From Structuralism to Post-Structuralism (Deconstruction) - PowerPoint PPT Presentation

About This Presentation
Title:

From Structuralism to Post-Structuralism (Deconstruction)

Description:

2) Objectification of the Woman? ... Signs: frame within the frame ... of electronic game -- virtual reality with a woman presented in double; ... – PowerPoint PPT presentation

Number of Views:8245
Avg rating:3.0/5.0
Slides: 46
Provided by: engFj
Category:

less

Transcript and Presenter's Notes

Title: From Structuralism to Post-Structuralism (Deconstruction)


1
From Structuralism to Post-Structuralism
(Deconstruction)
  • Constructions of Meanings and their Radical
    Uncertainty

2
Outline
  • Structuralism A Brief Review (two examples)
  • Poststructuralist Views of Language Reality
  • Language (Polysemy) and Reality
  • Jacque Derrida (1) Différance
  • Jacque Derrida (2) Transcendental Signified
  • Deconstruction Practice
  • e.g. Wordsworths I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud
    Keats Ode on Melancholy
  • e.g. Refusal To Mourn The Death, By Fire, Of A
    Child In London
  • Derrida in Context Self-Conscious/Deconstructing
    Texts

Assignments
3
Key words for Structualist and Semiotic
approaches
  • I. Following language as a model
  • II. Disclosing the deep/basic structure of a
    text, which is a (combination or selection)
    system of meaning composed of basic elements such
    as
  • -- binaries, or semiotic rectangles,
  • -- roles/actant and functions,
  • -- mytheme,
  • -- narrator- narratee,
  • -- signs or signification on different levels
    (signifier and signified). ? Roland Barthes
    Semiotics

4
Semiotics Some Key Concepts
  • Culture is composed of different languages, or
    systems of signs
  • Myth (or connotation) is constructed by emptying
    out or distorting the signs original meanings
    (denotation)
  • Myth is seductive, and its is apparently natural
    and innocent.

5
Examples for analysis gender identity
  • TOYOTA-VIOS 1.6-?????
  • Signs? Objectification of the Woman?
  • Myth vs. Reality?

6
Two More Examples for analysis gender identity
  • TOYOTA-VIOS 1.6-?????
  • Main idea What do you want? Vios, its
    everything.
  • Signs
  • 1) the car Silver gray colors, in a clean but
    empty city with glass buildings ? easy, fast and
    smooth driving? luxury and power (The whole city
    is emptied out.)
  • 2) Objectification of the Woman? A woman larger
    than life (with the power of T.V. wallglass
    building) ? the womans flowing hair, gaze and
    smile are signs of the mans self-projection of
    power, ease and desirability.
  • Distorted city, the woman? an ad and its
    interpellation(??) in disguise
  • Symptom Revealed spectacle/image society The
    TV is watching us.

7
Two More Examples for analysis gender identity
  • .??VISA??-VISA??????-??(??)?
  • Signs? Connotations? Distortion?
  • Is the woman all powerful?

8
Two More Examples for analysis gender identity
  • .??VISA??-VISA??????-??(??)?
  • Signs frame within the frame
  • of the Gothic woman in a cape old
    mansion/computer game parlor a secret pass
  • of electronic game -- virtual reality with a
    woman presented in double
  • sci-fi strong woman in black tight-fit dress,
  • Is the woman all powerful?
  • Apparently, the two women empower each other
  • Actually, the visa card is power.
  • Distortion money power game reality
  • Symptom Revealed everything is construction, but
    the power of money and electronic game is
    stronger than anything else.

9
Poststructuralism
  • Keywords constructionism ? floating signifier
  • -- a major theoretical school in the postmodern
    age which radicalizes structuralist views of
    language by seeing signified as signifier, and
    separating signs from reality.
  • -- in conflict with many other theoretical
    schools such as Marxism, Feminism and
    Postcolonialism, but also get to be combined with
    them
  • -- the areas of its influences range from arts,
    politics to popular culture.

10
Poststructuralism
  • Keywords constructionism ? floating signifier

11
Poststructuralism Theory
  • Major Questions
  • How does poststructuralism de-center traditional
    authorities?
  • Why is the author dead? Why is there nothing
    outside the text? Why is reality textual, and
    individual, a product of social and linguistic
    forces. . . a tissue of textualities (64-65)?
  • Why is signifier floating, meaning
    disseminated, and text, an endless free play of
    meanings(66)?

12
(1) How does poststructuralism de-center
traditional authorities?
  • the traditional centers or foundations of our
    lives -- e.g. Truth, Humanity, Family, Nation,
    History, Reality, God, Creativity, Author ? and
    their stable meanings
  • Physical analogy the ground beneath our feet
    fixed landmark with which we feel stability and
    measure the other things
  • With their views of languages fluidity, all the
    above fixed meanings are destabilized.
  • ? Physical analogy our perception on a moving
    train of another moving train//multiple
    signifying chains intersecting with one another?
    textuality

13
(2) Why is the author dead?
  • Why is reality textual, and individual, a
    product of social and linguistic forces. . . a
    tissue of textualities (64-65)?
  • Self No longer a unified self in a system of
    relations with multiple Subject Positions
  • ? Our social existence is modeled after language
    as a system of relations (e.g. kinship gender)
  • ? different languages (discourses) provide us
    with different subject positions. There are
    meanings in a text which its author is not aware
    of. ? polysemy e.g. ??????

