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Christopher Norris

Christopher Norris. Deconstruction: Theory and Practice. Deconstruction: Theory and Practice. Introduction

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Christopher Norris

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  1. Christopher Norris • Deconstruction: Theory and Practice

  2. Deconstruction: Theory and Practice • Introduction • Literature as well as criticism - the difference between them being delusive - is condemned (or privileged) to be forever the most rigorous and, consequently, the most unreliable language in terms of which man names and transforms himself. Paul De Man. • This sentence by the critic Paul de Man is a fair sample of the kind of thinking about literature which is currently termed deconstruction. xi • It bristles with the sort of paradox which that thinking finds at work not only in literary texts but in criticism, philosophy and all varieties of discourse, its own included. xi

  3. Deconstruction: Theory and Practice • What can it mean to reject the distinction between literature and criticism as merely a delusion? xi • How can a language be at once the most 'rigorous' and the most 'unreliable' source of knowledge? xi • Deconstruction works at the same giddy limit, suspending all that we take for granted about human language, experience and the 'normal' possibilities of human communication. xii • Deconstruction is the active antithesis of everything that criticism ought to be if one accepts its traditional values and concepts. xii

  4. Deconstruction: Theory and Practice • That literary texts possessed meaning and that literary criticism sought a knowledge of that meaning - a knowledge with its own proper claims to validity - were principles implicit across the widest divergences of thought. xii • But deconstruction challenges the fundamental distinction between 'literature' and 'criticism' implied by those principles. xii • And it also challenges the idea that criticism provides a special kind of knowledge precisely in so far as its texts don't' aspire to 'literary' status. xii

  5. Deconstruction: Theory and Practice • For the deconstructionist, criticism (like philosophy) is always an activity of writing, and nowhere more rigorous - paraphrase de Man - that where it knows and allows for its own 'literary' vagaries. xii—xiii • Roots: Structuralism and New Criticism • To present 'deconstruction' as if it were a method, a system or a settled body of ideas would be to falsify its nature and lay oneself open to charges of reductive misunderstanding.

  6. Deconstruction: Theory and Practice • Deconstruction can be seen in part as a vigilant reaction against this tendency in structuralist thought to tame and domesticate its own best insights. • Some of Jacques Derrida's most powerful essays are devoted to the task of dismantling a concept of 'structure' that serves to immobilise the play of meaning in a text and reduce it to a manageable compass. 2

  7. Deconstruction: Theory and Practice • One the one hand Culler appeals to what seems a loose extension of Noam Chomsky’s argument: that linguistic structures are innately programmed in the human mind and operate both as a constraint upon language and as a means of shared understanding. 2 • Deconstruction is avowedly 'post-structuralist' in its refusal to accept the idea of structure as in any sense given or objectively 'there' in a text. 3

  8. Deconstruction: Theory and Practice • Deconstruction, on the contrary, starts out by rigorously suspending this assumed correspondence between mind, meaning and the concept of method which claims to unite them. 3 • From Kant to Saussure: The Prison House of Concepts • Thought seemed condemned to a prison-house of reason, endlessly rehearsing its own suppositions but unable to connect them with the world at large. 4 • Kant saw an escape-route from this condition of deadlocked sceptical reason.

  9. Deconstruction: Theory and Practice • It was, he agreed, impossible for consciousness to grasp or 'know' the world in the direct, unmediated form despaired of by Hume and the sceptics. • Knowledge was a product of the human mind, the operations of which could only interpret the world, and not deliver it up in all its pristine reality. 4 • Henceforth philosophy must concern itself not with a delusory quest for ‘the real’ but with precisely those deep regularities – or a priori truths – that constitute human understanding. 4

  10. Deconstruction: Theory and Practice • [Kantian thought has its] origins in a sceptical divorce between mind and the ‘reality’ it seeks to understand. 4 • In structuralist terms this divorce was most clearly spelled out by the linguist Ferdinand de Saussure. • He argued that our knowledge of the world is inextricably shaped and conditioned by the language that serves to present it. 4 • In his view, our knowledge of things is insensible structured by the systems of code and convention which alone enable us to classify and organise the chaotic flow of experience. 5

