Page 80 - DENG501_LITERARY_CRITICISM_AND_THEORIES

Literary Criticism and Theories Digvijay Pandya, Lovely Professional University

Notes Unit 7: Structure, Sign, and Play in the Discourse of
the Human Sciences-Jacques Derrida

CONTENTS
Objectives
Introduction
7.1 Life and Works
7.2 Deconstructive Strategy
7.3 Derrida’s Early Works
7.4 Time and Phenomenology
7.5 Undecidability
7.6 Derrida’s Other Activities
7.7 Possible and Impossible Aporias
7.8 Summary
7.9 Key-Words
7.10 Review Questions
7.11 Further Readings

Objectives

After reading this Unit students will be able to:
• Discuss Life and Works of Derrida.
• Understand Derrida’s Deconstruction.

Introduction

Jacques Derrida was one of the most well-known twentieth century philosophers. He was also one
of the most prolific. Distancing himself from the various philosophical movements and traditions
that preceded him on the French intellectual scene (phenomenology, existentialism, and
structuralism), he developed a strategy called "deconstruction" in the mid 1960s. Although not
purely negative, deconstruction is primarily concerned with something tantamount to a critique
of the Western philosophical tradition. Deconstruction is generally presented via an analysis of
specific texts. It seeks to expose, and then to subvert, the various binary oppositions that undergird
our dominant ways of thinking-presence/absence, speech/writing, and so forth.
Deconstruction has at least two aspects: literary and philosophical. The literary aspect concerns
the textual interpretation, where invention is essential to finding hidden alternative meanings in
the text. The philosophical aspect concerns the main target of deconstruction: the "metaphysics of
presence," or simply metaphysics. Starting from an Heideggerian point of view, Derrida argues
that metaphysics affects the whole of philosophy from Plato onwards.
The deconstructive strategy is to unmask these too-sedimented ways of thinking, and it operates
on them especially through two steps-reversing dichotomies and attempting to corrupt the
dichotomies themselves. The strategy also aims to show that there are undecidables, that is,
something that cannot conform to either side of a dichotomy or opposition. Undecidability returns
in later period of Derrida's reflection, when it is applied to reveal paradoxes involved in notions
such as gift giving or hospitality, whose conditions of possibility are at the same time their conditions
of impossibility. Because of this, it is undecidable whether authentic giving or hospitality are
either possible or impossible.

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