CHAPTER IV DECONSTRUCTION

Transcription

1 CHAPTER IV DECONSTRUCTION

2 Deconstruction is one of the approaches to literary criticisms that emerged in the late 1960 s. It has been the subject of controversy in contemporary literary theory. There are many learned scholars and critics who criticize deconstruction for not providing valid solutions to the premises and concepts raised by it. However, it is true that deconstruction challenges traditional concepts of reading a text. In literature, deconstruction is a method of analysing a particular literary text. The deconstructive tactics are carried out by the close analysis of literary meanings of literary texts. But there are some internal contradictions of the text itself and these contradictions reveal two or more possibilities of meanings. As a result, the readers sometimes meet the complexities in interpretation. Generally the readers always make an attempt to bring out several implications of the text. The results of such implications keep the readers into a situation where

3 99 interpretations are to be reinterpreted. Such situation is a never ending process and yet when contradictory implications are brought out by different readers from the same statement, obviously the readers cannot understand the meaning. Therefore, no reader can arrive at an absolute or fixed meaning for any text. It is due to the underlying inherent contradictions of language which is the medium of any literary text. So, one can say that deconstruction is a form of linguistic analysis of the text. Jacques Derrida initiates such deconstructive strategies in literary criticism in one of his books, Of Grammatology (1967). The main argument of deconstruction has already been explored by Derrida in a paper called Structure, Sign and Play in the Discourse of Human Sciences. The seminar has often been marked as the emergence of deconstruction in literary criticism. Consequently, learned scholars and academicians started analysing how words are capable of producing multiple meanings. The inquisitive learners investigate on how words mean many meanings simultaneously. Since words can produce multiple meaning the interpretation seems to be beyond language. This situation can be defined as deconstruction. But there is no exact definition for the word deconstruction in literature. Christopher Norris has given his idea that one cannot exactly define what it is; rather mislead us if it were a system or method. He writes: To present deconstruction or as if it were a method, a system or a settled body of ideas would be to falsify its nature and lay oneself open to charges of reductive misunderstanding. 1

4 100 Actually the word deconstruction is derived from the German philosopher Martin Heidegger s concept of destruction, which is the desire for the loosening up of the old tradition of Ontology (the study of ultimate reality through the revelation of its inner contradictions and development). In spite of such derivative concept, Derrida expresses in a letter written to one of his Japanese friends: all sentences of the type deconstruction is X or deconstruction is not X, a priori, miss the point 2. So, defining deconstruction in any definite word or sentence will be misleading because one gives definition only when something is definite. Since nothing is definite, a definition is meaningless. Here, Christopher Norris writes: Any attempt to define deconstruction must soon run up against the many and varied obstacles that Derrida has shrewdly placed in its path Deconstruction is not a method, a technique, or a species of critique. 3 And Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, the translator of Derrida s book, Of Grammatology, suggests that in deconstruction a text is an open-ended entity with no absolute final meaning. She encapsulates the meaning and method of deconstruction in her translator s introduction of the book, Of Grammatology. She says: Deconstruction seems to offer a way out the closure of knowledge. By inaugurating the open-ended indefiniteness of textuality thus placing it in the abyss it shows us the allure of the abyss as freedom. The fall into the abyss of deconstruction inspires us with as much pleasure as fear. We are intoxicated with the prospect of never hitting bottom. 4

5 101 In other words, deconstruction is an activity of a close reading that involves the decentralization of the problematic nature of all centers in the existing concepts of the world. There is always the problem with the center because everyone has the tendency to create the center. According to Derrida, all philosophical thought is based on the idea of a center which is a Truth, an Origin, an Idea, and an Essence which generates all meaning. This is clearly expressed in the book, Of Grammatology: The history of metaphysics, like the history of the West, is the history of these metaphors and metonymies. Its matrix if you pardon me for demonstrating so little and for being so elliptical in order to bring me more quickly to my principle theme is the determination of being as presence in all the senses of this word. It would be impossible to show that all the names related to fundamentals, to principles, or to the center have always designated the constant of a presence eidos, archè, telos, energia, ousia (essence, existence, substance, subject) aletheia, transcendentality, consciousness, or conscience, God, man, and so forth. 5 Since there is no stable center, deconstruction changes completely the ways one thinks about the existing concepts. For instance, for more than two thousand years western culture has been centered on Christianity. In doing so, Christianity is central and other religions are marginalized. Similarly, when religion like Buddhism or Islam or Jainism, or Hinduism is at the center, Christianity will be marginalized. Likewise in a patriarchal society, man is central, obviously woman is marginalized. In a society where

