From Structuralism to

Post-Structuralism (Deconstruction)
Constructions of Meanings and
their Radical Uncertainty
Outline
Structuralism: A Brief Review (two examples)
Poststructuralist Views of Language & Reality
Language (Polysemy) and Reality
Jacque Derrida: (1) Diffrance
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
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
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.

Examples for analysis: gender & identity
TOYOTA-VIOS 1.6-
1. Signs? Objectification of the Woman?
2. Myth vs. Reality?

Two More Examples for analysis:
gender & identity
TOYOTA-VIOS 1.6-
1. Main idea: What do you want? Vios, its everything.
2. 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. wall+glass building) the
womans flowing hair, gaze and smile are signs of the
mans self-projection of power, ease and desirability.
1. Distorted: city, the woman an ad and its
interpellation() in disguise
2. Symptom Revealed: spectacle/image society; The
TV is watching us.
Two More Examples for analysis:
gender & identity
.VISA-VISA-
()
1. Signs? Connotations? Distortion?
2. Is the woman all powerful?
Two More Examples for analysis:
gender & identity
.VISA-VISA-()
1. Signs: frame within the frame
1) of the Gothic: woman in a cape; old
mansion/computer game parlor; a secret pass;
2) of electronic game -- virtual reality with a woman
presented in double;
3) sci-fi: strong woman in black tight-fit dress,
1. Is the woman all powerful?
Apparently, the two women empower each other;
Actually, the visa card is power.
2. Distortion: money = power; game = reality
3. Symptom Revealed: everything is construction, but
the power of money and electronic game is stronger
than anything else.
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.
Poststructuralism
Keywords: constructionism floating signifier

Poststructuralism: Theory
Major Questions
1. How does poststructuralism de-center
traditional authorities?
2. 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)?
3. Why is signifier floating, meaning disseminated,
and text, an endless free play of
meanings(66)?
(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
(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)?

1. 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.

(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
(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)
Q 3: -- Why is signifier floating, meaning
disseminated, and text, an endless free
play of meanings(66)?

Note: metaphors of dandelion or seeds
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.
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?

Language/Literature as
an enclosed system



Syntagmatic/Combination
(narrative structure:
roles + actions);
metonymy
P
a
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a
d
i
g
m
a
t
i
c
/
S
e
l
e
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t
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:


Thematic structure:
Motifs, mythemes,
metaphors, etc.
Polysemy caused by context




Syntagmatic/Combination
P
a
r
a
d
i
g
m
a
t
i
c
/
S
e
l
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t
i
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:

Chinaman

+ more stereotypical
descriptions, or a fathers
advice to his son, etc.

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)
Multiple Context:

http://203.198.70.29/subject/chlt/tangci.htm
Male poet and
Waiting woman.
random samples from Internet
.
03:59

, NAPSTER,
.

(source)
Traces of other usages
Derrida: Outline
-- Jacque Derrida:
1. Prologue: Instability of Meaning
(discussed)
2. Writing as Diffrance
3. Center as Transcendental Signified
and Binarism
4. Deconstruction: Literary Practice
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.
Writing and Diffrance
Language a system of difference of
Diffrance.
* 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)
Writing and Diffrance (2)
Diffrance:
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.
Writing and Diffrance
The chain of signification:
(1) symbolization or mythologizing
Signifier 1
(rose)
Signified
1
(flower)
Signified
2
(love)
Signified 2
(rose=love)
Signified 3
(rose=
woman in
love)
Signified 4
(rose = weak,
vain &
dependent
woman in love)
The other Americans
Other Skin colors
Other Racial Features
What they did
Writing and Diffrance: chain of
signification (1)
1.
Signifier

Signified 2 Signified 3

Asian People Yellow
Exotic (Evil or Weak)
White Americans White
Innocent, Strong
and Civilized
White Mans Burden
Manifest Destiny
God
Writing and Diffrance: Chain of
Signification (2)


Re-contextualization; traces kept. e.g.
1. Pharmakon: 1). poison,
2). Pharmacy
2. ;
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?
The Transcendental Signified
1. (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.
2. The unmoved mover e.g.
God (transcendental signified)
The Bible (transcendental signifier)

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.
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.
Ways of Questioning the
Hierarchical Binaries
1. 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.
Deconstruction: practices
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)
(textbook p. 131)
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.
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]).

Deconstruction of
Binary Opposition: Example (2)
Ode on Melancholy
Binaries:
1. No to active pursuits of sleep or suicide (
drowns the soul, turns it passive);
2. Savor the contraries and transience in life;
3. 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.
Undecidability: example 3


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

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.
<Gap>
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 )
Undecidability: example 4
past
life
the human
fear
present
death
the cosmic
peacefulness and
regularity
A slumber did my spirit seal --
Contradictions between
Gap: What happened in between the
present and the past?
Whose peacefulness is it? Whose death
and when?
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 diffrance: desired
object in unattainable, constantly
deferred and replaced; colonial
mimicry disseminate/de-center
colonial authority.
4. diffrance and temporary closure.
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,
Assignments
1. "The Blind Man"
2. Chap 6 (123-33)
3. Into the Woods