  11. Deconstruction: Theory and Practice • There is simply no access to knowledge except by way of language and other, related orders of representation. 5 • This basic relativity of thought and meaning [...] is the starting-point of structuralist theory. 5 • The ‘transcendental subject’ (or seat of intelligence) in Kantian philosophy is like wise capable of exercising its priori powers without being made in the least aware of them. 6 • On the one hand it presupposes an activity of reading grounded in certain deeply naturalized codes of understanding. 7

  12. Deconstruction: Theory and Practice • On the other, it assumes that texts must offer at least sufficient hold - in activity to take its own intuitive bearings. 7 • New Critics into structuralist? 7 • Beyond New Criticism 7 • The challenge became stronger when critics like Geoffrey Hartman announced their intention of breaking altogether with New Critical method and moving ‘beyond formalism’. 14

  13. Deconstruction: Theory and Practice • The sources of this thought were in continental theory, and its American representatives – among them Paul de Man and J. Hillis Miller – were later to become the protagonists of deconstruction. 15 • At the same time they both tended to generate, in livelier minds, a sense of unease or frustration which called their very methods into question. 15 • For American critics the waning of New Critical hegemony coincided with a sudden new interest in French theoretical ideas. 15

  14. Deconstruction: Theory and Practice • This came at a time when structuralism was already being subjected (in the texts of Derrida especially) to a searching critique of its own supposition and methodological claims. 15 • Jacques Derrida is the philosophic source of this powerful critique, and Paul de Man at present is foremost American exponent. 17 • [Deconstruction] has provided the impetus for a total revaluation of interpretative theory and practice, the effects of which have yet to be fully absorbed. 17

  15. Deconstruction: Theory and Practice • Jacques Derrida: Language Against Itself • The text of Jacques Derrida defy classification according to any of the clear-cut boundaries that define modern academic discourse. 18 • They belong to 'philosophy' in so far as they raise certain familiar questions about thought, language, identity and other long standing themes of philosophical debate. 18

  16. Deconstruction: Theory and Practice • Moreover, they raise those questions through a form of critical dialogue with previous texts, many of which (from Plato to Husserl and Heidegger) are normally assigned to the history of philosophic thought. [...]. 18 • Yet Derrida's texts are like nothing else in modern philosophy, and indeed represent a challenge to the whole tradition and self-understanding of that discipline. 18 • One way of describing this challenge is to say that Derrida refuses to grant philosophy the kind of privileged status it has always claimed as a sovereign dispenser of reason. 18

  17. Deconstruction: Theory and Practice • Derrida confronts the claim to power on its own chosen ground. He argues that philosophers have been able to impose their various systems of thought only by ignoring or suppressing, the disruptive effects of language. 18 • His aim is always to draw out these effects by a critical reading which fastens on, and skilfully unpicks, the elements of metaphor and other figurative devices at work in the texts of philosophy. 18-19 • Deconstruction in this, its most rigorous form acts as a constant reminder of the ways in which language deflects or complicates the philosopher's project. 19

  18. Deconstruction: Theory and Practice • Above all, deconstruction works to undo the idea - according to Derrida, the ruling illusion of Western metaphysics - that reason can somehow dispense with language and arrive at a pure, self-authenticating truthor 'written' character, the signs of that struggle are there to be read in its blind-spots of metaphor and other rhetorical strategies. 19 • In this sense Derrida's writings seem more akin to literary criticism than philosophy. 19

  19. Deconstruction: Theory and Practice • They rest on the assumption that modes of rhetorical analysis, hitherto applied mainly to literary texts, are in fact indispensable for reading any kind of discourse, philosophy included. 19 • Literature is no longer seen as a kind of poor relation to philosophy contenting itself with mere 'imaginary' themes and forgoing any claim to philosophic dignity and truth. 19 • This attitude has, of course, a long prehistory in Western tradition. 19

