Post-Structuralism and Deconstruction?
--language does not merely reflect or record the world; it shapes it, so that how we see is what we see
--we exist in a universe of radical uncertainty, since we can have no access to any fixed point or landmark which is beyond linguistic processing
--in post-structuralism there are no fixed intellectual reference points
--we live in a “decentered universe,” one in which, by definition, we cannot know where we are, since all previous concepts to define a stable center have been destabilized. There are no absolutes or fixed points, and thus our universe is inherently relativistic
--there is an almost universally felt anxiety that language is inexact, that language will express things we hadn’t intended, or convey the wrong impression, or betray our ignorance
--inevitably, there is some breakdown between the signifier, the signified, and the receiver
--Nietzsche’s famous remark is often quoted: “There are no facts, only interpretations.”
--Structuralists accept that the world is constructed through language, in the sense that we do no have access to reality other than through the linguistic medium; post-structuralists take this notion much further, since they reject the notion that language is stable and orderly. Post-structuralism believe that we are never fully in control of language, that meanings can never be set in unchanging contexts. Linguistic anxiety is a keynote of the post-structuralist outlook.
--post-strucutalism accepts a radical break from the past (modernist revolt against the 19th c, Nietzsche, Heidegger, Freud, WWI, WWII, Holocaust, nuclear warfare)
--deconstruction is the critical practice of post-structuralism. In deconstruction literary texts are discussed as emblems of the decentered universe. Texts previously regarded as unified artistic creations are revealed to be fragmented, self-divided, and centerless
--Derrida’s famous remark is often quoted: “There is nothing outside the text.”
--Reading and interpretation, then, are not just reproducing what the writer thought and expressed in the text. Critical reading must produce the text, since there is nothing behind it to reconstruct. Thus, the reading has to be deconstructive rather than reconstructive.
--a deconstructive reading—pulling at a loose thread; all texts are characterized by disunity rather than unity, and by reading against the grain—reading a text against itself—discontinuities will be revealed
--deconstruction demonstrates that any given text has irreconcilably contradictory meanings, rather than being a unified, logical, coherent whole
--all language is characterized by “deferred presence,” that is to say, the thing being signified is never actually present, and every signified concept invokes others in an endless stream of connotations
--deconstruction emphasizes textual undecidability and indeterminacy