6 102 Marxism is prevalent, proletariat is central and bourgeois is marginalized. This process will go on so long as we try to centralize something. Binary oppositions bring forth the desire of a center where one term is central and other marginal. Moreover the center wants to fix the play of binary opposites. Binary opposites are the pairs of opposite things and concepts like nature/culture, white /black, god/man, faith/reason, speech/writing etc. According to Derrida, one can access to reality through concepts, quotes, categories and human mind functions by creating binary oppositions. Out of these oppositions, one is privileged and other is marginalized. For example, when Christianity is at the center, all other religious views are repressed and marginalized. Actually, the formation of such an icon is an attempt to fix the free play of opposites. These icons are made by the particular community or a society as a part of social practices social conventions, rules and regularities, rites and rituals etc. that attempt to fix the play of opposition. Derrida writes: The very meaning and mission of deconstruction is to show that how that things texts, institutions, traditions, societies, beliefs, and practices of whatever size and sort you need do not have definable meanings and determinable missions, that they are always more than any mission would impose, that they exceed the boundaries they currently occupy. 6 When we try to fix the centrality of any of such aspect, we are trying to deconstruct the icon. Deconstructive strategy first tries to decenter the central term. The central term is not always at the central position because there is possibility to subvert

7 103 the central term so that the marginalized term can become the central. For a moment, the marginalized term overthrows the hierarchy. In a sense, deconstruction is a kind of political practice because it always stands against the imposition of laws, ideas, etc. which are considered as grand narratives. Grand narratives are the ideas and theories which are universally accepted. Grand narrative is the grand ideology that controls the individual or beliefs. It also tries to impose their authoritative ideas on the readers. Thus, the Holy books, major philosophical and scientific theories have been constructing some ideologies or beliefs. These ideologies or beliefs ensure people that they are fixed and have definite meaning. In spite of their privileging position, they can be overthrown. So, they can never be the absolute truth or realities. Whenever hierarchy is made, it is always engaged in the free play of binary opposite. This hierarchy is reversible so, it is unstable. The same is applicable to texts too and all the knowledge of the world. Saussure writes in this context: our knowledge of the world is inextricably shaped and conditioned by the language that serves to represent it. 7 When we apply deconstructive tactics in reading a text, the meaning will be self contradicted. Deconstruction advocates that a text cannot have single authoritarian meaning. Whenever a signified emerges, it resolves into another signified. It depends on the configuration of texts and this process goes on endlessly. There is no central thing that can fix the play of opposites. Thus, deconstruction emphasizes mainly on the nature

8 104 of fixity in human thoughts. It is against centralization, institutionalization and totalitarianism. In spite of such complexities, we always have the tendency to construct the central term and repress the other which is different from the central term. Therefore, Derrida writes: Whenever it runs up against a limit, deconstruction presses against it. Whenever deconstruction finds a nutshell a secure axiom or a pithy maxim the very idea is to crack it open and disturb this tranquility. 8 Deconstructive strategies involve several steps. It first brings out the binary opposition and breaks the link between two opposite things while interpretation of a text. In the book, Positions, Derrida states: to deconstruct the opposition, first of all is to overturn the hierarchy at a given moment. 9 Next, is to show how these oppositions are central and marginalized. Eventually, the opposition subverts the hierarchy to show what the text means. Finally, both the hierarchical terms are engaged in the free play of binary oppositions in a never ending process in giving absolute meaning. To show the undecidability of all binary oppositions, Derrida coins various terms such as: The pharmakon is neither remedy nor poison, neither good nor evil, neither the inside nor the outside, neither speech nor writing; the supplement is neither a plus nor a minus, neither an outside nor the complement of an inside, neither accident nor essence, etc.; the hymen is neither confusion nor distinction, neither identity nor difference, neither consummation nor virginity, neither the veil nor unveiling, neither the inside nor the outside etc. the gram is neither a signifier nor a signified, neither a sign

9 105 nor a thing, neither presence nor an absence, spacing is neither space nor time; the incision is neither the incised integrity of a beginning, or of a simple cutting into, nor simple secondarity. Neither/nor, that is, simultaneously either or; the mark is also the marginal limit, the march, etc. 10 Deconstruction has attempted to explore the subversion of oppositions and hierarchies on any text. In other words, one can say that deconstruction is a kind of reading a text. It means not to destruct the work of an author but to show the different meanings at work in language. Barbara Johnson writes: Deconstruction is not synonymous with destruction. It is in fact much closer to the original meaning of the word analysis, which etymologically means to undo. The deconstruction of a text does not proceed by random doubt or arbitrary subversion, but by the careful teasing out of warring forces of signification within the text itself. If anything is destroyed in a deconstructive reading, it is not the text, but the claim of to unequivocal domination of one mode of signifying over another. A deconstructive reading is a reading which analyses the specificity of a text s critical difference from itself. 11 The tactics of deconstruction are carved out of structuralism. Structuralism is the most important concept from which Derrida derived his idea of deconstruction. The structuralists try to formulate a sign system of language. In formulating the rules of the sign system one has to understand the constituents on which the rules or the

