Derrida and Deconstruction

Hello everyone, in this blog i will discuss about some question about deconstruction and also give some example of deconstruction.

Deconstruction: Theory

Derrida's concept of deconstruction is based on the concept of Zerstörung or destruktion by the German philosopher Martin Heidegger (1889–1976). Deconstruction was initially a philosophical proposition but gained a foothold in literary analysis and the interpretation of texts in religion, law, and several other social institutions. Today, the term 'deconstruction' is used in mathematics and even gastronomy.

Origins of deconstruction can be found in Derrida's books Writing and Difference (1967) and Of Grammatology (1967) and the lecture titled 'Structure, Sign, and Play in the Discourse of the Human Sciences' which Derrida gave at Johns Hopkins University in a 1966 symposium.

Before we delve into the meaning of deconstruction, here are some key terms that will make understanding deconstruction slightly easier!

Formalism is a critical approach that focuses on the form of a text instead of its content and its relationship to the outside world.

Structuralism was a broader philosophy and critical approach that emerged in the early 20th century. In literary theory, structuralism focused on the structural and linguistic aspects of a text rather than what it represented.

Binary oppositions are two concepts that are set as opposites of each other. For example, light and dark, man and woman, and nature and culture.

Hierarchy is a system in which things or people are organized into different levels based on their status or importance.



Deconstruction: Meaning



Derridean deconstruction is sometimes described as bringing a literary approach to philosophy, a way of reading philosophical texts like literature, using methods of literary analysis. Irrespective of how accurate this view of deconstruction is, Derrida is now a prominent figure in literary analysis and criticism itself.
What does a Deconstructionist do?

In general, we read literary texts in order to establish unity and bring out a meaning based on our entire reading. The Deconstructionist, however, reads the text just to find the fault lines. Mostly read in fragments, a Deconstructionist’s reading of any literary text is aimed at the following:
To prove that the text does not have any singular meaning and it can be read and understood in various ways

To find out the disassociation of ideas and discontinuity of style to prove that the text is not a single unit and is rather made of different units of different kinds

To look for various kinds of breaks in the text to find out the possible repressed interpretations which could be brought out of the ‘textual silence’

Going a little deeper into Deconstruction Realm:

Peter Barry has hinted at the three levels which might be highlighted to further simplify the process of a Deconstructive reading. He identifies the three levels as:
Verbal
Textual
Linguistic
The elementary level, Verbal, is purely elementary in nature. A reader with the Deconstructive view looks at the text leisurely to find out the obvious contradictions or paradoxes or confusions. A Deconstructive reader would take the poem’s basic idea and question it. For example, if you suppose the poem Paradise Lost by John Milton to be suggesting that God does everything right and that He is just and upholds truth and righteousness, why did he create Satan anyway? And the idea of the whole poem falls flat when we think of the poem this way.

On the Textual level, Barry suggests that a close reading of the text is carried with minute details to find the instances of shifts or breaks in the narrative or the continuity of the text. These shifts are of various kinds – time, point of view, idea, word choices, or even the technical shift such as grammatical choices – change from the third person to first person (speaker) or the change in tense.

For example, if you read the part-poem, Before the World Was Made (A Woman Young and Old, published in The Winding Stair and Other Poems, 1933), you will find a clear break in the poem. It begins with someone decorating herself and then, after a certain time, suddenly trying to look at the face that was even before the world was made!
“I’m looking for the face I had
Before the world was made.”

And then the speaker thinks of looking at some man in a cold manner which might make that man feel like betrayed… and then suddenly the speaker remembers to hunt for the face which was there before the world was made. So, a break is found and there is no singular idea which is being carried in the poem by Yeats. (I Know it’s extradition of his poem. Believe me, I just don’t like the idea of Deconstruction!)

And the third one that Peter suggests is the Linguistic level. It concerns with finding the instances where the author or the poet is unsure about the powers of the medium he or she is using – that is language. For example, the instances when a poet says that no words can describe the beauty of his beloved but actually describes her beauty in the same poem.
Meaning and Difference


"The Road not Taken," is a text which rises over multiple differences; some of them are:


1- The title itself supplies the major difference in the text.


