, in a way that, the sign represents the presence of the thing in the absence of it: here there is already a difference, in the double sense of a temporal distance (temporization) and being different (spacing). This, in Derrida's opinion, supports the idea that, what is said about the sign, can be said, -and with more reason- about the text.

"We only think in signs."

Jacques Derrida.

If we admit that the meaning, depends on the two directions of differance, then we should question ourselves the way we think about the world, that means being conscious that the meaning isn't as direct and clear as it seems, and that it is always susceptible of being disclosed by the deconstruction of it; And, that our ways of thinking, speaking, or writting, imply political, ludic, sexual, historic, and ethic matters among others, that we don't always acknowledge or admit. This is why some philosophers have argued that deconstruction is above all, an ethic practice: by reading a text in a deconstructive way, we question ourselves its statements and at the same time, we reveal to complicated ethic problems that may have been occult.

"We are all mediators, translators."

Jacques Derrida.

Word Count -2021

Works Cited

“deconstruction | Definition, Philosophy, Theory, Examples, & Facts.” Encyclopedia Britannica, 4 September 2022, https://www.britannica.com/topic/deconstruction. Accessed 4 November 2022.

Naas, Michael, et al. “Jacques Derrida (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy).” Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, 22 November 2006, https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/derrida/. Accessed 4 November 2022.

Salmon, Peter. “How to deconstruct the world.” Psyche.Co, 19 May 2021, https://psyche.co/guides/how-to-deconstruct-the-world-by-thinking-like-jacques-derrida. Accessed 4 November 2022.