10 106 norms operate. Thus, one must reconstruct a whole structure based on the underlying relations which are functional in the system of language. This notion of structuralism is rejected by deconstruction. Deconstruction refuses a historical identity to one s grammar as it alters the relational identity and the importance of words in language. The interrelated constituents in the system of language are to be identified not by history but by their place in the system of language. It can be analysed into different levels such as the difference in phonological structure like cold, hold, sold etc. Next it depends on relations to other words and those which contrast with it, which can have different combination in a sequence in a given context. As Benveniste says, the relation between elements of the same level are distributional, those between elements of different levels are integrative. 12 Such study may result into paradigmatic relations (functional contrasts) and syntagmatic relations (possibilities of combination). So, the analysis of the system of language is very complicated. In this connection, Saussure says, language is a system in which everything is inextricably related to everything else. 13 Like Saussure, Lévi-Strauss, the structural anthropologist began analysis of this structural principle into the system of elements such that modification of anyone entails modification of all the others. 14 Therefore, they were bound to go beyond the linguistics itself. In doing so, the identification of the system of language has become an impossible scheme because one needs a complete examination on the meaning of the text. Henceforth, linguistics does not deal with a system which will provide exact interpretation. One can say that it is not hermeneutic (interpretation). Here, Derrida points out that relationship between theory and any text cannot be bound by rules of

11 107 linguistics or any philosophical thought. In this regard Christopher Norris writes: T.S. Eliot proposes a disciplined or educating movement of thought from perception to principle, they discover an endlessly fascinating conflict, the scene of which is the text itself in its alternating aspects of knowledge and pleasurable fantasy. 15 This view of Eliot can be considered as one of the modes of deconstruction. All the problems created by deconstruction can be found in the texts of Derrida. He read a series of books in the history of western philosophy from Plato to Descrates, Rousseau and Hegel to Husserl and Heideggar, Saussure to Lévi-Strauss, Lacan and Foucault. Deconstruction arose as a rupture, a break away from what the structuralist thinkers saw that anything could be studied through its underlying structures. In the essay Structure, Sign and Play in the Discourse of Human Sciences, Derrida points out several concepts about the nature of structure which is as old as an episteme. Derrida writes: Structure or rather the structurality of structure although it has always been at work, has always been neutralized or reduced and this by a process of giving it a center or of referring, it to a point of presence, as fixed origin. 16 Derrida further states in this paper that there occurs an intellectual turn called event which he called a rupture in this century. This event breaks the ideas of the great philosophers of the world such as Nietzsche, Heidegger and Freud. This event decentered our intellectual world. Before the advent of this event there is existence of

12 108 center in our life that includes dress, behaviour, architecture and intellectual outlook etc. The idea of dismantling and marginalization is not there in several perspectives. The consequence of this event is the understanding that there is no absolute, certain and fixed point in everything. Instead of a fixed origin or an absolute origin there is free play. Derrida says: Turned towards the lost or impossible presence of the absent origin, this structuralist thematic of broken immediacy is therefore the saddened, negative nostalgic, guilty, Rousseauistic side of the thinking of play whose other side would be the Nietzchean affirmation, that is the joyous affirmation of the play of the world and of the innocence of becoming, the affirmation of a world of signs without fault, without truth, and without origin which is offered to an active interpretation. 17 The center also plays an important role in orienting, balancing and organizing the structure. Nobody can conceive an unorganized structure. The organizing principle of the structure is to limit the play of the structure. At the center the substitution and transformation of structure is forbidden. The center is the governing principle of the structure. Derrida says: Thus it has always been thought that the center, which is by definition unique, constituted that very thing within a structure which while governing the structure, escapes structurality. This is why classical thought concerning structure could say that the center is paradoxically, within the structure and outside it. 18

13 109 The center is within the structure but also outside the structure. The dual nature of the center is what Derrida called contradictorily coherent. He further says: center had no natural site, that it was not a fixed locus. 19 The concept of the center is problematic to the structuralist view of language. The structuralist assumes that the center is the origin of all things. Within the underlying system the existence of center is possible, which Derrida called full presence. The center cannot be replaced by other elements. It also cannot be defined in relation to other elements which contradicts Saussure s view that the meaning lies in relation to other elements. The thought that the center is a transcendental signified or the ultimate source of meaning breaks down the arbitrary nature of signifier and signified. Derrida cites early ethonological studies as an example of decentering system. Ethonology begins with a viewpoint that Western European society is the center of civilization or the touchstone to compare other cultures. Moreover, this central view of human civilization begins to realize that other culture is an autonomous entity. They can exist themselves not in relation to the convention of western civilization. The discussion of ethnology leads Lévi-Strauss s view of culture which states that culture is constructed by binary opposition. For Lévi-Strauss nature is privileged to culture. Derrida goes on to deconstruct this view that the use of nature/culture as binary opposition. The stability of a structure is questioned when such oppositions are put into play. This destruction of binary opposition is the essence of deconstruction. Therefore,