There are two roads: the road not taken and the road taken. This intended ambiguity suggests two meanings:
a- It can mean that the poem is about the road which the speaker did not take.
b- It can also mean that the poem is about the road which the speaker took which was not taken by others.
The speaker himself makes of the clause controversial:


Two roads diverged in a yellow wood, 1
And sorry I could not travel both 2
And be one traveler, long I stood 3
And looked down one as far as I could 4
To where it bent into the undergrowth; 5
Then took the other as just as fair, 6
And having perhaps the better claim,7
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;8
Though as for that the passing there, 9
Had warn them really about the same, 10




The difference which controls stanza one, will soon germinate itself in stanza two to stress the ambiguity of meanings. By talking about one road, the poet will lead the readers to speculate on the other; so as to know, from the poet, or even by their own speculation, which one is better, or whether both of them are the same. The poet, of course, could not give the readers a better claim. He does not identify the exact road intended by the speaker. Two hints help readers reach this conclusion.

The speaker took the new road because it was " grassy "and" wanted wear." However, the speaker soon hesitates again in lines 9-10 to make the two roads appear similar: Though as for that the passing there, 9 Had warn them really about the same, 10 Differences are so clear in both readings of the title. Though the title suggests that the poem is about the road not taken but the poem is about both roads. The Meaning of the text is blurred at this moment of reading.





It is clearly hinted in the text that the speaker is taking a new road which was not previously taken by him. The symbolic reading of taking the new road will prepare the reader for another level of meaning which he / she will discover through the continuous process of reading.


2- Signs and difference


Different signs are used in the text in order to suggest rich meanings. The road itself is a main sign. Roads are used in life and culture to stand for lifeline, its crises and decisions. The road in the text suggests a shift in the way of life for the speaker and shows his decision to make a new turn in it. The moral indication in this sign is clear: man must keep on developing his manner of thinking: he / she must be creative and genuine in action and thinking. One must discover truth by himself.


This idea can be generalized to stand for the American thinking and way of life. Americans are always eager to find out realities by themselves. They never imitate others. Frost is speaking the traditions of his country and summarizing the search for novelty which he finds in the people of his nation.
This is the reason why this poem became one of the major landmarks of American literature for the Americans themselves and for all readers as the poet (the seer) urges them never to imitate the others but to be (themselves) all the time. In this respect: the road not taken becomes a symbol for the call of novelty in life and newness in thinking.
The poet also uses color signs of yellow and black in the poem: Two roads diverged in a yellow wood, And sorry I could not travel both
Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both




And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.


According to the theory of deconstruction; reality is known by opposition. Earlier, structuralists talked about "binary oppositions" to argue that opposition between two things regenerates one clear idea. Deconstruction critics, on the other hand, claimed that such oppositions open the door in front of continuously changing ideas which replace each other. The color yellow is known to the readers because it is different from black. Yellow (in the poem) stands for the newly fallen leaves from Autumn trees.
While black, stands for the passing of time for these leaves. This idea suggests that realities change and replace as time passes. Being very sensitive, the poet uses every possible element of nature to recreate his ideas in the minds of the readers; this is why he uses this Autumnal setting to cover the rich ideas of the poem.


The speaker argues that he took the road of the yellow leaves because it is new and suggests a genuine experience. However, when the speaker took the new road, the road itself will be no more new. Its leaves themselves will turn black because the speaker has already trodden on them. The road not taken then will be the road taken and in such manner the ideas keep on replacing each other, and that is the spirit of deconstruction.


Another important sign in the text is the repeated use of the pronoun (I). The speaker in the poem repeated the pronoun (I) many times, while he mentioned (the other) only once. Such a repetition of the first person pronoun suggests the subjective experience of the speaker. The (I) is associated with the road not taken while (the other) symbolizes the road taken by other people.


