As we have seen in the previous topic on Structuralism… ‘Things cannot be understood in isolation…they should be understood as the part of the larger structure they belong’…and also seen the examples…if we want to understand what is chair, we must know what is table, sofa-set, bed, show-case etc. It means simply that the meaning is ‘relational’…one object’s meaning is dependent upon the others. But have you noticed that the meaning is jumping from one object to another…from Chair>Table>Bed>Sofa>Show-case>Furniture and many more? Yes…it is transferring to other objects. If you want to understand Chair…you must know Table. Chair is chair because it is not table. Black is black because it is not white, green or orange. So the meaning is transferring, jumping, passing to the other objects. It’s a kind of ‘binary opposition’…one is one because it is not two. Till it is oky. But here the post-structuralist tries to find out the fault…and it leads to the theory of ‘Deconstruction’. How? Let’s see.
As per ‘the theory of relativity’ by Einstein…the whole universe is moving. The Earth moving around sun, the sun moving with galaxies, million galaxies are moving and so the universe. What we understand about ‘time’ and ‘space’ is ‘relative’. Time – we count it with seconds, minutes, hours, days, weeks, months, years, and ages and so on…but it is in relation. Space – from millimeter to light years…again in relation. Why in relation…because not a single thing in the universe is stable…everything is in motion…moving and moving and moving. There is no ‘fixed pole’ in the universe to measure the development…only to count in relation. The same thing is with structuralism - the meaning is jumping and jumping and jumping. There is no fixed pole to determine the true meaning of the objects. Chair is chair because we understand it is not Table, Table is table because it is not bed etc. This is how we are watching the things. It makes a kind of structure in our mind. But if we start to analyze minutely…this structure start to vanish…because we have no fixed pole that tells us the true meaning. We always have to depend on something else. Now move to language…Sign (word) and Signifier (sound) and the object (Signified) are not the same. The word ‘tree’ (t, r, e, e) doesn’t mean the same…we have associated the meaning externally. In different languages the ‘tree’ is called with different pronunciations (‘Ped’ in Hindi, ‘Zad’ in Marathi and many more). Pronunciations or utterances or say signifiers do not represents the objects (signified)…So no fixed pole to determine the meaning…and here the genuine problem begins. The meaning is started to soar or say float aimlessly…and pointing it or fixing it in a particular structure becomes impossible. It is called post-structuralism. Post-structuralism is a theory while deconstruction is practice. When you start to find of the relation between Sign, Signifier and Signified…it is not one-to-one…and still we try our best to fix everything in a structure…without a stable centre or say fixed pole. The result is inevitable – D E C O N S T R U C T I ON…!
Now see the example (or mis-example) of Deconstruction. Take the famous quots… ‘My luv is like a red red rose, that has sprung in June’. A structuralist finds it as a love poem and starts to structuralize it. But post-structuralist deconstructs the poem. How?
My luv is like a red red rose
Take any word/phrase/idea from it. Ok.. we take ‘rose’. Rose is a flower…so the sunflower, lily, lotus, and many more. Flower plants are different in their structure than the other plants. What are other plants…description starts..???????? Ok. It is red rose. There may be yellow, white, blue and lavender colored roses. Now colour and their description starts…???????? Then the word ‘red’ is used two times. Why? Poetic device…reinforcement of the objects…what are the other poetic devices…description starts…?????? So it is a poem…love poem. There are also other genres like novel, drama etc. description starts. Love poem….poem of war/person/incident….description starts. Now the grammatical structure of the line….description starts…???????
Now move to pronunciation…sign, signifier and signified…it is different in different languages…in Hindi gualb, roza in tamil…description starts…???? Again the word, its meaning and etymology (origini)…????
How can you analyze a poem? How can you structuralize the poem? The meaning is jumping and jumping and jumping and there is no fixed center or pole to determine the development. Its just like Nuclear Chain Reaction.
So reading the poem becomes a chaos…it has been deconstructed. It is a kind of ‘reading the text against itself’.
You lose the charm of the poem. There is none on the earth who has read a single piece of literature by using deconstruction method. Keep in mind…although deconstruction is a practice it has philosophical base too – in the writing of Foucault, Derrida, Barthes and many more post-structuralists. Refer the other posts.
Thanks.
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