In structuralism, the individuality of the text disappears in favor
of looking at patterns, systems, and structures. Some structuralists (and
a related school of critics, called the Russian Formalists) propose that
ALL narratives can be charted as variations on certain basic universal
narrative patterns.
In this way of looking at narratives, the author is canceled out, since the text is a function of a system, not of an individual. The Romantic humanist model holds that the author is the origin of the text, its creator, and hence is the starting point or progenitor of the text. Structuralism argues that any piece of writing, or any signifying system, has no origin, and that authors merely inhabit pre-existing structures (langue) that enable them to make any particular sentence (or story)--any parole. Hence the idea that "language speaks us," rather than that we speak language. We don't originate language; we inhabit a structure that enables us to speak; what we (mis)perceive as our originality is simply our recombination of some of the elements in the pre-existing system. Hence every text, and every sentence we speak or write, is made up of the "already written."
By focusing on the system itself, in a synchronic analysis, structuralists
cancel out history. Most insist, as Levi-Strauss does, that structures
are universal, therefore timeless. Structuralists can't account for change
or development; they are uninterested, for example, in how literary forms
may have changed over time. They are not interested in a text's production
or reception/consumption, but only in the structures that shape it.
In erasing the author, the individual text, the reader, and history,
structuralism represented a major challenge to what we now call the "liberal
humanist" tradition in literary criticism.
The HUMANIST model presupposed:
There are two key points to the idea of deconstruction. First is that
we're still going to look at systems or structures, rather than at individual
concrete practices, and that all systems or structures have a CENTER, the
point of origin, the thing that created the system in the first place.
Second is that all systems or structures are created of binary pairs or
oppositions, of two terms placed in some sort of relation to each.
Derrida says that such systems are always built of the basic units structuralism
analyzes--the binary opposition or pair--and that within these systems
one part of that binary pair is always more important than the other, that
one term is "marked" as positive and the other as negative. Hence in the
binary pair good/evil, good is what Western philosophy values, and evil
is subordinated to good. Derrida argues that all binary pairs work this
way--light/dark, masculine/feminine, right/left; in Western culture, the
first term is always valued over the second.
In his most famous work, Of Grammatology, Derrida looks particularly
at the opposition speech/writing, saying that speech is always seen as
more important than writing. This may not be as self-evident as the example
of good/evil, but it's true in terms of linguistic theories, where speech
is posited as the first or primary form of language, and writing is just
the transcription of speech. Derrida says speech gets privileged because
speech is associated with presence--for there to be spoken language, somebody
has to be there to be speaking.
No, he doesn't take into account tape recordings and things like that. Remember, a lot of what these guys are talking about has roots in philosophic and linguistic traditions that predate modern technology--so that Derrida is responding to an opposition (speech/writing) that Plato set up, long before there were tape recorders. Just like poor old Levi-Strauss talks about how, in order to map all the dimensions of a myth, he'd have to have "punch cards and an IBM machine," when all he'd need now is a home computer.
Anyway, the idea is that the spoken word guarantees the existence of somebody doing the speaking--thus it reinforces all those great humanist ideas, like that there's a real self that is the origin of what's being said. Derrida calls this idea of the self that has to be there to speak part of the metaphysics of PRESENCE; the idea of being, or presence, is central to all systems of Western philosophy, from Plato through Descartes (up to Derrida himself). Presence is part of a binary opposition presence/absence, in which presence is always favored over absence. Speech gets associated with presence, and both are favored over writing and absence; this privileging of speech and presence is what Derrida calls LOGOCENTRISM.
You might think here about the Biblical phrase "Let there be light" as an example. The statement insures that there is a God (the thing doing the speaking), and that God is present (because speech=presence); the present God is the origin of all things (because God creates the world by speaking), and what God creates is binary oppositions (starting with light/dark). You might also think about other binary oppositions or pairs, including being/nothingness, reason/madness, word/silence, culture/nature, mind/body. Each term has meaning only in reference to the other (light is what is not dark, and vice-versa), just as, in Saussure's view, signifiers only have meaning--or negative value--in relation to other signifiers. These binary pairs are the "structures," or fundamental opposing ideas, that Derrida is concerned with in Western philosophy.
Because of the favoring of presence over absence, speech is favored over writing (and, as we'll see with Freud, masculine is favored over feminine because the penis is defined as a presence, whereas the female genitals are defined as absence).
It's because of this favoring of presence over absence that every system
(I'm referring here mostly to philosophical systems, but the idea works
for signifying systems as well) posits a CENTER, a place from which the
whole system comes, and which guarantees its meaning--this center guarantees
being as presence. Think of your entire self as a kind of system--everything
you do, think, feel, etc. is part of that system. At the core or center
of your mental and physical life is a notion of SELF, of an "I", of an
identity that is stable and unified and coherent, the part of you that
knows who you mean when you say "I". This core self or "I" is thus the
CENTER of the "system", the "langue" of your being, and every other part
of you (each individual act) is part of the "parole". The "I" is the origin
of all you say and do, and it guarantees the idea of your presence, your
being.
Western thought has a whole bunch of terms that serve as centers to
systems --being, essence, substance, truth, form, consciousness, man, god,
etc. What Derrida tells us is that each of these terms designating the
center of a system serves two purposes: it's the thing that created the
system, that originated it and guarantees that all the parts of the system
interrelate, and it's also something beyond the system, not governed by
the rules of the system. This is what he talks about as a "scandal" discovered
by Levi-Strauss in Levi-Strauss's thoughts about kinship systems. (This
will be covered in detail in the next lecture).
What Derrida does is to look at how a binary opposition--the fundamental
unit of the structures or systems we've been looking at, and of the philosophical
systems he refers to--functions within a system. He points out that a binary
opposition is algebraic (a=~b, a equals not-b), and that two terms can't
exist without reference to the other--light (as presence) is defined as
the absence of darkness, goodness the absence of evil, etc. He doesn't
seek to reverse the hierarchies implied in binary pairs--to make evil favored
over good, unconscious over consciousness, feminine over masculine. Rather,
deconstruction wants to erase the boundaries (the slash) between oppositions,
hence to show that the values and order implied by the opposition are also
not rigid.
Here's the basic method of deconstruction: find a binary opposition.
Show how each term, rather than being polar opposite of its paired term,
is actually part of it. Then the structure or opposition which kept them
apart collapses, as we see with the terms nature and culture in Derrida's
essay. Ultimately, you can't tell which is which, and the idea of binary
opposites loses meaning, or is put into "play" (more on this in the next
lecture). This method is called "Deconstruction" because it is a combination
of construction/destruction--the idea is that you don't simply construct
new system of binaries, with the previously subordinated term on top, nor
do you destroy the old system--rather, you deconstruct the old system by
showing how its basic units of structuration (binary pairs and the rules
for their combination) contradict their own logic.
©1997 Mary Klages