Searching for novelty is not a new method of thinking or a recent way of life for the Americans. Such American philosophers like Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, Nathaniel Hawthorne, and Herman Melville, who were considered to be the fathers of the American thought, insisted on the private and special American experience and way of life. Emerson once remarked: "We have listened too long to the courtly muses of Europe. We will walk on our own feet; we will work with our own hands; and we will speak our new minds." 6 In one of his maxims Emerson also stressed the importance of the freshness of thought when he philosophized: " Insist on yourself; never imitate." 7 By (yourself) Emerson called every American citizen to depend on his experience to create the pure genuine collective experience of the American Nation. In our poem, Frost repeats Emerson when he insists on novelty and the continuous updating of reality


in a great many of Frost's poems we find ourselves in a diminished version of an Emersonian world. The familiar Emersionian emphases are here – the concern- -traction on the individual searching for himself and for meaning, on nature as resource, on immediate experience as a way to some kind of truth.8


In "The Road not Taken," Frost concludes the poem with the following stanza:


I shall be telling this with a sigh Somewhere ages and ages hence: Two roads diverged in a wood, and I-- I took the one less traveled by, And that has made all the difference.


The newness of thought and the novelty of experience is the main idea in the above stanza and in the whole text. This is why Frost insisted on the repetition of the pronoun (I) to the point that he made of it a clear sign in the text. The individual search for reality is clear; the impact of nature is also interesting in the poem.


Of course, in the poems of Frost, we find ourselves in a diminished Emersionian world because Frost, unlike Emerson, is not a transcendentalist thinker. Emerson looked at things from the philosopher's point of view, while Frost looked at things with the vision of a poet. Both of the two visions are creative but the philosopher's vision is wider. In "The Road not Taken," Frost has not gone so far as to say that the world presented in the poem is ideal one. On the contrary he does not even confirm the idea that the road which he took was the best. Simply because the aim of Frost is not to deal with abstract reality, but only to suggest a sort of reality perceived from the point of view of a poet.




No One Particular Meaning for the Text


As the reader will finish reading the text he / she will soon discover that no one particular meaning is taken for granted in the poem: in general no road is preferred to the other: Then took the other as just as fair 6 The matter is not related to roads; it is concerned with the philosophy of looking at life or making the proper decision and accepting the consequences of the new choice.
In the poem, the result of choosing, the road not traveled by, is given in the last line when the speaker ends the poem by telling the readers about the difference resulted from taking the new road: And that has made all the difference. According to the context of the poem; the speaker in the text talks about a positive difference because of the following reasons:


a- The speaker is happy with his private experience and he insists on it to the point that he repeats the pronoun
(I) 9 times: two of them at the end of the poem: one at the end of line 19 and at the other at the beginning of line 20. He even appears ready to accept all the consequences which may result from his choice.
b- The experience was very rich to the point that it affected the life of the speaker who remembers it and talks about it, though it took place long time ago: "ages and ages hence."
c- Indirectly the speaker invited the readers to try his experience of choosing genuine and new methods in thinking and in living. Of course, it is very clear in the poem that the road in the text is used in a symbolic manner. It stands for lifeline.


At this point the reader feels that the speaker in the poem is very happy with his choice, but as this idea is about to install itself in the mind of the reader, it is soon deconstructed when the word (sigh) soon forces its impact on the previous understanding of the text: I shall be telling this with a sigh


Conclusion


"The Road not Taken," is a poem which is read with its greatness inside it. It is a great poem because the poet himself is outstanding. Some critics believe that Frost's poetry: "transcends the greatness of American poetry and the greatness of Western Civilization in general."10 This greatness is clearly revealed in the poem.

Short story by R.K.Narayan

 Hello everyone, in this blog i will discuss about some questions related to R.K.Narayan short story.

 Question 1:- explore the role of teacher and student in the short story 'Crime and Punishment '

Introduction 

R K Narayan mingles humour, sarcasm, irony and a serious undertone in his story. He portrays his characters, in a vivid and realistic manner, and they seem to spring up from the society around us. The hopes and dreams of the parents, the poverty of the school master which makes him take tuition class after six hours of working in the school, the mischievous nature of the boy, the silly mistakes that they commit, the dilemma the teacher faces, the predicament of the boy at the end, all are finely woven together.