  20. Deconstruction: Theory and Practice • [Derrida] His work provided a whole new set of powerful strategies which placed the literary critic, not simply on a footing with the philosopher, but in a complex relationship (or rivalry) with him, whereby philosophic claims were open to rhetorical questioning or deconstruction. 21 • Once alerted to the rhetorical nature of philosophic arguments, the critic is in a strong position to reverse the age-old prejudice against literature as a debased or merely deceptive form of language . 21

  21. Deconstruction: Theory and Practice • It now becomes possible to argue - indeed, impossible to deny - that literary texts are less deluded than the discourse of philosophy, precisely because they implicitly acknowledge and exploit their own rhetorical status. 21 • Philosophy comes to seem, in de Man's work, 'an endless reflection on its own destruction at the hands of literature'. 21 • Derrida's attentions are therefore divided between 'literary' and 'philosophical' texts, a distinction which in practice he constantly breaks down and whose to be based on a deep but untenable prejudice. 21

  22. Deconstruction: Theory and Practice • Derrida has no desire to establish a rigid demarcation of zones between literary language and critical discourse by a motivating impulse which runs so deep in Western thought that it respects none of the conventional boundaries. 21 • Criticism, philosophy, linguistics, anthropology, the whole modern gamut of 'human sciences' - all are at some point subjected to Derrida's relentless critique. 21 • This is the most important point to grasp about deconstruction. 21

  23. Deconstruction: Theory and Practice • There is no language so vigilant or self-aware that it can effectively escape the conditions placed upon thought by its own prehistory an ruling metaphysic. 21-22 • Blindness and Insight: deconstruction the new Criticism • Deconstruction draws no line between the kind of close reading appropriate to a 'literary' text and the strategies required to draw out the subtler implications of critical language. 22

  24. Deconstruction: Theory and Practice • This amounts to a downright refusal of the system of priorities which has traditionally governed the relation between 'critical' and 'creative' language. 23 • That distinction rested on the idea that literary texts embodied an authentic or self-possessed plenitude of meaning which criticism could only hint at by its roundabout strategies of reading. 23 • For Derrida, this is yet another sign of the rooted Western prejudice which tries to reduce writing - or the 'free play' of language - to a stable meaning equated with the character of speech. 23

  25. Deconstruction: Theory and Practice • In spoken language (so the implication runs), meaning is 'present' to the speaker through an act of inward self-surveillance which ensures a perfect, intuitive 'fit' between intention and utterance. 23 • Literary texts have been accorded the status of a self-authenticated meaning and truth, a privilege deriving (in Derrida’s view) from the deep mistrust of textuality which pervades Western attitudes to language. 23

  26. Deconstruction: Theory and Practice • This mystique of origins and presence can best be challenged by annulling the imaginary boundaries of discourse, the various territorial imperatives which mark off 'literature' from 'criticism', or 'philosophy' from everything that stands outside its traditional domain. 23 • This redistribution of discourse implies some very drastic shifts in our habits of reading. 23 • For one thing, it means that critical texts must be read in a radically different way, not so much for their interpretative 'insights' as for the symptoms of 'blindness' which mark their conceptual limits. 23

  27. Deconstruction: Theory and Practice • Language, writing, différance • The argument turns on Saussure's attitude to the relative priority of spoken as opposed to written language, a dualism Derrida locates at the heart of western philosophic tradition. 26

  28. Ferdinand de Saussureand The Geneva School • Suassure Language and Writing • Language and writing are two distinct systems of signs; the second exists for the sole purpose of representing the first. • The linguistic object is not both the written and the spoken forms of words. The spoken forms alone constitute the object. • But the spoken word is so intimately bound to its written image that the latter manages to usurp the main role.

