Robert Con Davis and Ronald Schleifer. Contemporary Literary Criticism: Literary and Cultural Studies, fourth edition. New York:Ê Longman, ©1998.
Derrida:Ê traditional embodiments of legitimate authority have traditionally taken as self-evident their absolute "rightness," as is the case with concepts of "goodness," naturalness," reason," and "truth."Ê The same is true of more abstract versions of authority such as "altheia, transcendentality, consciousness, or conscience, God, man, and so forth" - all are assumed in the West to be self-evident givens of understanding and "correct."Ê He also noted that such concepts are necessarily defined in relation to their opposites.Ê Further, Derrida explained in "Structure, Sign, and Play," authority in the West is generally conceived as existing in a structure and thought to be the precise _center_ "at which substitution of contents, elements, or terms is no longer possible."
example of cemter:Ê Enlightenment conception of reason as the _ground_ of understanding
other ex nature as opposed to culture
Heidiger intro "time" as decisive element of way we understand the world
Derrida shows meanings and values are so mutually interdependent in local systems of thought that they continually destabilize each other and even themselves
reason itself has a history
deconstruction suggests that meaning is historical, local, and subject to change
method = disinterested use of reason\
opposite is culture - try to free from this
culture is historical and collective
thus liberation from error req liberation from culture
Enlightenment rationalism is profoundly individualist
thus unitary subject of reason who participates in universal and transhistorical truths. [322]
the opposite of Enlightenment "order" of reason is culture which is historical and collective
modern thought brings about a depreciation or displacement of conventional cultural references, of notions such as 'rut,' 'objectivity,' and so on.Ê This 'decentering,' in other words, deeply undercuts or destroys all notions of self-evident and absolute grounds on knowledge.Ê In short, as Nietzsche said, God, or any absolute reference point, really does 'die' (does become 'decentered') for the modern world."
deconstruction Is irreducibly non-simple
immediacy of "perception" and "experience" is a problem
deconstruction is a strategy of reading
start from philosophical hierarchy in which 2 opposed terms are presented as the 'superior' general case and the 'inferior' special case
i.e. Western culture's most important categories of thought
truth/error, health/disease, male/female, nature/culture, phil/lit, seriousness/play, reason/practice
certainties of grammar/uncertainties of rhetoric, man=human, woman=special case of female human being
isolate such oppositions and point out hierarchy & elevate inferior over superior
explode the inferior/superior rel
confront one interp of interpretation
transformative forms of critique
the object of deconstructing the text is to examine theprocess of its production, ther materials and their arrangement in the work [324]
the aim is to locate the point of contardiction w/in the text
composed of contradictions, "the text is no longer restricted to a single, harmonious and authoritative reading
also true of psychological subject, social expr (of ideology) or canons of positive "science/"
Each has contrary meanings
3 issues of Derrida
textuality
anything that can be known will be articulated as a text within a system of differences without positive terms (i.e. w/out a center)
textuality will always be in progress and unfinished [325]
undecidability
strategy - 2 startegic moves
reversing and reinscribing the terms of a hierarchy
radically disruptive playfulness
responsibilities toward a future created by "new modes of questioning that are also a new relation to language and tradition
play intended to subvert the most fundamental strictures of seriousness and thus to displace and contaminate the very basis of (Western) authority."
simed at producing revolutionary changes in thought
deconstructive play offers a virtual model of the continual revolution (political and intellectual) of critique in its drive to overturn the status quo and then to institute a new order.
reversal and reinscription of the usual patterns of interpretationchallenge the superiority of literature over criticism
decenters the trad Freudian version of the "subject"
Feminism
Marxist
What does it matter who is speaking? (from Beckett)
1.Ê Today's writing has freed itself from the dimension of expression
2.Ê Writing's rel to death - writing as something to ward off death
Disapearance - or death - of the writer
1.Ê the idea of the work - analyze thru structure. architecture, intrinsic form, internal relationships
Dividing line today between
those who believe they canstill locate today's discontinuities in thr historicotranscendental trad of the 19th c
those who try to free themselves once and for all from that trad [368]
author-function
historically texts, etc began to have authors when authors became subject to punishment - i.e. when texts cd be transgressive
types of texts requiring attribution - changed
what we now call literary were earlier anonymous
texts we now call scientific were accepted as true onlu bith name of author
17th or 18th c - reversal
author function result of complex operation
criteria
constant level of value
conceptual or theoretical coherence
stylistic unity
historical figure - at a certain time
i.e. author is the principle of a unity of writing - dif must be explained
Capitalism needs subjects who work by themselves
who freely exchange their labor-power for wages
It is in the epoch of capitolism that ideology emphasizes the value of indiv freedom, freedom os conscience and consumer choice
The ideology of liberal humanism assumes a world of non-contradictory ( and therefore fundamentally unalterable) individuals whose unfettered consciousness is the origin of meaning, knowledge, and action
Classic realism (still dominant in lit, film and TV drama) coincides chronologically w/ the epoch of industrial capitalism
represents world of consistent subjects, the origin of meaning, kn & action
offers the reader the position of subject
Romantic and post-Romantic poetry (Wordsworth, Victorian thru Eliot and Yeats) takes subjectivity as its central theme
developing self of the poet, his consciousness of himself as a poet, his struggle against the constraints of outer reality
the "i" is a super-subject, experiencing life at a higher level of intensity than ordinary people
absorbed in a world of selfhood, which phenomenal world nourishes or constrains
transcendency of subject is not unproblematic, but is overt
Fiction at same time deals w/ social interactions
to exclusion of subjectivity of author
impersonal narration, showing rather than telling the truth - required by end of 19th c
Drama - author is absent, shows from outside how people speak and behave
Form of classic realist text acts in conjunction w/ expressive theory and w/ ideology by interpellating the reader as subject [384]
reader judges "truth" of textC
cl realism addresses itself to readers as subjects
"Cl realism is characterized by 'illusionism,' narrative which leads to 'closure,' and a 'hierarchy of discourses' which establishes the 'truth' of the story."
Classic realist narrative (as Barthes shows) turns on the creation of enigma thru the precipitation of disorder which throws into disarray the conventional cultural and signifying systems....The story moves inevitably towards closure which is also disclosure, the dissolution of enigma thru the re-establishment of order, recognizable as a reinstatement or development of the order which is understood to have preceded the events of the story itself." [384]
reader in a position of knowingness = a pos of identification w/ the narrative voice
story depends on set of assumptions shared bet narrator and raeder, confirms transcendent knowingness of reader as subject and the "obviousness" of the shared truths
Deconstructing the text [385]
Ideology, masquerading as coherence and plentitude, is in reality inconsistent, limited, contradictory
realist text participates in this incompleteness
Object of deconstructing a text is to examine the process of its construction
to locate the point of contradiction w/in the text, the point at which it transgresses its limits
Composed of contradictions, the text is no longer restricted to a single harmonious and authoritative meaning.Ê Instead it becomes plural, open to rereading.
deconstruction locates meaning in areas which trad crit sees as marginal
in metaphores, the set of oppositions or hierarchies of terms which provide framework
identify in the wk the contrary meanings
What Is Literary Studies?
What is Literary Theory? - 1
What is Literary Theory? - 2
Deconstruction
Cultural Studies
| Home | Questions | History/Music | Prophetic Arts | World Now | Broadening |