Question 1:-Dynamic role of teacher and student in crime and punishment by R.K.Narayan

The teacher in the story “Crime and Punishment” by R.K. Narayan is a hardworking man. He teaches 6 hours in the school and then he comes to teach the small boy in the nursery for just 30 rupees a month. He has to work for three hours in the nursery teaching a gorilla of a child. This shows the teacher is very poor. Otherwise he would not come to teach such a mischievous imp after his normal school hours. 

The teacher suffered at the hands of the parents also. Every day he had to listen to the lectures of the parents on child psychology for half an hour. The father had written a thesis on infant psychology for his M.A. The mother had studied a good deal of it for her B.A. So, both lectured to him on the same lines. It seemed that the parents of the boy thought he was made of thin glass. They pampered him a lot and they wanted the teacher also to be very kind to the boy and not to annoy him in any way. The teacher found it hard to manage the boy. The boy had a lot of love and money. 

His parents built the nursery for him. They bought him expensive toys. They even gave him a small pedal motor to move about in the garden. His cupboard was filled with chocolates and biscuits which he could eat whenever he wanted. He was a highly pampered, spoilt child. The teacher could lose his temper when tempted too much. He slaps the boy because the boy persisted in making the same mistake in spite of the corrections so many times. The hard slapping made a red mark on the cheek of the boy. The boy used that mark to blackmail the teacher. 

He teacher had to play with the boy acting as a station master. Then the train stops running and the boy wants him to repair it. But the teacher is not at all mechanical minded and he can’t do that. Then the boy makes him tell stories. He tells the story of the tiger and the bison and the story of AN Baba and 40 thieves. The boy wants to hear the story of the tiger and bison again. When the teacher refuses the boy runs home, the teacher in hot pursuit. The teacher has good presence of mind. 

When the father asks why they are running about, the teacher says they are just playing about to keep up their spirits. The teacher can lie if there is a need! Poor teacher! He has to suffer so much for getting an extra amount of Rs.30 per month! I think he represents many teachers in our society who do not get a decent salary and have to nd others ways of making both ends.

Question 2:- write a analysis of short story 'An Astrologer Days?

An Astrologer’s Day’ is a story from the Indian author R. K. Narayan’s 1943 collection Malgudi Days. The Malgudi of the collection’s title is a fictional city in India, where all of the stories in the collection take place. The opening story in the book, ‘An Astrologer’s Day’ is about an unnamed astrologer who is confronted by a stranger who questions his abilities.

The story is about revenge, the past, and the reasons why we make the decisions we make in our lives. If you find this analysis helpful, we also recommend this discussionNarayan’s story is a short tale with a twist, and its plot is neat in the way it brings together its several strands. We learn at the end of ‘An Astrologer’s Day’ that the title character only left home and became an astrologer in the first place because he feared he had killed Guru Nayak after they drunkenly quarrelled. That one moment of anger determined the subsequent path of his life, and forced him to move to a new town and to alter his identity, so nobody from his village would chance to recognise him.

But he is able to recognise Guru Nayak when this figure from his youth turns up one night. Faced with a tricky customer who is sceptical of his abilities (quite rightly, it turns out, since the astrologer is essentially a blagger), he is backed into a corner and only saved from humiliation when he recognises his client as the very figure from his past who had set his life on its subsequent course.

This chance encounter is significant because, oddly enough, it ends up doing exactly what an encounter with an astrologer is meant to do: it gives the client clarity regarding his future, and he is now happy to return to his village, safe in the knowledge that his wrongdoer is dead.

Of course, this ‘knowledge’ is actually lies, but Narayan appears to be suggesting that the astrologer’s actions, performed out of cowardice and a desire to save his own skin, also avert the wrongful execution of vengeance. It is better for Guru Nayak to believe his would-be murderer dead and let go of the past, after all these years.

Similarly, the astrologer’s recognition of Nayak enables him to assume the role of a genuine astrologer, if only for one night, and speak with the air of an oracle or seer. Nayak is utterly convinced that the man is genuine clairvoyant, after he revealed he knew so much about his life. The astrologer is thus given a chance to be relieved of the burden of guilt he has carried around with him for all these years.