14 110 any system is seemed as being built around a central idea which is not an absolute truth but a construct, even an illusion. Derrida goes on to discuss the concept of totalisation or the desire to have a system that explains everything. Totalisation is not possible for several reasons. Firstly, there may be too much free play among the various elements resulting in a lack of center. The next and final is the idea of supplementary. This structure naturally deconstructs them due to this problematic contradiction. The center must be viewed in terms of the supplement. However, with the introduction of free play within the system, the order can be reversed or questioned. Thus, he questions the concept of structural integrity in this paper. However, Derrida does not give any definition for the word, deconstruction. It is important to note that Derrida himself has no great fondness for the word. He says [ Deconstruction ] is a word I have never liked and one whose fortune has disagreeably surprised me. 20 On numerous occasions Derrida spoke about deconstruction as de sedimentation about a force of irruption that the entire inherited order. 21 Nicholas Royle quotes what Derrida says in an interview in 1993: [D]econstruction moves, or makes its gestures, lines and divisions move, not only within the corpus [of a writer] in general, but at times within a single sentence, or a microscopic element of a corpus. Deconstruction mistrusts: proper names it will not say Heidegger in general says thus or so; it will deal, in the micrology of the Heideggerian text, with different moments, different applications, concurrent logics, while trusting no generality and no configuration that is solid and given. It is a sort of great earthquake,

15 111 a great tremor, which nothing can calm. I cannot treat a corpus, or a book, as a whole and even the simple statement is subject to fission. 22 In short, Derrida envisages that philosophers since Plato and even the work of Saussure and Lévi-Strauss are all fascinated with yearning for a stable centre. But Derrida could find no central rule in their works. Derrida believes that these philosophers prefer speech to writing. Derrida called this bias attitude as logocentrism. Deconstruction subverts the traditional mode of reading and certain notions on language or text have been taken for granted. Deconstruction focuses on language but ignores the limited area of language. Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, the translator of Derrida says: A certain view of the world, of consciousness, and of language has been accepted as the correct one, and if the minute particulars of that view are examined, a rather different picture (that is also a nopicture, as we shall see) emerges. 23 Since the evolution of this earth, these are many general facts, truth and other things that human beings consider as true. But when one investigates minutely, he can find something that is not known before. For instance, Derrida examines Saussure s view on language. According to Saussure, language is a system of signs that consists of a signifier, signified and referent. Saussure also gives preference to speech over writing. Derrida made a series of arguments with Saussure. Saussure considers signified as more important than the signifier. The actual sound provides us an entry to the intangible meaning in accordance with Saussure. In his view, sound is something external thing

16 112 and meaning is internal. Derrida argues on this point that metaphysics of presence fulfil the idea of an origin or central or logos as presence within. Saussure declares a natural or arbitrary relation between signifier and signified. So, his view is supposedly free from a centrality. Saussure s implication is that there is a relationship between the signifier and the signified. Derrida called this as metaphysics of presence. Derrida further examines how Saussure sets up a binary opposition between speech and writing and favours speech to writing. According to Saussure, speech is common, natural, absolute, complete, and direct and immediately implies to the speaker. But, writing partly conceals language which is used only in the absence of the speaker. Saussure argues further that speech represents inner meaning; on the other hand, writing represents speech. Therefore, Saussure makes conclusion that speech should be the objective of linguistics. He states the spoken form alone constitutes the object 24. Derrida has also highlighted the dichotomy existing in speech and writing linguistically and culturally. Saussure made a conclusion that speech is superior to writing because speech is genuine, accurate and reliable. It also concerns only with the person who is speaking at present. On the other hand, writing refers to something very artificial and indicates as unsound because writing remains alive after the death of the writer also. Therefore, speech tends to refer to the presence of the speaker and writing refers to the absence of the speaker. Writing always gets less preference to speech. For this Derrida coined a term called Phonocentrism to mean privileging of speech over writing. Speech has the feature of presence where the audience and listener

17 113 get the truth of what the speaker says. However, Derrida suggested that this truth or reality is built on the idea of center, logos or God word. Derrida again referred to this as logocentrism or the metaphysics of Presence (the notion that there is a transcendental signified, a god- word that underlies all philosophical talk and guarantees its meaning). He notices the whole principle of western philosophy as firmly grounded on this metaphysics of presence. Derrida further argues that God is a figure having some kind of truth, essence and origin which Derrida called transcendental signified. But there is no transcendental signified because there is no fixed meaning. However, there always remains a trace (residual meaning). Trace (French word carries strong implications of track, footprint, imprint) a word that cannot be a master-word, that presents itself as the mark of an anterior presence, origin, master. For trace one can substitute arche-writing (arche-écriture), or difference, or in fact quite a few other words that Derrida uses in the same way. 25 Derrida writes the strategy of trace: The value of the transcendental arche [origin] must make its necessity felt before letting itself be erased. The concept of the arche-trace must comply with both that necessity and that erasure. It is in fact contradictory and not acceptable within the logic of identity. The trace is not only the disappearance of origin, it means that the origin did not even disappear, that it was never constituted except reciprocally by a non-origin, the trace, which thus becomes the origin of the origin. 26

