P-204 Assignment

Structure Sign and Play in the Discourse of the Human Sciences

Name-Daya Vaghani

Paper- Cultural Studies

Roll no-06

Enrollment no-3069206420200017

Email id- dayavaghani2969@gmail.com

Batch-2020-22 (MA Sem-III)

Submitted to- S. B. Gardi Department of English,

Maharaja Krishnakumarsinhji Bhavnagar University

👉Introduction

Jacques Derrida is a French philosopher, was born on July 15, 1930 in Algiers of Algeria, the then French colony. He is famously known as the father of Deconstruction. He has published more than 40 books on various topics such as anthropology, sociology, semiotics, jurisprudence, literary theory and so on. Some of them  of  “Grammatology”  is very  famous one that discusses   theory of deconstruction and its various aspects. Jacques Derrida was the founder of “deconstruction,” a way of criticizing not only both literary and philosophical texts but also political institutions. Although Derrida at times expressed regret concerning the fate of the word “deconstruction,” its popularity indicates the wide-ranging influence of his thought, in philosophy, in literary criticism and theory, in art and, in particular, architectural theory, and in political theory. Derrida died in Paris on October 8, 2004.

Jacques Derrida first read his paper Structure, Sign and Play in the Discourse of Human Sciences (1966) at the John Hopkins International Colloquium on “The Language of Criticism and the Sciences of Man” in October 1966 articulating for the first time a post structuralist theoretical paradigm. This conference was described by Richard Macksey and Eugenio Donata to be 

“The first time in United States when structuralism had been thought of as an interdisciplinary phenomenon”.

However, even before the conclusion of the conference there were clear signs that the ruling trans-disciplinary paradigm of structuralism had been superseded, by the importance of Derrida’s “radical appraisals of our assumptions”

Derrida begins the essay by referring to ‘an event’ which has ‘perhaps’ occurred in the history of the concept of structure, that is also a ‘redoubling’.

Derrida embraces this decentred universe of free play as liberating, just as Barthes in 'The Death of the Author' celebrates the demise of the author as ushering in an era of joyous freedom. The consequences of this new decentred universe are impossible to predict, but we must endeavour not to be among 'those who ... turn their eyes away in the face of the as yet unnamable which is proclaiming itself (Newton, p. 154).

👉Define Deconstruction:

As applied in the criticism of literature, designates a theory and practice of reading which questions and claims to "subvert" or "undermine" the assumption that the system of language provides grounds that are adequate to establish the boundaries, the coherence or unity, and the determinate meanings of a literary text. Typically, a deconstructive reading sets out to show that conflicting forces within the text itself serve to dissipate the seeming definiteness of its structure and meanings into an indefinite array of incompatible and undecidable possibilities.

A post – structuralist term referring to the new way texts are read and interpreted. It is a view of literature derived from Jacques Derrida’s theory of writing and the linguistics of Saussure. Traditional interpretation of author and suppressed the kind of subjectivity, which is often interfered with it. Traditional interpretation also assumed that it is possible to get at the meaning of the text because it is universal.

This is based on a language philosophy which stress the relativity of meaning in as much as ‘language is a system of differences without positive terms.’

It was Saussure who showed that signs differ from each other and they become meaningful through their difference which often taken the form of opposition.For ex: The red is a traffic signal it means stop while green means go. The connection between the signifier red and the signified stop is arbitrary, conventional; It is defined not by its essential properties but by the difference that distinguishes it from green or other signs.

This feature made Saussure describe language as a system of difference without any positive terms.

This interdependence leads Derrida to the hypothesis that we cannot say what any sign means without reference to its relation to other signs. In other words signifiers differ from each other and from what they signify. The differences that make them meaningful keep them from meaning anything definite. He employs terms like trace / difference / differance/ supplement to explain this interminacy or play. He also shows by the same logic that logocentrism or phonocentrism or ‘privileging’ speech over writing has no validity.