In ‘An Astrologer’s Day’, Narayan makes effective use of light and dark symbolism. But light can be misleading as well as illuminating. At the beginning of the story, Narayan’s third-person narrator tells us that the ‘gleam’ in the astrologer’s eyes is often interpreted by clients as a sign of his ‘prophetic light’, but is in reality his keen eyes searching for more customers.

We are told that the lack of ‘municipal lighting’ in the area is part of its charm: the light comes from the nearby shops, and not all of these have their own lights, so the street is plunged in a curious mixture of light and shadow.

This is symbolic of the story itself, where truth and lies, like those lights and shadows, are conflated and confused. It is significant that it is when the stranger (later identified as Guru Nayak) lights his cheroot pipe that the astrologer recognises him as the old associate from his past: the light here illuminates his old adversary but Nayak himself remains in the dark concerning the true identity of his interlocutor.

Derrida and Deconstruction

         Hello everyone, in this blog i will discuss about some questions related to Derrida and Di instruction. This task was given by Dilip Barad Sir. It is a part of flipped learning activities. 

Question 1:-Discuss the influence of structuralism on Derrida's development of the deconstruction theory."

Answer by chat GPT

Structuralism greatly influenced Derrida's development of the deconstruction theory. Structuralism, a theoretical framework popular in the mid-20th century, emphasized the study of underlying structures and binary oppositions in language and culture. Derrida engaged with structuralism's ideas, particularly those of linguist Ferdinand de Saussure.

However, Derrida critiqued the structuralist emphasis on stable binary oppositions, arguing that these divisions were not as fixed as they seemed. He proposed that these oppositions were characterized by "differance," suggesting that meanings were always deferred and never fixed. This insight led to his development of deconstruction, a method aimed at revealing the inherent complexities, contradictions, and uncertainties within texts and language. Deconstruction challenges the idea of a single, stable interpretation, promoting a more fluid and multi-layered understanding of meaning. Thus, while Derrida was influenced by structuralism, he ultimately diverged from its foundational assumptions, giving rise to his groundbreaking theory of deconstruction.

Question 2:-In what ways has Derrida's theory of deconstruction impacted fields beyond philosophy, such as literary criticism, cultural studies, and art?"

Answer by chat GPT 

Jacques Derrida's theory of deconstruction has had a profound impact on various fields beyond philosophy, including literary criticism, cultural studies, and art. In literary criticism, deconstruction challenges traditional notions of text interpretation by emphasizing the multiplicity of meanings and the instability of language. This approach has led to more nuanced analyses of literary works, uncovering hidden layers of meaning and contradictions.

In cultural studies, deconstruction's focus on dismantling binary oppositions and revealing underlying power structures has provided a framework for examining how societal norms, identities, and hierarchies are constructed and maintained. This has influenced discussions about race, gender, sexuality, and other social dynamics.

Within the realm of art, deconstruction has encouraged artists to question traditional artistic conventions and challenge established norms. It has inspired the creation of works that explore fragmentation, ambiguity, and the blurring of boundaries between different forms and mediums.

Overall, Derrida's deconstruction has encouraged critical thinking that goes beyond surface interpretations, fostering a more nuanced understanding of texts, cultural phenomena, and artistic creations across various disciplines.

Question 3:-How does Derrida's deconstruction challenge traditional notions of language and meaning, and what implications does this have for our understanding of texts and interpretation?

Answer by chat GPT 

Derrida's deconstruction challenges traditional notions of language and meaning by asserting that language is inherently unstable and that meaning is not fixed. He argues that texts contain inherent contradictions and ambiguities that resist straightforward interpretation. This challenges the idea that language conveys a singular, objective truth. Instead, deconstruction highlights the role of context, perspective, and reader in shaping meaning. This has implications for how we understand texts; they become open to multiple interpretations rather than having a single, definitive meaning. Interpretation is seen as a dynamic process influenced by the reader's biases and cultural context, leading to a more nuanced appreciation of the complexity of language and communication.