18 114 Everything in this world including text, word and whatever it is, the opposite is always there as a trace. Each sign is only a trace of another and no sign is complete without supplement (additional or substitution word). The notions of trace, difference and supplement are applicable to texts too. So in a text many meanings co-exist. The text has become a point where many meanings from various readings interact and mingle together. Therefore the factor of aporia( a path that leads no goal )is always there. An aporia, the Greek word for a seemingly insoluble logical difficulty: once a system has been shaken by following its totalizing logic to its final consequences, one finds an excess which cannot be constructed within the rules of logic, for the excess can only be conceived as neither this nor that or, both at the same time a departure from all rules of logic. 27 Thus, the whole world has been establishing in this notion of truth. Henceforth, deconstruction seriously questions the concept of a stable center. Derrida also notices that absence is something very unavoidable present condition. Some signs are always absent in the act of speaking or writing. Hence, the absence of sign is a repeatable phenomenon. But communication is made possible only by the repetition of signs. The speaker (addresser) receives a word or phrases same as the listener (addressee). Writing is considered as a sign or representation and can be added to speech. It is a sign that is used in the absence of the speaker. Writing functions as an additional sign

19 115 system that makes something complete. Therefore, it is secondary to speech in the hierarchical order of things. Derrida called this supplement, completeness of something which makes the addition of something or substitution of something. Besides, Derrida also says that signs do not ever signify things or objects. The structuralists believe that the signifier and signified are not connected to each other. There is no underlying relation between the object and the particular word. The relation between the signifier and the signified is arbitrary. Therefore, signs need something else to make up the deficiency or to substitute continuous dependency on which the existing relationship cannot provide. It is only supplement that fills the necessary part of the whole. Hence, some signs are to be put as extra signifiers. But Derrida argues that this signifier is also not sufficient. It requires another signifier to complete itself. Thus, the signifiers ever remain deficient. They are always defined through the addition and substitution of other signifiers. It can also substitute the absence of the speaker. Besides, a sign is an indicator of absence and presence because it signifies some other absent signifier which makes us aware of the absent signifier. This process of signifiers lead to significations itself. Derrida usually deals with the two fold meaning of essentiality and excess to describe how supplement is changeable and constantly shifting from one signifier to another. Thus, supplement is an ever changing signifier. In order to find the meaning we move from one signifier to another signifier. The signifier is the cardinal point of the signified because without a signifier there would not be a signified. The signifier exists at this game of absence and presence of the signified.

20 116 So, this process will never end. Hence, Derrida evokes the result of the seeking signified beyond the supplement is what One wishes to go back from the supplement to the source: one must recognize that there is a supplement at the source 28 But the repeatable nature of sign is equal to speech as well as writing. The signs never come to an end whenever there is repetition in them. In fact, written and spoken signs are repeated in accordance with necessity. Thus, written and spoken forms are those that depend on the repetitions of signs and contexts in order to fill our requirement at anytime. However, the primary status is given to speech. It illustrates the fundamental feature of deconstructive strategy for the analysis of hierarchical order of things. Both the elements of written and spoken form of language are constitutive part of the whole thing. So, speech and writing are not contradictory to each other but rather each contains the other. Therefore, they cannot be termed as binary opposition. Derrida further declares that writing and language is the product of difference, different and postponement. He states that all forms of writing are difference. Derrida called the study of difference as grammatology (Science of arche-writing). It is a sign of nonexistent form of writing which deals with the pure contrast of meaning. Next, Derrida focuses on the nature of text which required a precise and exact interpretation. Language creates the whole universe in every respect. Language is acquired in a textual form that have established in the phenomena of difference. Nothing is exterior to the game of language because language has possessed typical feature of difference. Therefore, no reader can come to the conclusive meaning about