Deconstructive criticism in practice derives from this notion of the infinite regress of signifiers: and the acceptance of interminacy of meaning or freeplay. The critic or the interpreter ‘dismantles’ analyses, turns something unified back into detached fragments or part and reassembles them. He coauthors the text; constructs in a different from what he has deconstructed. Deconstructive readings show scant respect for the wholeness or integrity of individual works. He concentrates on parts relating them to material of diverse sort and may not even consider the relation of any part to the whole.

👉Deconstructing Structure and Sign:

            It can be said that Derrida begins the  text with a reference to a recent event in the history of the concept of structure, but immediately retreats to question the use of the word “event.” He is concerned that the word “event” is too loaded with meaning. Why is this a problem?Because the function of thinking about structure is to reduce the notion of events. Why is it so? Because thinking about structure must be abstract and exclude concretes such as events. Still, Derrida wants to report on something that happened, which is relevant to the concept of structure, so he allows the event to be admitted into the discussion, provided it is enclosed in quotation marks, as a word and not an actual event. The event is now identified as that of “rupture” and “redoubling” Of what? The reader will not find out until the end of the essay:

“The appearance of a new structure, of an original system, always comes about and this is the very condition of its structural specificity by a rupture with its past, its origin, and its cause”.

It is very difficult to define Deconstruction and Derrida himself denied to defined.There is the reason behind it.Then this is what has recently happened as we see in the history of the concept of structure, a nascent structure is struggling to be born out of the old one, and it collides with the old structure--its origin and cause. The reader, however, is still in the beginning of the essay and has no clue what the rupture is about.Back in the beginning of the essay, Derrida proceeds to talk about the center of a structure, which controls the structure by orienting and organizing it. Derrida admits that an unorganized structure is unconceivable and that a structure without a center is unthinkable, but he contends that the center delimits and diminishes the possible play within the structure. Play, then, is whatever goes against the organization and coherence of the structure. (Peter Barry, Beginning theory, Deconstruction, 61)

Then Derrida also talks about the paradox.Its very important to understand paradox in any work of art.Derrida now points out the paradox that the center of the structure must be both inside and outside the structure. It must be a part of the structure, but also independent of it, in order to control it. Derrida appears to delight in refuting the Law of Identity. He exclaims that since the center is both inside and outside the structure, “the center is not the center”. Nevertheless, he continues to write about the center, confident that it can exist and function while not being itself. So much for Aristotle in Derrida’s esteem.

Derrida never used a structure without a center, full of nothing but play. What types of centers were there so far? Derrida names a few, essence, existence, substance, subject, consciousness, God, man. The structure, then, is not just any structure, but a structure of concepts, that is, philosophy, with one central concept that controls it. According to Derrida, the event of the rupture occurred when there was a disruption in the series of substituting one center for another. This disruption occurred when the very idea of the structurality of the structure became the subject of somebody’s thought. However, according to Derrida, a center cannot substitute itself, it cannot be repeated. The old center could not stay and there was no new one. Then, for the first time in the history of structure, “it was necessary to begin thinking that there was no center”. Instead, “an infinite number of sign-substitutions came into play”. In the absence of a center, play finally had its chance. What does play consist of? Derrida describes how, once there was no center, language invaded the scene and everything became discourse. The signified became indistinguishable from the signifier, and the play became “a play of signification”. Signs, that is, words, could have any meaning, in a boundless, infinite play.Derrida stops short of embracing Nihilism.

In a half-hearted admission of historical events, Derrida points out several individuals who contributed to the historical elimination of the center Nietzsche’s critique of the concepts of “being” and “truth”; Freud’s critique of self-presence, consciousness, self-identity, and the subject himself; and finally, Heidegger’s radical destruction of metaphysics. Still, Derrida stops short of embracing Nihilism. He admits that it is impossible to destroy a concept without using it. It is impossible to pronounce a proposition without using the form, the logic, and the postulations of what it attempts to contest. He points out that signs must signify something.

As we also can see that why is Derrida concerned about saving the distinction between the sign and what it signifies? Because “we cannot do without the concept of the sign, for we cannot give up this metaphysical complicity without also giving up the critique we are directing against this complicity”. Like Prometheus, who was not allowed to die so that the eagle could keep eating his liver, the sign has to be kept in existence in order to keep being critiqued. The ugly face of Deconstruction finally shows itself. Derrida is characteristically blunt about the paradox that the metaphysical reduction of the sign needs what it is reducing. He goes further to say that Nietzsche, Freud, and Heidegger could destroy each other only because they worked within an inherited system of metaphysics. They inherited enough of what to destroy.