  29. Ferdinand de Saussureand The Geneva School • Suassure Language and Writing • People attach even more importance to the written image of a vocal sign than to the sign itself. • A similar mistake would be in thinking that more can be learned about someone by looking at his photograph than by viewing him directly. • Language does have a definite and stable oral tradition that is independent of writing but the influence of the written form prevents our seeing this.

  30. Ferdinand de Saussureand The Geneva School • Suassure Language and Writing • The literary language adds to the undeserved importance of writing. • Language is constantly evolving, whereas writing tends to remain stable. • Writing obscures language; it is not a guise for language but a disguise.

  31. Deconstruction: Theory and Practice • He cites a number of passages, from Saussure in which writing is treated as a merely derivative or secondary form of linguistic notation, always dependent on the primary reality of speech and the sense of a speaker's 'presence' behind his words. 26 • For Derrida, there is a fundamental blindness involved in the Saussurian text, a failure to think through the problems engendered by its own mode of discourse. 26 • What is repressed there, along with 'writing' in its common or restricted sense, is the idea of language as a signifying system which exceeds all the bounds of individual 'presence' and speech. 27

  32. Deconstruction: Theory and Practice • In practice, however, his theorizing leans above the system of meaning that sustains it. 27 • Derrida's line of attack is to pick out such loaded metaphors and show how they work to support a whole powerful structure of presuppositions. 28 • Derrida sees a whole metaphysics at work behind the privilege granted to speech in Saussure's methodology.28 • Voice becomes a metaphor of truth and authenticity, a source of self-present 'living' speech as opposed to the secondary lifeless emanations of writing. 28

  33. Deconstruction: Theory and Practice • In speaking one is able to experience (supposedly) an intimate link between sound and sense, an inward and immediate realization of meaning which yields itself up without reserve to perfect, transparent understanding. 28

  34. Ferdinand de Saussure • Suassure • But this rather naive approach can bring us near the truth by showing us that the linguistic unit is a double entity, one formed by the associating of two terms. 842 • We have seen in considering the speaking-circuit that both terms involved in the linguistic sign are psychological and are united in the brain by an associative bond. 842 • The linguistic sign unites, not a thing and a name, but a concept and a sound-image. 842

  35. Ferdinand de Saussure • Suassure • The latter [the sound-image] is not the material sound, a purely physical thing, but the psychological imprint of the sound, the impression that it makes on our senses. 842 • The sound-image is sensory, and if I happen to call it "material," it is only in that sense, and by way of opposing it to the other term of the association, the concept, which is generally more abstract. 842

  36. Ferdinand de Saussure • Without moving our lips or tongue, we can talk to ourselves or recite mentally a selection of verse. • The linguistic sign is then a two-sided psychological entity that can be represented by the drawing: Concept Sound image

  37. Ferdinand de Saussure • Suassure • The two elements are intimately united, and each recalls the other. • Whether we try to find the meaning of the Latin word arbor or the word that Latin uses to designate the concept "tree," it is clear that only the associations sanctioned by that language appear to us to conform to reality, and we disregard whatever others might be imagined.843

  38. Ferdinand de Saussure • Suassure • I call the combination of a concept and a sound-image a SIGN,but in current usage the term generally designates only a sound-image, a word, for example (arbor, etc.). 843 • One tends to forget that arbor is called a SIGN only because it carries the concept "tree," with the result that the idea of the sensory part implies the idea of the whole. 843

  39. Ferdinand de Saussure • The Linguistic Sign: Signifier/Signified • That the idea of the sensory part implies the idea of the whole: “tree” arbor arbor

  40. Ferdinand de Saussure • Suassure • I propose to retain the word: • sign [signe] to designate the whole • and to replace concept and sound-image respectively by signified [signified and signifier [signifiant];843

  41. Ferdinand de Saussure • Suassure • the last two terms have the advantage of indicating the opposition that separates them from each other and from the whole of which they are parts. 843

  42. Borges and the Sign • Their language is complex, and resembles none other that I know. One cannot speak of “parts of speech,” as there are no sentences. Each monosyllabic word corresponds to a general idea, which is defined by its context or facial expressions. The word nrz for example, suggests dispersion or spots of one kind or another; it may mean the starry sky, a leopard, a flock of birds, smallpox, something splattered, with water and mud, the act of scattering, or the flight that follows a defeat. Hrl, on the other hand, indicates that which is compact, dense or tightly squeezed together; it may mean the tribe, the trunk of a tree, a stone, a pile of rocks, the act of piling them up, a meeting of the four witch doctors, sexual congress, or a forest.