21 117 actual things or identity because language has got an inherent uncertainty leading even to contradictions and unstable meaning for its distinctive features of traces, postponement, absences, arbitrariness and endless deferment. What we have in the form of a text is indeed, an endless process of a sign system where the signifiers are constantly shifting, resulting in full of vague, equivocal, absences, traces and multiple meaning of other texts. Derrida thus declares: there is nothing outside the text 29 because any reader will discover this process of shifting signifiers within text or in any piece of writing. Text is thus a definite area of study, rather a system of traces and endless references. Derrida reveals how writing can be seen as central in Saussure s own view on language Saussure has given his view that there is arbitrary relation between signifier and signified. For example the sound bat remains an independent entity only because it is different from rat, cat, etc. So, language is a system of differences. A signifier is what it is, due to its difference from other signifiers in the same language. It is similar in the case of signified also. The signified rat has no meaning in itself but only its difference from other concept such as mice, it gains its identity. There is no fixed origin in the system of differences in language. For example, when one looks up the meaning of the word tree one would find series of references and its difference from herb, shrub and plant. Hence, one would never arrive at a fixed, stable signified or meaning that provides an origin for the whole system in language. Derrida continues his argument that Saussure while describing language is a system of difference; he himself used writing, a graphic system. In the system of writing, the phoneme /p/ is nothing in

22 118 itself but is what it is due to its difference from /b/, /t/, /k/, therefore it could be work out that speaking is like a form of writing. In this point, Derrida illustrates that neither speech nor writing is sufficient to describe the play of differences. Both speech and writing are play of differences. He, therefore, does not reverse Saussure s view but put both terms writing and speaking under erasure (Sous rature) by putting a mark X through them to show that they exist but needs close examination. Thus, speech and writing are binary opposite words under erasure and further describe the more play of differences. Derrida has introduced a wonderful term differance in 1968 while discussing Saussure s structural linguistics. It is a combination of the meaning in the word differance. It refers to delay or postpone (deferral), the notion that words and signs can never fully express what they mean. But they can be defined through additional words from which they differ. So meaning is always deferred or postponed through an endless series of signifiers. Finally, it refers to the idea of difference itself. It sometimes refers to as spacing (arrange at interval). It concerns the tendency which differentiates words from another, making it different entities. In doing so, binary oppositions and hierarchies are appeared which generate meaning itself. Alan Bass writes: Whenever Derrida uses différance as a neologism I have left it untranslated. Its meanings are too multiple to be explained here fully, but we may note briefly that the word combines in neither the active nor the passive voice the coincidence of meanings in the verb différer to differ(in space) and to defer( to put off in time, to

23 119 postpone presence). Thus, it does not function simply either as différence (difference) or as différance in the usual sense (deferral), and plays on both meanings at once. 30 Another interesting thing of differance is that the letter a of differance is misspelling of the word difference. Yet, it has the same pronunciation with the word difference. This implies the fact that written form when we pronounce is not heard completely and serves to undermine the priority of speech on writing. Derrida states differance is neither a word nor a concept 31 because words and concepts are always different from other words and concepts. It is only this difference that gives their meaning. Despite this view, he again states that differance provides the circumstance of possibility and impossibility of meaning and hence he remarks, possibility of conceptuality. 32 Hence, differance covered not only the differences between the words but also the differential between the concepts of the signified. Therefore, complete meaning is always postponed in language. No one can find a moment when meaning is total, exact and complete. Hence substances or entities are never fully present because language is a stage of dissemination. Dissimination is a state of dispersal or fragmentation of meaning where the word itself does not give complete meaning. For example, the word animal derives its meaning more as a function of how it differs from living organism, creature, organism, beast, brute, monster, etc. So, the word animal does not have a certain stable meaning. Therefore, Derrida has no use for differences in language

24 120 in closed system or static structure. He coins the term differance to express not only difference but the endless deferral. In this context Derrida states: We will designate as difference the moment according to which language, or any code, any system of reference in general, is constituted historically as a weave of difference. 33 Such a concept of differance means the relation of entities is conceived again as not based on identity of language i.e. word or signified. It is based on difference between themselves, a difference that is resolved into a difference within. Derrida provocatively assured us that differance is neither a word nor a concept, it is that which subverts the very foundation of any affirmation of value. 34 Words and concepts are themselves different from other words or concepts and this difference gives their meaning. There is neither absence nor presence in the sign system of language. There is the only play of difference because the sign operates as a trace and not as a self present sign. Thus meaning is delayed, postponed and ever deferred. Therefore: Derrida put in brackets or under erasure, the concept of meaning, neither affirming nor rejecting but suspending it, suspending logic, reason, truth, to leave space for activities, as yet perhaps virtually inconceivable. 35 Thus, differance is one of the important features of speech and writing. According to Derrida, writing is a system that exhibits the three features i.e. difference, trace and