👉Incest, Myth, and Music in the Discourse of the Human Sciences:

In the connection of this topic Derrida tries to ask something that is this. Derrida asks: “What is the relevance of this formal scheme when we turn to what are called the ‘human sciences’”. Derrida brings up ethnology as the human science that can benefit from his discussion in part one. He draws out a parallel between the history of ethnology and the history of the concept of structure. Ethnology emerged as a science when European culture lost its ethnocentric notion of itself, when the central idea in Western culture, ethnocentrism, lost its control over Western culture. The critique of European ethnocentrism coincided with the destruction of the inherited metaphysics by Nietzsche, Freud, and Heidegger. Ethnology is caught up in a similar paradox as the metaphysics of deconstruction. It depends on that which it seeks to destroy. It originated in Europe and uses European concepts, but it attempts to destroy the notion of European ethnocentrism. There is no escaping the paradox: “The ethnologist accepts into his discourse the premises of ethnocentrism at the very moment when he denounces them”. This deterministic conclusion should be sufficient to invalidate ethnology as a science, but Derrida defies this paradox and continues to write about ethnology.

So we can find here that at this point Derrida brings up the opposition between nature and culture, which is an ancient philosophical issue. Derrida himself uses uses the ethnological writings of Claude Levi-Strauss as an example of the study of this opposition. Levi-Strauss discovered a scandalous paradox inherent in the nature/culture opposition. The taboo on incest, as Levi-Strauss observed, was both natural and cultural: It was a universal taboo, not particular to a specific culture, but still a part of each culture. The problem, obviously, is not with the taboo on incest, but with Levi-Strauss’s interpretation of its universality as “natural”.

Will Thomas observed in his essay is that  the natural and the universal are not synonymous. Still, Derrida uses this “paradox” in order to commend Levi-Strauss for continuing to use the nature/culture opposition in his ethnological studies while criticizing its inherent paradox. This is an example of deconstruction, which must continue to use what it is deconstructing. The “scandal” of this paradox is like a storm in a teacup, but it is sufficient for Derrida to require that the nature/culture opposition be questioned. Derrida proceeds to claim that once the opposition between nature and culture is questioned, there is no way to separate nature and culture, and they become indistinguishable.

Another successful deconstruction has taken place. At this point, Derrida proceeds to search for the origin, or originator, of language. In a conglomeration of linguistic musings, he hypothesizes that if there was such an originator, he must be a myth, because he would be “the absolute origin of his own discourse and supposedly would construct it ‘out of nothing’”. However, Derrida admitted before that signs could not exist independently of what they signify. The logical conclusion would be that language did not come into existence out of nothing, but was preceded by the concepts it was about to name. In Objectivist terms, man developed a conceptual capacity before he developed language. Nevertheless, Derrida continues to use Levi-Strauss’s writings to explain that language was preceded and created by mythology. He describes mythology as a structure with no center, that is, no origin or cause.

But wasn’t “center” defined before as an overruling concept, which mythology certainly has? In an application of the deconstructing play, the meaning of the word “center” has shifted to “origin”. The origin of mythology is indeed unknown, which qualifies it as a center-less structure. Similarly, the musical works of the archaic societies studied by Levi-Strauss have no known composers, so music qualifies as a center-less structure as well. In another shift of the meaning of “origin,” Derrida quotes Levi-Strauss’s claim that the audience of a musical performance is like “a silent performer,” so the origin of the music is indeterminate. It is in the conductor, the performers, and the audience, everywhere and nowhere. The reader may think that mythology and music still have an overruling concept, they have a meaning, but once they are defined as center-less, their meaning is doomed to be deconstructed as well: “Music and mythology bring man face to face with potential objects of which only the shadows are actualized”. Derrida wants to save philosophy for the same purpose he wanted to save the sign: for endless deconstruction.