  43. Borges and the Sign • Pronounced in another way, or with other facial expressions, it may mean the opposite. We should not be overly surprised at this: in our own tongue, the verb to cleave means to rend and to adhere. Of course, there are no sentences, even incomplete ones. (1999: 406) • It is the instability of the sign in its external relation to the referent and internal to the signifier/signified binary, and therefore to language itself, to what Borges points to here, that is, to language impossibility to guarantee signification.

  44. Deconstruction: Theory and Practice • Writing, on the contrary, destroys this ideal of pure self-presence. 28 • It obtrudes an alien, personalized medium, between utterance and understanding. 28 • It occupies a promiscuous public realm where authority is sacrificed to the vagaries and whims of textual 'dissemination'. 28

  45. Deconstruction: Theory and Practice • Writing, in short, is a threat to the deeply traditional view that associates truth with self-presence and the 'natural' language wherein it finds expression. 28 • Against this tradition Derrida argues what at first must seem an extraordinary case: thatwriting is in fact the precondition of language and must be conceived as prior to speech. 28 • Writing is the endless displacement of meaning which both governs language and places it for ever beyond the reach of a stable, self-authenticating knowledge. 29

  46. Fernando de Toro • This is a topic is present throughout I the Supreme as it becomes evident in the quotations provided below: • […] the dictionary is an osuary of empty words (Roa Bastos, 1987: 11) • All I can do is write; that is to say, deny what is alive. Kill what is dead even deader. (Roa Bastos, 1987: 92) • Whoever you are, insolent corrector of my pen, you are beginning to annoy me. You don’t understand what I write. You don’t understand that the law is symbolic. Twisted minds are unable to grasp this.

  47. Fernando de Toro • They interpret the symbols literally. And so you make mistakes and fill my margins with your scoffing self-importance. At least read me correctly. The are clear symbols/obscure symbols. (Roa Bastos, 1987: 100) • You place all your faith in scraps of paper. In writing. In bad faith. (Roa Bastos, 1987: 108) • Very shortly there won’t be anything left but this tyrannosaurian hand, which will go on writing, writing, already a fossil writing. Its scales flying off. Its sking falling off. Going on writing. (Roa Bastos, 1987: 122)

  48. Fernando de Toro • Such is the curse of words; and accursed game that obscures what it is seeking to express. (Roa Bastos, 1987: 207) • I’m going to have a go at it another way: by way of supreme weakness; by way of the dead end of the written word. (Roa Bastos, 1987: 320) • The delusion in whose toils you lie is making you swallow the dregs of that bitter elixir you call life, as you finish digging your own grave in the cemetery of the written word. (Roa Bastos, 1987: 376)

  49. Fernando de Toro • Go on writing. It has no importance, in any event. When all is said and done, what is prodigious, fearful, unknown in the human being has never yet been put into words or books, and never will be. At least so long as the malediction of language does not disappear, in the way that irregular condemnations eventually evaporate. So go ahead and write. Bury your self in letters. (Roa Bastos, 1987: 392)

  50. Fernando de Toro • De Toro • The primacy of phonocentirsm is indeed clear: • It costs Patiño an effort not to allow himself merely to coast downhill, to follow instead the uphill path of the telling and write at the same time; to hear the disparision of what he writes; to trace the sign of what his ear is taking in. To attune words to the sound of thought, which is never a solitary murmur, however intimate it may be; less still if it is the speech, the thought involved in dictating. (RoaBastos, 1987: 18)

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