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.