Theories of Deconstruction

Semester 2
Module II

 Theories of Deconstruction


Theories of Deconstruction rest on the belief that there is no transcendental signified and that there is nothing outside of the text. However, texts betray traces of their own instability, making the possibility of determinate meaning suspect.

• Prescribed Essay: 
  Jacques Derrida. “Structure, Sign and Play in the Discourse of Human Sciences.” Modern Criticism and Theory: A Reader. Ed. David Lodge. UK: Longman, 2000. Pp. 89-103.

POSTSTRUCTURALISM

Post Structuralism emerged in France in the 1960s as a critique of structuralism that argues against the Structuralist’s orderly perception of language and human experience.  For Post Structuralism, language is the ground of being and the world is an infinite text, that is, an infinite chain of signifiers always in play.

 PostructuralistApproaches

I.Major Schools of Post Structuralist Thought

·         Existential phenomenology

·         Structuralism

·         Theory of deconstruction

·         Yale School of Deconstruction

II.Major Concepts

·         Ambiguity                                                           

·         Aporia

·         Arché

·         Archia

·         Bricolage/Bricoleur

·         Centre/Margin

·         Decentering

·         Deconstruction

·         Differance

·         Discourse/discursive

·         Disruption

·         Écriture

·         Episteme

·         Epistemology

·         Erasure

·         Essence

·         Faultline

·         Free play

·         Historia

·         Immanent Critique

·         Iterability

·         Locus

·         Logocentrism

·         Logos

·         Margin

·         Metaphor

·         Metaphysics

·         Multiplicity

·         Phenomenology/Phenomenological Reduction or Epoche.

·         Phonocentrism

·         Play

·         Post Structuralism

·         Presence/Absence 

·         Rupture

·         Speech and Writing

·         Substitute

·         Subversion

·         Supplement

·         Supplementarity

·         Surplus

·         Telos

·         Text/Textuality

·         Trace

·         Transcendental signified

·         Under Erasure

III.Major Figures

·         Nietzsche

·         Heidegger

·         Edmund Husserl

·         Roland Barthes

·         Jacques Derrida

·         Geoffrey Hartman

·         Paul de Man

·         Foucault

IV.Major Works

·         Nietzsche- On the Genealogy of Morals

·         Heidegger- Being and Time

·         Roland Barthes- The Pleasure of the Text, “The Death of the Author”

·         Jacques Derrida- Of Grammatology, Writing and Difference, “Structure, sign and Play in the Discourse of Human Sciences.”

·         Paul de Man- The Resistance to Theory

·         Michel Foucault- Language, Counter- Memory, Practice, selected Essays and Interviews

V.Sample Reading

·         “The Road not Taken”- http://jncoppock.tripod.com/id28.html