Learning: Derrida and Deconstruction

 Hello Readers!!

In this blog my Flipped Learning task on Derrida and his Deconstruction Theory given by our prof. Badad sir. 

Why is it difficult to define Deconstruction?

Derrida is a difficult philosopher to read it and he refused to defined. He say that it is possible to define something? What are the limits or to what extent can we define something? That is reason to difficult to define Deconstruction

Is Deconstruction a negative term?

Because Derrida says that it is not destructive activity. He say that it is a inquiring the condition or what causes of philosophical system to stand with intellectual system.

How does Deconstruction happen on its own?

Deconstruction is an inquiring into the limit of philosophical system and it's coherence. Then we see that the conditions which produced of philosophy system are the same condition. This is a stract that is one reason to Deconstruction happened on its own

The influence of Heidegger on Derrida

Yes, Heidegger influence on Derrida. His philosophy deal with some important themes which Derrida continues in his own philosophy. and Heidegger want to destroy or dismantle the antire tradition of western philosophy by pursuing the question of being of being.

2.2. • Derridean rethinking of the foundations of Western philosophy

Man is decentered from the language.and focusing the language and the tendency in the western philosophy to repress or neglect writing or as Derrida call it, Phonocentricism of the western metaphysics the tendency to privillege presence our absence.

3.1. • Ferdinand de Saussureian concept of language (that meaning is arbitrary, relational, constitutive)

Saussureian concept of arbitrary means to writing is that relationship between the word and it's meaning is not natural but it's conventional.example is word sister has no natural relation with the person but it is just a convention that connects the word sister with the person. It means arbitrariness means any words can be used to taked about anything.

3.2. • How Derrida deconstructs the idea of arbitrariness?

Derrida read the concept of arbitrariness by Saussure, he saying that meaning of word is usually thought of as something over in mind but Derrida point out meaning of the word nothing but another word.

3.3. • Concept of metaphysics of presence

Heidegger pointed out by metaphysics of presence when we consider being of something we often connect it with its present. We seem to connect present it proof of its existence.

4.1. • Derridean concept of DifferAnce

Differ does not have audible diffrence but it's became difficult to understand. And here Derrida questioning is what do u means by understanding and attention to the fact or what we looked in. He say that to we stop to asking the meaning of word.

4.2. • Infinite play of meaning

One word leads to another word and that word leads to yet another and finally we never come out of the dictionary.

4.3. • DIfferAnce = to differ + to defer

Derrida combines two terms differ and defer because in French word is used to imply both that is to defer. Saussureian sign is equal to signifier which signifies something but derridan sign is free play of signifiers, signifying nothing. meaning is always postponed.

5.1. • Structure, Sign and Play in the Discourse of the Human Sciences

In this essay is actually a critique of Levi Strauss and a very famous anthropologist who made structuralism very popular. We means not outright rejection of criticism of structuralism but going beyond by criticism structuralism.

5.2. • Explain: "Language bears within itself the necessity of its own critique."

It is a very fascinating statement to inquiring of Deconstruction. When it began as a criticism or attack on metaphysics on one hand and science on other. science was a predominant way of getting knowledge in the west. Structuralism began as a critic of the assumptions of science as well as metaphysics. 

6.1. • The Yale School: the hub of the practitioners of Deconstruction in the literary theories

 The Yale School play a vital role in propogation of Derrida's Deconstruction in America and in to whole world. Deconstruction was going on to Yale it became a kind of new thing and it became a fascinating and people associated with this department. The four names Paul De Man, J Hills Miller, Harold Bloom and Geoffrey Hartman those are very popular in America.

6.2. • The characteristics of the Yale School of Deconstruction

First characteristics is looking at literature as rhetorical or figuretive construct 

Second, they questions both the aesthetic as well as formalist approach to literature, and also questions the historicist or sociologist approch to literature.

Third is Yale School is their preoccuption with Romanticism.

7.1. • How other schools like New Historicism, Cultural Materialism, Feminism, Marxism and Postcolonial theorists used Deconstruction?

Post colonial theories fascinated by its ability to show that the texts or the discourse of the colonizers can be deconstructed from within narratives.

Feminist theorist interested because it deal with how to subvert the binary between male and female to subvert patriarchal discourse.

Cultural materialist interested in it to emphasize the materiality of language. And language is material construct and it has got ability to unmask the hidden ideological agendas.

The text is historical, and history is textual.

Questions:-

1. Derrida say that Deconstruction is not destructive activity but an inquiry into the foundation? Why?  Explained.

2. What is the meaning of Phonocentricism and Logocentricism?

3. What is the understanding of Derrida in metaphysics and science in his own practice of structuralism?

4. What happens is that language is unrealiable tool for communication?