25 121 supplement. Language is an endless process characterized by differance. Christopher Norris in his Deconstruction: Theory and Practice sums up what Derrida sets out to demonstrate in the following terms: that writing is systematically degraded in Saussurean linguistics, that this strategy runs up against suppressed but visible contradictions and that by following those contradictions through one is led beyond linguistics to a grammatology or science of writing and textuality in general. Having discussed how Saussure s arguments on language deconstructs itself, Derrida moves to make the same sort of argument on the eighteen century French philosopher, Jean Jacques Rousseau, the father of French Romanticism. Derrida examines Rousseau and finds that he is strongly opposed against the view that science and arts that progress rapidly and subsequently will make man happy and prosperous life. For him, civilization and knowledge through learning destroy the inborn human nature. Despite he believes in the original, natural, the savaged and uncivilized man who is ignorant of the skill of writing. Rousseau is obsessed with a life of simple and close to nature. Hence, he spent most of his life with an illiterate servant girl. His philosophy is based on the binary opposition between nature and culture that the old savaged man living on the lap of nature is corrupted by culture. According to Rousseau, savaged man is noble. However, the savaged man felt some sort of deficiency, need for something and desired for living altogether. Culture is supposed to displace nature in two distinctive ways such as culture adds to nature and culture also substitutes nature. This opposition of nature/culture comes in the tradition of binary opposition such as

26 122 good/evil, man/woman etc. The initial word nature, good and man of the pairs are the privileging entity. Derrida has pointed out that Rousseau s argument is totally dependent on the idea of supplement. Nature is considered to be self sufficient but it needs culture. In this point, Derrida responds that there is no exact, complete thing in nature. Yet nature is a supplemented entity. Derrida again puts the term nature under erasure Nature. The device is an indication of double meaning that employs both the insufficient and provisional status of an entity. At the same time, Derrida does not believe in the metaphysics of presence but admits the necessity to work within the play of language. For Rousseau, speech is original and the most natural condition of language whereas writing is incompetent and inadequate. In Confessions, Rousseau says: Writing is a dangerous supplement an addition to the natural resources of speech that always threatened to poison the springs of authentic human understanding. 36 Rousseau feels that writing is a product of human civilization and a dangerous supplement to speech. Writing also breaks the intimacy between speakers and destroys the personal network of social relations. Writing keeps the individual at a distance from each other and sometimes, imposes a gap between them. Writing is such a skill that one can practice the idea of concealment to show the reality of what he feels and thinks. In this, Derrida argues:

27 123 Rousseau is repeating the same logocentric gesture which has characterized the entire discourse of western metaphysical thought.self presence, transparent proximity in the face to face of countenance and the immediate range of the voice, this determination of social authenticity is therefore classic, Rousseauistic but already the inheritor of Platonism 37 Rousseau s ideal spoken form is thus based on the model of a small community. But in the context of a larger society, writing seems to be an indispensable medium for communication. So, the idea of writing is always there when Rousseau talks about society and language. Derrida pointed out how Rousseau s writing deconstructs itself. Derrida argues Rousseau is not speaking to us at present. He is absent; therefore, one can understand his argument through writing. By means of writing Rousseau can communicate and share his thought to us. And yet of course, Rousseau was himself a writer, an exceptionally prolix and dedicated writer, one whose every thought and experience seemed to find a place in his written work. So what can be this strange compunction that operates everywhere in Rousseau s text, leading him to denounce the very means by which his own life-history is set down other to read? 38 For Derrida that is Rousseau s predicament. In Confessions Rousseau realises that though writing corrupts human mind and spring the evils of social inequality and class division, he depends on writing and makes his own thought and feeling known to others and even himself. Moreover, he also confesses that when he writes his own

28 124 biography, he feels to embellish himself and to destroy the original natural truth. Therefore, Rousseau concludes writing is a dangerous supplement to speech. Derrida describes this situation of Rousseau s writing in terms of a classic double bind predicament. 39 Rousseau s dependence in writing can be shown from Confession, he writes: I would love society like others, if I were not sure of showing myself not only at a disadvantage, but as completely different from what I am. The part that I have taken of writing and hiding myself is precisely the one that suits me. If I were present, one would never know what I was worth. 40 In Rousseau s Essays on the Origin of Languages, Derrida can seize upon the word supplement. Rousseau denounces writing as superfluous and added on as sullpementary. But according to Derrida, the word carries further meaning. Derrida writes: The supplement adds itself, it is a surplus, a plentitude enriching another plentitude, the fullest measure of presence. It cumulates and accumulates presence. It is thus that art, techè, image, representation, convention etc., come as supplements to nature and are rich with this entire cumulating function But the supplement supplements. It adds only to replace. It intervenes or insinuates itself in-the-place-of; if it fills, it is as if one fills a void. If it represents and makes an image, it is by the anterior default of a presence. Compensatory [supplémant] and vicarious, the