14
(2) Why is the author dead?
  • Why is reality textual, and individual, a
    product of social and linguistic forces. . . a
    tissue of textualities (64-65)?
  • 2. Text From work, to text to (inter)textuality
  • There is nothing outside of text
  • ? No fixed boundaries no stable meanings
  • e.g. Internet and the world of ads

15
(2) Why is the author dead?
  • 3. The death of the author.
  • ? The birth of the Reader
  • 4. Readings of Meaning and Reality
  • 1) deconstruction to read against the grain to
    find textual undecidability
  • 2) postmodern self-reflexivity everything is
    representation and in need of interpretation
    (more examples later)

16
Q 3 -- Why is signifier floating, meaning
disseminated, and text, an endless free play of
meanings(66)? Note metaphors of dandelion or
seeds
17
Which of the following statements are not
ambiguous?
  • I am 40 years old.
  • The Republic of China was born on Oct. 10, 1911.
  • I love you till the end of the world.
  • ??????????
  • ??????????
  • ????????????????
  • The experience of the earthquake yesterday was
    quite uncanny.

18
Which of the following statements are not
ambiguous?
  • I am 40 years old. ? Who is this I?
  • The Republic of China was born on Oct. 10, 1911.
    ? born?
  • I love you till the end of the world
  • ? (????? can be a store name.)
  • ? love?
  • ??????????? insecticide? Vegi with blue cheese?
  • ??????????? ????

19
Language/Literature as an enclosed system
Paradigmatic/Selection
  • Syntagmatic/Combination
  • (narrative structure
  • roles actions)
  • metonymy

Thematic structure Motifs, mythemes, metaphors,
etc.
20
Polysemy caused by context
??????????
Paradigmatic/Selection
  • Syntagmatic/Combination

more stereotypical descriptions, or a fathers
advice to his son, etc.
-??????Chinaman -????/??/????/???????
21
Why is language ambiguous?
  • Why are meanings undecidable slippery?
  • 1. Polysemy Traces of other signs, other
    meanings. (e.g. national birthday ????)
  • 2. Multiple Context Reference Undecidable.
    (e.g. The end of the world )
  • 3. Meaning is not present in language it
    happens in between signifiers.
  • 4. (intention and the unconscious)

22
Multiple Context ??????
Male poet and Waiting woman.
  • ??? ???
  • ???,???????
  • ???????,??????
  • ??????,???????
  • ???????,??????
  • ??????????,?????????????,???????????????????????
    ,??????????
  • (http//203.198.70.29/subject/chlt/tangci.htm ?

23
??????(random samples from Internet?
  • ?????? ??????. ????? 0359
  • ???????????????, NAPSTER??????, ???.
  • ???,????,??????????,???????,???????? (source)

Traces of other usages
24
Derrida Outline
  • -- Jacque Derrida
  • 1. Prologue Instability of Meaning (discussed)
  • 2. Writing as Différance
  • 3. Center as Transcendental Signified and
    Binarism
  • 4. Deconstruction Literary Practice

25
Language in movement (1) Spacing
  • Movement from one Signifier to another
  • -- Meaning changed when the context is further
    revealed.
  • Comic effects in ?? old traces vs. newly defined
    meanings. (e.g. ????,???)
  • The traces of the old meanings are both present
    and absent.

26
Writing and Différance
  • Language a system of difference ? of Différance.
  • While structualists had treated binary
    oppositions as stable terms in a formal
    structure, Derrida sees them as organized in
    unstable disequilibrium. ? because of the
    presence/absence of traces
  • Derrida sees the signifieds also in a relation
    of difference, and they are turned into
    signifiers? floating signifiers.

(Textbook chap 6 p. 123 28)
27
Writing and Différance (2)
  • Différance
  • To differ
  • A sign is defined by its binary opposition to
    another sign.
  • 2. To defer.
  • The signifier (black) that is distinguished from
    the other one (white) is not completely erased
    it is only deferred, bracketed or merely put
    under erasure. It can subvert the fixed meaning
    of the sign.

28
Writing and Différance
  • The chain of signification
  • (1) symbolization or mythologizing

Signifier 1 (rose) Signified 1 (flower)
Signified 2 (love) Signified 2(roselove)
Signified 3 (rosewoman in love) Signified 4 (rose weak, vain dependent woman in love)
29
Writing and Différance chain of signification (1)
  • Signifier Signified 2
    Signified 3

Asian People
Yellow
Exotic (Evil or Weak)
Other Racial Features What they did
Other Skin colors
Innocent, Strong and Civilized
White
White Americans
The other Americans
30
Writing and Différance Chain of Signification (2)
Re-contextualization traces kept. e.g. 1.
Pharmakon 1). poison,
2). Pharmacy 2. lt?????gt??????
31
Questions
  • Do you agree that meaning is always uncertain and
    slippery? What does Derridas views of language
    shed light on our communication?
  • What is wrong with binarism(either . . . or),
    which structuralism sees as basic to our
    thinking?
  • Why are poststructuralist views of reality
    radical or de-stablising? Are they then
    destructive?

