Deconstruction for beginners

Decontruction

 A school of literary theory and philosophy was inaugurated by Jacques Derrida, usually aligned with Poststructuralism, to indicate that it emerged after structuralism to emphasize on the decentring and destabilizing structures. Poststructuralism is a late 20th Century movement in philosophy and literary criticism, could be acknowledged as an umbrella term used to denote all the radical theories which opposed structuralism. Structuralism put forwarded the idea that there is a definite structure of meaning beneath the surface level of signs. Where as poststructuralists blatantly discard the possibility of any single definite meaning. Thus, poststructuralism is an outright reaction to the views of structuralism. 

Influenced by the concept of Deconstruction, which exposes the deep-seated contradictions in a text. Poststructuralism as an intellectual project attempt to articulate new theories regarding the meaning and interpretation. The notion of Deconstruction was primarily based on three books Speech and Phenomena, Of Grammatology and Writing and Difference by the phenomenal French philosopher Jacques Derrida(1930-2004).

According to Derrida, all suppositions about the absolute meaning in language are incorrect. Signifiers often do not point to a signified but to other signifiers. Even binary oppositions can not permit fixed meanings but only relative ones, both are complementary for generating meaning. He adapted the term from Martin Heidegger, a German philosopher.  It focuses the complex relationship in language or the difficulty of language to convey the right meaning.

it can be treated as the controversial way of reading a text, as it aims at showing how texts dismantled or rather contradict themselves. and thereby exposing the instability of meaning which every text carries. This instability results from the endless chain of meanings which a word is capable of generating.

Deconstruction is not a dismantling of the structure of a text. But a demonstration that it has already dismantled itself. Practitioners of Deconstruction refused the fixed formula of analyzing a text. they give emphasis to the openness of meaning. Thus, Deconstruction analyses the new scopes of reading that is inherent in the text and it also rigorously rethink about the possibilities of language. Derrida does this in his much anthologized paper, "Structure Sign and Play in the Discourse of Human Sciences". 

Deconstruction is a radical unsettling of all earlier movements in literature. it is the most philosophically oriented and the most theorized movement we have known so far. there are numerous things the Deconstruction teaches us. it adds to our understanding of literature with a greater sense of critical perception. For Derrida language is not a reliable mode of communication, it is fluid and slippery. Once it is written the play is possible.

Consider for example, the following sentence : 'Time flies like an arrow'. Most of us are familiar with the older saying, and we know it means that time passes quickly.

Time (Noun) flies (Verb) like an arrow(Adv. clause)    = Time passes quickly

If we rethink about the further possibilities of meanings, we can undeniably say that this sentence could also mean that time moves in one direction, or straight ahead, because that's how arrows move. But what would happen if we thought of the first word of the sentence as an imperative mode - telling us to do something and the second word indicates a kind of insect:

Time (verb) flies (obj.) like an arrow(Adv. clause)   = calculate the speed of flies as you'd time an arrow's flight.

Again, what would happen if we thought of the first two words of the sentence represent a kind of insect - time flies(like fruit flies) and the third word as if it were as a form of the verb to like. then the sentence would tell us the emotional life of certain kinds of insects.

Time flies (noun)  like (verb) an arrow (obj.)   =  time flies are fond of arrows.

this exercise shows how, without changing a word, a single sentence can have several meanings.

Deconstruction, however, asks us to look at the sentence's ambiguities even when the sentence seems at first glance, as clear and specific as this one does.

if we read the celebrated poem  "The Road not taken" by Robert Frost, the title itself supplies the major difference in the text. There are two roads: the road not taken and the road taken. it can mean that the poem is about the road which the speaker did not take. and another possibility is that the poem is about the road which the speaker took, was not taken by others.

similarly the Poem "Church Going" by Philip Larkin indicates at once the process of moving into the church and also fading away the belief of the church.this is how a text shows the word play.

Apart from Derrida other practitioners of Deconstruction were Harold Bloom, Paul De Man, Hillis Miller and Jeoffrey Hartman.

Reference & for further reading

• Critical Theory Today A user-friendly guide   by Lois Tyson
• A New Approach to Literary Theory and Criticism  by R.S Malik & Jagdish Batra
• English Literary Criticism and Theory  by M.S Nagarajan.
• From Text to Theory  by Pramod K Nayar.
• contemporary literary and Cultural Theory by Pramod K Nayar.
• A Glossary of literary Terms  by M.H Abrams.
• Theory into Practice,an Introduction to Literary Criticism  by Ann.B. Dobie