M.

Ali

Deconstruction
Deconstruction is a philosophical-critical approach to textual analysis that is most closely associated with the work of Jacques Derrida in philosophy and the Yale School (Paul DeMan, J. Hillis Miller, Geoffrey Hartman) in literary theory and criticism. Derrida, in his own words, "wished to translate and adapt to [his] own ends the Heideggerian word Destruktion or Abbau"" One way to understand deconstruction is in terms of a critique of the binary, oppositional thinking. This is to say, each term in the Western philosophical/cultural lexicon is accompanied by its binary opposite: intelligible/sensible, truth/error, speech/writing, reality/appearance, mind/body, culture/nature, good/evil, male/female, and so on. Derrida shows that such oppositions constitute a tacit hierarchy, in which the first term functions as privileged and superior and the second term as derivative and inferior. The task of deconstruction is to dismantle or deconstruct these binary oppositions. As a critical practice, the deconstruction of these oppositions involves a double movement of overturning of the hierarchy and displacement. Within literary criticism, the deconstructive method is used to show that the meaning of a literary text is not fixed and stable. Instead, by exploring the dynamic tension within a text's language, literary deconstruction reveals the literary work to be not a determinate object with a single correct meaning but an expanding semantic field that is open to multiple, sometimes conflicting interpretations. As Barbara Johnson clarifies the term, A deconstructive reading is a reading which analyses the specificity of a text's critical difference from itself." Even, this critical practice of reading may cause a drastic result for a text, as J. Hillis Miller, one of the most prominent deconstructors, asserts, The deconstruction, rather, annihilates the ground on which the building stands by showing that the text has already annihilated the ground, knowingly or unknowingly. Deconstruction is not a dismantling of the structure of the text but a demonstration that it has already dismantled itself. However, Barbara Johnson gives a succinct statement of the aim and method of deconstructive reading, If anything is destroyed in a deconstructive reading, it is not the text, but the claim to unequivocal domination of one mode of signifying over another.
The paper, prepared by: Muhammad Ali, English, 2003-2004, IU, Kushtia. # m.ali_iu@yahoo.com # 01714 502052

M. Ali

Thus we see that the text betrays itself, and rather than being a unified whole, any given text has irreconcilably contradictory meanings. As a theory, deconstruction argues that the nature of language is such that a language-user cannot neatly mean what he or she intends to mean and that this can be demonstrated by showing how the use of certain words or certain passages in a text resist or contradict the meaning the author intends for the text as a whole. Again, a "deconstruction" of a given text describes the failure of the "appeal to presence" within the text, which, in literary criticism, is understood as the failure of the text to mean what its author intended it to mean. However, Derrida states that Deconstruction is not a method and cannot be transformed into one. It is not a method in the traditional sense and this means that it is not a neat set of rules that can be applied to any text in the same way. Rather it is what Derrida terms "an unclosed, unenclosable, not wholly formalizable ensemble of rules for reading, interpretation and writing." . Derridas deconstructive theory also involves the key distinction of differance and difference, which concerns the principle of the continuous (and endless) postponement or deferral of meaning. Rejecting the classical anthropological model of language, Derrida follows the structuralist thesis of Swiss linguist Ferdinand de Saussure. Furthermore, Derrida's thought is post-structuralist; it criticizes Saussure for privileging speech over writing, in violation of the arbitrariness of the linguistic sign, and for treating linguistic strings as closed systems of fixed structures. Actually, deconstruction is very much difficult to define in terms of traditional philosophy. Even, Derrida himself gives negative answer to What is deconstruction? "I have no simple and formalisable response to this question. All my essays are attempts to have it out with this formidable question"(Derrida, 1985, p. 4). Thus, by refusing to define deconstruction positively Derrida preserves the infinite possibility of deconstruction, the possibility for the deconstruction of everything. (Derrida, 1985, p. 3). One thing should be mentioned that there is a basic difference between theory of reception and theory of deconstruction. Reception theory gives emphasis on the role of the readers in interpreting the meaning of the text. That
The paper, prepared by: Muhammad Ali, English, 2003-2004, IU, Kushtia. # m.ali_iu@yahoo.com # 01714 502052

M. Ali

is the meaning exists outside of the text. On the other hand, deconstruction shows that a text may betray itself. A deconstructive criticism of a text reveals that there is nothing except the text. That is, one can not evaluate, criticize or construe a meaning for a text by refence to anything external to it. Now a literary criticism from a Derridean deconstructive perspective shows that King Lear enacts a philosophic tragedy as much as a personal one. The crisis of madness in the play is also a crisis of the metaphysical conceptual regime upon which the plays values depend. To conclude, deconstruction has called attention to rhetorical and performative aspects of language use, and it encouraged scholars to consider not merely what a text says but rather on the relationshipand potential conflict between what a text says and what it does.. Though it leads to ingenious and fascinating interpretations of texts and brilliant exhibitions of intellectual dexterity, it is unsatisfying. Because, deconstruction does not take into account the way we experience texts, the sense we have that they are unique, the way they excite us, generating feelings and passions in people, or the social and political dimensions of texts.

The paper, prepared by: Muhammad Ali, English, 2003-2004, IU, Kushtia. # m.ali_iu@yahoo.com # 01714 502052