32
The Transcendental Signified
  • (Textbook p. 124) transcendental signified
    source of meaning and center of existence
    foundations the external point of reference,
    whose definition should not be changed, should
    not be relational.
  • The unmoved mover e.g.
  • God (transcendental signified)
  • The Bible (transcendental signifier)

33
The Transcendental Signified and Binaries
  • They are the upper terms in hierarchical
    binaries e.g.

Man Light Reason Culture The Public West, etc.
Woman Dark-ness Emotion Nature The Private East, etc.
34
Critique of Metaphysics logocentrism,
phallogocentrism
  • Traditional binaries are hierarchical. Should
    be reversed or questioned.
  • Logocentrism Logo as center, source, or founding
    presence of knowledge and human beings.
  • Phallogocentrism the hierarchy of Man/Woman
    sun/moon, reason/emotion, Subject/Object, etc.

35
Ways of Questioning the Hierarchical Binaries
  • The two terms are actually mutually determinant.
    e.g. The West has to define itself by
    having/rejecting an Other which is different.
  • 2. The weak term is not really weak.
  • 3. Mutually implicated One term implies its
    opposite term.

36
Deconstruction practices
(textbook p. 131)
  1. Open texts ? A text that deconstructs its own
    unity or author. (contemporary self-reflexive
    texts)
  2. Reverse the texts binaries or expose its
    undecidability or multiple meanings
  3. Study the process of signification of a sign or a
    text and find out what it tries to erase. (e.g.
    Scarlet Letter Barthesian studies of commercials)

37
Deconstruction practices (2)
  • 4. Find where the text differs from itself.
    (critical difference)? ambiguity and
    undecidability
  • 5. Radical contextualization ? to find out its
    intertextual references and thus undecidability
    of meanings.

38
Deconstruction example (1)process of
signification
  • Wordsworths poems
  • I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud
  • I cloud (Dorothy) daffodils dancing
    (daffodils weary)
  • Daffodils milky way (real flowers) ? I saw
  • Daffofils in glee (the waves) ? I recollect
    them in my minds eye bliss of solitude (the
    actual experience).

39
Deconstruction of Binary Opposition Example (2)
  • Ode on Melancholy
  • Binaries
  • No to active pursuits of sleep or suicide (?
    drowns the soul, turns it passive)
  • Savor the contraries and transience in life
  • 1. She (active) dominates where all the senses
    are quickened you ?
  • He burst joys grape against his palate
    hung as one of his trophies (passive)
  • When senses are active, the poet seems powerless
    and passive.

40
Undecidability example 3
  • Refusal To Mourn The Death, By Fire, Of A Child
    In London
  • Verbal -- paradoxes
  • Textual no fixed context in this poem
  • Linguistic (contextual) against a grave truth
    (or all the received ways of mourning) but then
    the poem still uses its rhetoric

41
Undecidability example 4
  • A slumber did my spirit seal
  • I had no human fears
  • She seemed a thing that could not feel
  • The touch of earthly years.
  •  ltGapgt
  • No motion has she now, no force
  • She neither hears nor sees
  • Rolled round in earth's diurnal course,
  • With rocks, and stones, and trees.
  • (William Wordsworth )

42
Undecidability example 4
A slumber did my spirit seal -- Contradictions
between
  • present
  • death
  • the cosmic
  • peacefulness and regularity
  • past
  • life
  • the human
  • fear

Gap What happened in between the present and
the past? Whose peacefulness is it? Whose
death and when?
43
Derridian Deconstruction in Context
  • 1. Anti-Foundationalist de-centering
  • 2. Like New Critics, deconstructionists read
    closely to find out the contradictions and gaps
    in a text, but without reconstructing them back
    to a unity.
  • 3. Other usages of différance desired object
    in unattainable, constantly deferred and
    replaced colonial mimicry disseminate/de-center
    colonial authority.
  • 4. différance and temporary closure.

44
Self-Conscious Texts in Contemporary Popular
Culture
  • Challenge the author e.g. Icicle Thief Truman
    Show
  • Exposing the (TV) frames Money for Nothing
    (Dire Strait) Ferris Beulers Day Off (1, 2)
    MTV channels commercial
  • Reality and illusion Vanilla Sky, Mulholland
    Drive
  • Parody Moulin Rouge, ????

45
Assignments
  • "The Blind Man"
  • 2. Chap 6 (123-33)
  • 3. Into the Woods
Write a Comment
User Comments (0)
About PowerShow.com