After stating that the mythological discourse has no center, Derrida leaps to the conclusion that the philosophical or epistemological requirements of a center appear as no more than a historical illusion. Philosophy never had a real center, only an illusionary one, because it depends on language, which depends on mythology, which never had a center. Again, Derrida recoils from the inevitable Nihilism of this conclusion. He prefers to leave open the question of the relationship between philosophy and mythology, so that philosophy may still have a center. 

He acknowledges that the possibility that philosophy never had a center is a problem that cannot be dismissed, because it may become a fault within the philosophical realm. Such a fault, however, is a species of Empiricism, a doctrine that Derrida obviously holds in great disregard. Derrida is concerned that Empiricism is a menace to the discourse he attempts to formulate here. Derrida wants to save philosophy for the same purpose he wanted to save the sign: for endless deconstruction. He stresses that it is impossible to actually turn the page on philosophy. Even “transphilosophical” concepts that attempt to go beyond philosophy can only amount to reading philosophers in a certain way. There is nothing to be studied beyond philosophy.

Derrida proceeds to deconstruct Empiricism, the one philosophy he will not miss. He attempts to invalidate the Empiricist critique of Levi-Strauss’s ethnological theories. Levi-Strauss was criticized for not conducting an exhaustive inventory of South American myths before proceeding to write about South American mythology. He defended himself by claiming that a linguist can decipher a grammar from only a few sentences and does not need to collect all the sentences of a language. Derrida obviously agrees with him. However, grammar and mythology are not analogous. Each myth is unique and can add more to the study of mythology, whereas all the sentences in a language use the same grammar, so only a sample of sentences is needed for the study of grammar. However, this is empirical evidence, which Derrida disregards. He uses Levi-Strauss’s example of the study of grammar to prove that “totalization” is both useless and impossible. 

It is useless and impossible to encompass the totality of language in order to study its grammar. In the absence of totalization, what emerges is “nontotalization,” which is again defined as “play.” This time, it is language, not structure that loses its coherence to “play.” However, the play remains the same: words can now have any meaning.

👉What makes content of Derrida’s point of view?:

• We look for the truth of the text which in fact is only language, and create in our quest another text through our criticism to supplement the lack of the original text. Supplement the lack of the original text reading is reactivating the expressivity of the text with the help of its indicative signs. But in the words of John Sturrock,

• “the meanings that are read into it may or may not coincide with the meanings which the author believes he or she has invested it with. A reasonable view is that a large number of these meanings will coincide depending on how far separable author and reader are in time, space and culture; but that a large number of other meanings will not coincide. For language have powers of generating meanings irrespective of the wishes of those of who use it.”(Derrida, 42)

Conclusion:

Thus, Derrida still remain ambiguous and interesting face in literary theory. He suggests that to go beyond philosophy, it has to be read I “a certain way” not assume there is something beyond it. We cannot say what any sing means without reference to its relations to other signs. He employs term like trace / difference / differance / supplement to explain this indeterminacy or play. He also shows by the same logic that logocentrism or phonocentrism or ‘privileging speech over writing has no validity. Stanley Fish, Miller and Paul de man also gives their view to prove the idea of deconstruction.

I read in M.H.Abrahm's book in this book he observed that observed that, ‘How to do things with texts?’“Derrida emphasizes that to deconstruct is not to destroy; that his task is to “dismantle the metaphysical and rhetorical structures” operative in a text “not in order to reject or discard them, but to reconstitute them in another way” that he puts into question the “search for the signified not annul it, but to understand it within a system to which such a reading is blind”.Hence we also can say that he tries to prove some important argues with the facts that can give us clear come back with by examples that is conspicuous.

References

• Barry, Peter. "Beginning theory." Barry, Peter. Beginning theory. Manchester University Press, n.d.

• Derrida, Jacques. "Structure, Sign And Discourse In The Human Sciences."

.NASRULLAH, MAMBROL. “Jacques Derrida’s Structure, Sign and Play.” Literary Theory and Criticism, 21 Mar. 2016, literariness.org/2016/03/21/jacques-derridas-structure-sign-and-play.