Page 111 - DENG501_LITERARY_CRITICISM_AND_THEORIES

Unit 9: Structure, Sign and Play in the Discourse of the Human Sciences’—Jacques Derrida: Critical Appreciation

Play is simply any shift in the structure, any unplanned, unordered event. Deviance, alteration, Notes
contingency, arbitrariness, perversion, spontaneity, mutation-all these are synonyms for play.
If the center mitigates and moderates play within the structure, it thereby provides the requisite
coherence, organization, and stability for making the world appear to be ordered and intelligible.
"The center is not the center."
This phrase defines "the event" of the rupture which Derrida talks about in the first paragraph.
Throughout the history of Western philosophy, the center (so Derrida asserts) was conceived as
that safe, untouchable region which was immune to play. It was immune to play but it also
"permitted the play of its elements inside the total form" of a structure. The center was seen to
regulate play but also to avoid its effects.
But to avoid its effects the center could not be conceived of as within the structure, for the structure
is the scene of play, play that is allowed for and contained. To not be influenced by the play which
pervades a structure, the center had to be conceived of as "beyond" the structure, as "transcending"
it. But to regulate and guide the system, the center had also to be conceived of as within the
system, as implicated within it, as a part of what the system is. How else could it effect the
system?
This paradox gave rise to "the rupture" of the notion of the structure: it decentered the structure.
"The center is not the center," as Derrida says. This means that "the concept of centered structure
. . . is contradictorily coherent". That which had given security and certitude to Western thought,
had provided the basis for the Western world, rests upon a contradiction and, more, cannot
thereby attain the coherence it had striven for. By its own standards, the concept of centered
structurality critiques itself and falls prey to-play. A center that is contradictory is no center.
The center itself results from play, and this realization defines the event of the internal disintegration
of the concept of structure. Play has become fundamental.
Precursors to and Exponents of Rupture
Derrida mentions that Nietzsche, Freud, and Heidegger all contributed to "The event" of the
rupture.
Nietzsche critiqued metaphysics, finding it everywhere; he "substituted the concepts of play,
interpretation, and sign "for the concepts of truth and Being.
Freud critiqued consciousness, showing how the subject cannot amount to a secure center; it is not
even known to itself.
And Heidegger called for the destruction of all metaphysics and the destruction of the
"determination of Being as presence."
On interesting point here is that in each of their critiques of metaphysics and centered structures,
these thinkers are bound to the very language of metaphysics. This is because there is no language
available to the West beside this kind of language. This fact, that critics of metaphysics are caught
in a circle, also defines the situation for the human sciences. But as we shall see with this discourse
of Levi-Strauss, the human sciences also hint at a way somewhat to accept Nietzschean affirmation.
Difference
To say that play has become fundamental is to say that all meaning has become discourse. The
center, which was supposed to be fixed, turned out to vary with different philosophical systems.
It could not be repeated in just the same way or as just the same thing.
Formerly signs pointed to the center and received their justification and stability therefrom. But
now that the center is seen as a kind of play, signs only point to more signs, "an indefinite chain
of representations." A sign does not achieve anything but more signs. One sign endlessly substitutes
another sign and meaning is a kind of vertigo. In terms of our course, the transcendental ego, say,
provides no secure foundation, grants access to no apodictic certainty. Rather it is a sign that
points to other signs continuously.

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