Republic of the Philippines

DON HONORIO VENTURA STATE UNIVERSITY

Porac Extension Campus
Porac, Pampanga

Bachelor of Secondary Education major in English

Deconstruction Approach
And
Mimetic Critcism

Cabahug, Ronann Jay

Camaya, Jasper
Carisma, Graciela
Catacutan, Shiela

Mr. Cailvin D. Reyes LPT, MaEd

Deconstruction Approach

Deconstruction involves the close reading of texts in order to demonstrate that any given text has
irreconcilably contradictory meanings, rather than being a unified, logical whole. As J. Hillis Miller, the
preeminent American Deconstructionist, has explained in an essay entitled Stevens’ Rock and Criticism
as Cure (1976), “Deconstruction is not a dismantling of the structure of a text, but a demonstration that it
has already dismantled itself. Its apparently solid ground is no rock but thin air.”
Deconstruction was both created and has been profoundly influenced by the French philosopher
Jacques Derrida. Derrida, who coined the term deconstruction, argues that in Western culture, people tend
to think and express their thoughts in terms of binary oppositions (white / black, masculine / feminine,
cause /effect, conscious /unconscious, presence / absence, speech writing). Derrida suggests these
oppositions are hierarchies in miniature, containing one term that Western culture views as positive or
superior and another considered negative or inferior, even if only slightly so. Through deconstruction,
Derrida aims to erase the boundary between binary oppositions—and to do so in such a way that the
hierarchy implied by the oppositions is thrown into question.

Although its ultimate aim may be to criticize Western logic, deconstruction arose as a response to
structuralism and formalism. Structuralists believed that all elements of human culture, including
literature, may be understood as parts of a system of signs. Derrida did not believe that structuralists could
explain the laws governing human signification and thus provide the key to understanding the form and
meaning of everything from an African village to Greek myth to a literary text. He also rejected the
structuralist belief that texts have identifiable “centres” of meaning–a belief structuralists shared with
formalists.

Formalist critics, such as the New Critics, assume that a work of literature is a freestanding, self-
contained object whose meaning can be found in the complex network of relations between its parts
(allusions, images, rhythms, sounds, etc.). Deconstructionists, by contrast, see works in terms of their
undecidability. They reject the formalist view that a work of literature is demonstrably unified from
beginning to end, in one certain way, or that it is organized around a single centre that ultimately can be
identified. As a result, deconstructionists see texts as more radically heterogeneous than do formalists.
Formalists ultimately make sense of the ambiguities they find in a given text, arguing that every
ambiguity serves a definite, meaningful, and demonstrable literary function. Undecidability, by contrast,
is never reduced, let alone mastered in deconsctruction. Though a deconstructive reading can reveal the
incompatible possibilities generated by the text, it is impossible for the reader to settle on any permanent
meanings.

Deconstruction is a poststructuralist theory, based largely but not exclusively on the writings of
Derrida. It is in the first instance a philosophical theory and a theory directed towards the (re)reading of
philosophical writings. Its impact on literature, mediated in North America largely through the influences
of theorists at Yale University, is based
1) on the fact that deconstruction sees all writing as a complex historical, cultural process rooted in the
relations of texts to each other and in the institutions and conventions of writing, and 2) on the
sophistication and intensity of its sense that human knowledge is not as controllable or as convincing as
Western thought would have it and that language operates in subtle and often contradictory ways, so that
certainty will always elude us.
Jacques Derrida (1930 - 2004)
“language is not the reliable tool of communication”

Jacques Derrida was one of the most well known twentieth century philosophers. He was also one of the
most prolific. Distancing himself from the various philosophical movements and traditions that preceded
him on the French intellectual scene (phenomenology, existentialism, and structuralism), he developed a
strategy called “deconstruction” in the mid 1960s.
According to him Deconstruction has at least two aspects: literary and philosophical. The literary
aspect concerns the textual interpretation, where invention is essential to finding hidden alternative
meanings in the text. The philosophical aspect concerns the main target of deconstruction: the
“metaphysics of presence,” or simply metaphysics. Starting from an Heideggerian point of view, Derrida
argues that metaphysics affects the whole of philosophy from Plato onwards. Metaphysics creates
dualistic oppositions and installs a hierarchy that unfortunately privileges one term of each dichotomy
(presence before absence, speech before writing, and so on).

The deconstructive strategy is to unmask these too-sedimented ways of thinking, and it operates on them
especially through two steps—reversing dichotomies and attempting to corrupt the dichotomies
themselves. The strategy also aims to show that there are undecidables, that is, something that cannot
conform to either side of a dichotomy or opposition. Undecidability returns in later period of Derrida’s
reflection, when it is applied to reveal paradoxes involved in notions such as gift giving or hospitality,
whose conditions of possibility are at the same time their conditions of impossibility. Because of this, it is
undecidable whether authentic giving or hospitality are either possible or impossible.

In this period, the founder of deconstruction turns his attention to ethical themes. In particular, the theme
of responsibility to the other (for example, God or a beloved person) leads Derrida to leave the idea that
responsibility is associated with a behavior publicly and rationally justifiable by general principles.
Reflecting upon tales of Jewish tradition, he highlights the absolute singularity of responsibility to the
other.

Deconstruction has had an enormous influence in psychology, literary theory, cultural studies, linguistics,
feminism, sociology and anthropology. Poised in the interstices between philosophy and non-philosophy
(or philosophy and literature), it is not difficult to see why this is the case. What follows in this article,
however, is an attempt to bring out the philosophical significance of Derrida’s thought.
Deconstructions Theory Of Language
Based on the belief that language is much more slippery and amibgous

e.g (old saying)

Time flies like an arrow = Time passed quickly

Time = noun
Flies = verb
Like an arrow = adverb clause

e.g (additional meaning 1)

Time flies like an arrow = Get out your stopwatch and time the speed of flies as you’d
time an arrows flight
Time = verb
Flies = obj.
Like an arrow = adverb clause

e.g (additional meaning 2)

Time flies like an arrow = Time flies are fond of arrows (or at least of one particular
arrow)
Time Flies = Noun
Like = verb
An arrow = obj.

References:
https://literariness.org/2016/03/22/deconstruction/#:~:text=Deconstruction%20involves%20the
%20close%20reading,being%20a%20unified%2C%20logical%20whole.&text=Although%20its
%20ultimate%20aim%20may,response%20to%20structuralism%20and%20formalism.
https://iep.utm.edu/derrida/
https://www.slideshare.net/oleelchan/deconstructive-criticsm