Postcolonialism Colonialism
Feminist Theory
Oedipus Complex in Sons and Lovers
The Death of Author
Growth and Status of English Language in India
Deconstruction emerged on the literary scene almost at the
same time when Postmodernism flourished. The term was coined by a French
Philosopher Jacques Derrida in one of his essay, Structure, Sign
and Play in the Discourse of the Human Sciences. According to him, ‘Language bears within
itself the necessity of its own critique’.
By the above line Derrida means that to deconstruct a
discourse is to show how it undermines the philosophy it asserts, or the
hierarchical opposition on which it relies, by identifying in the text and then
dismantling the rhetorical operations that produce the supposed ground of
argument, the key concept or premise. Broadly
speaking, deconstruction is a ‘searching out’ or ‘to dismantle the text’ or ‘to
attack the subjectivity of the author and pave the way for own reading of the
text’. Instead of talking about the presences in a text, it talked of absences
and gaps.
Therefore, deconstruction investigated those areas in the
text which remained hidden from view. The reader investigated the gaps in the
text and worked towards a different construction, an alternative to the one
that the original author had constructed. In this way, every reader formed
one’s own perception of the text by questioning and re-organizing the author’s
view. For ex: let’s take any argument from a novel and structure it that is to
identify the terms as superior and inferior. Now what will the deconstruction
do? It will pull the carpet from below the superior by showing the faulty basis
of its superiority and place the carpet below the inferior. It reverses the
hierarchy by just altering their positions, making the superior as inferior and
vice versa. This reversed hierarchy is again open to another deconstructive
operation.
However, deconstruction is not a matter of only reversing
hierarchies. It involves looking into the structure of the discourse and
revealing the moments when certain assumptions became its controlling centre.
This centre inturn creates hierarchies.
In a sense, deconstruction does not lead us from a faulty to
a correct way of thinking or writing. Rather, it shows us the limitations of
human thought operating through language even while harbouring the same
limitations itself.
Ronald Barthes essay The Death of the Author is
a good example of deconstruction. Here, the death of the author marks the birth
of the reader in a new and more important role. Instead of being a passive and
receptive experience, reading is now transformed into a creative activity.
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