29 125 supplement is an adjunct, a subaltern instance which takes-(the) - place [tient-lieu]. As substitute it is not simply added to the positivity of a presence, it produces no relief, its place is assigned in the structure by the mark of an emptiness. Somewhere, something can be filled up of itself, can accomplish itself, only by allowing itself to be filled through sign and proxy. The sign is always the supplement of the thing itself. 41 Thus, the supplement is added on only because of a lack in the original and therefore, writing is not superfluous at all. Hence, lack of something, absence and deficiency in speech can be replaced or supplemented by writing. Therefore, writing is neither a dangerous supplement nor a necessary evil as Rousseau says. Rousseau believes writing is a mechanism that is added to speech and perhaps already complete and writing is something that makes speech complete. According to Derrida, speech is certainly not complete when it needs writing to supplement it. Speech is not full of presence since words do not generate stable meaning at present moment. So, Derrida sees that with Rousseau all activities are incorporated with this play of presence and absence. In connection to this, Derrida cites an appropriate example from Rousseau. Rousseau states that melody is central because it is pure and spontaneous impulse for singing. On account of the natural voice and presence of the singer, it is central. On the contrary, Harmony is the combination of multiple voices in concert that is considered as artificial. Due to the complexities in civilization written forms take the place of natural speech melody. However, Derrida points out how Rousseau s view deconstructs himself. As Rousseau says:

30 126 Melody has its principle in harmony, since it is an harmonic analysis which gives degrees of the gamut [scale], and the chords of the mode, and the laws of modulation, the only elements of singing. 42 A melodious song is always sung in a certain key in a certain scale and that is harmony. Therefore, the original melody is always a form of it. All the arguments harmony and melody along with nature and culture are dwelt in by a lack of or absence of something which is to be filled by a play of difference, a play of presence and absence. Next, Derrida continues his deconstructive analysis to French anthropologist, Claude Lévi-Strauss. Lévi- Strauss follows Saussure s structural linguistics in the study of anthropology in general and myth in particular. Lévi-Strauss s argument is also based on the binary opposition between nature and culture. Like Rousseau, Lévi-Strauss also favours nature to culture. Derrida turns to the same lamentation of the loss of nature in the observation of Lévi- Strauss. As a structuralist, he searches for invariant structures which show the nature of human intelligence. This leads to the traditional mode of reading that a text provides stable meaning. Derrida declares: when Lévi-Strauss describes the life of Nambikwara and their tradition to civilization he takes upon himself the burden of guilt produced by this encounter between civilization and innocent culture it ceaselessly exploits. 43 Like Rousseau, Lévi-Strauss gives the priority of speech before writing. According to Lévi-Strauss, speech is original and natural whereas writing is a mechanism of oppression that can corrupt the primitive

31 127 savaged mind of man. Derrida equates the philosophy of Lévi-Strauss to logocentrism. Derrida discovers how Lévi-Strauss deconstructs himself on the privileging attitude of nature to culture. As an anthropologist also Lévi-Strauss studied about primitive Nambikwara tribe living in the forest of Brazil in a book, Tristes Tropiques. He did so because the tribes communicate each other only by speaking. They were very close to nature since they were unknown to writing skill. But the strange thing was that one of the tribes imitated Lévi-Strauss when he noted down in his paper. The man imitated him by making few dots and zigzags on the gourds. Very soon, the man got something else different from other people and he was alienated from other people due to his attribute of writing skill. What Derrida tries to show with reference to this story is that Lévi- Strauss s belief about the Nambikwara tribe who are free from culture simply remains a fantasy. It shows that speech alone is not complete. In order to make complete speech needs something i.e. writing. Thus, speech is supplement to writing. What Derrida tries to show is that the arguments led down by Saussure, Rousseau and Lévi-Strauss can be deconstructed them. This is one of the important strategies of deconstruction. After the close examination of Levi Strauss s anthropology, Derrida finds the difficulties in giving a complete depiction of myths. When Lévi-Strauss brings out a totality of myths he is caught with Derrida s concept of center that without center, the totality cannot be existed. Any concept or a totality has a center, without center there will be no totality. The center can either be inside or outside the totality as origin or end,

32 128 areche or telos. This is why one perhaps could say that the movement of any archaeology, like that of any eschatology, is an accomplice of this reduction of the structurality of structure and always attempts to conceive of structure on the basis of a full presence which is beyond play. 44 The structure of totality requires a center that provides a system from the point of view from its origin and end or goal, but the origin and goal are situated in a paradoxical condition. In this point, it is to say that center can only be present in the system which Derrida terms as eschatological and as a full presence beyond play. Eschatology is a term coined by Foucault to refer to the totalset of relations that unite, at a given period, the discursive practices that give rise to epistemological figures, sciences and possibly formalized systems of knowledge. 45 Eschatology is related to full presence. It occurs when God s word is present on the world. Therefore there is an end of all metaphysics because metaphysics rests on the absence of the presence of the Being. Here Barry Stocker expresses: If everything in Being was fully present to consciousness, consciousness would not experience the differentiation of Being in time, and would not express any differentiation, so that experience itself would have come to an end. This is an impossible situation, though for Derrida it is a constant orientation of consciousness and thought, since they are trying to abolish the difference between themselves and their objects in the very acts of consciousness and thought. These essential conditions of consciousness and thought condition any system of knowlege. 46