English 3040 Notes: Deconstruction Handout

Notes from Parker How to Interpret Literature Chapter 4

Terms to Define from Parker 4
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.

Poststructuralism:
decentering:
diffrance:
essentialism:
constructionists :

Background:

Parker sets up a simple formula

Structuralism=Relatedness
Deconstruction=Multiplicity
The take Saussures structuralist formula defining the sign as the signified bonded
together with the signifier, and they widen the gap between the signified and the signifier,
focusing on what they call free-floating signifiers, or the free play of signifiers (78).
Is there no center?
To a deconstructionist, everything is multiple, unstable, and without unity. In this view,
we cannot tie language down; we cannot tie the signified tightly to the signifier (79).
because the signifiers inevitably drift away from any one signified, the meaning of
language, rhetoric, and textuality multiplies beyond the possibilities of literal language,
beyond the possibilities of the carefully organized systems that structuralists charted
(80).
Deconstruction is thus like new criticism, in that both pursue a close attention to
language, but deconstruction radically reverses new criticism through a fascination with
disunity. Whereas new critics argued that the text fits together in organic balance and
unity, deconstructionists might consider how a text can seem to fit together (the first
stage of the double reading), but they end up showing (in the second stage) how it breaks
apart (83)
We cannot know the essential signified. The gap between the signifier and the signified is
ever present, and the multiplicity of signifiers as well as their play off of one another
serves to keep the signified forever out of reach. Meaning is always unstable because the
gap is constant.

The Deconstruction Pattern:

Deconstructionist often present a double reading

Reading 1= follows typical pattern of interpretation, structuralist in nature, defining a
single interpretation
Reading 2=breaks down the first reading, focusing on how the free play of signifiers
allows for more than one meaning
The second reading comes out of what Deconstructionists see as internal contradictions

or internal differences that frustrate any interpretation of the text as holding a singular,
stable meaning (84).
Problems with pure deconstructive readings:
1. Like New Criticism, early deconstruction tended to focus on language in
isolation.
2. The goal of the deconstructive reading was to show multiplicity of meaning, and
early readings all followed the same predictable pattern.
Deoconstruction evolved to incorporate social considerations. It began to ask to what
end? Early critics focused on the word game. Later critics (poststructuralists) began to
address the question of so what?
Poststructuralism provides us with tools to examine society at large. Deconstruction
theorys recognition of multiplicity of meaning and its denial of a static signifier allows
poststructuralists to address problems with essentialist views, particularly as they relate to
identity construction and identity expression.

Questions Deconstructive Critics Might Ask (from Lois Tyson Critical Theory Today 2nd ed.
265)
1. How can we use the various conflicting interpretations a text produces (the play of
meanings) or find the various ways in which the text doesnt answer the questions it
seems to answer, to demonstrate the instability of language and the undecidability of
meaning?
2. What ideology does the text seem to promotewhat is its main themeand how does
conflicting evidence in the text show the limitations of that ideology? We can usually
discover a texts overt ideological project by finding the binary opposition(s) that
structure the texts main theme(s)?