Semiotic approaches:
From Structuralism to
Post-Structuralism (Deconstruction)
Outline
Deconstruction: Practice:
.VISA-VISA-
()
1. Signs? Connotations? Distortion?
2. Is the woman all powerful?
2.
3.
Poststructuralism
Keywords: constructionism floating signifier
-- a major theoretical school in the postmodern age which
radicalizes structuralist views of language by seeing
signified as signifier, and separating signs from reality.
-- in conflict with many other theoretical schools such as
Marxism, Feminism and Postcolonialism, but also get to
be combined with them;
-- the areas of its influences range from arts, politics to
popular culture.
Poststructuralism
Keywords: constructionism floating signifier
Poststructuralism: Theory
Major Questions
1.
How does poststructuralism de-center
traditional authorities?
2.
Why is the author dead? Why is there nothing
outside the text? Why is reality textual, and
individual, a product of social and linguistic
forces. . . a tissue of textualities (64-65)?
3.
Why is signifier floating, meaning disseminated,
and text, an endless free play of
meanings(66)?
1.
I am 40 years old.
The Republic of China was born on
Oct. 10, 1911.
I love you till the end of the world.
Syntagmatic/Combination
(narrative structure:
roles + actions);
metonymy
Thematic structure:
Motifs, mythemes,
metaphors, etc.
+ more stereotypical
descriptions, or a fathers
advice to his son, etc.
Paradigmatic/Selection:
Paradigmatic/Selection:
Language/Literature as
an enclosed system
Syntagmatic/Combination
Chinaman
.
03:59
, NAPSTER,
.
(source)
Traces of other usages
Multiple Context:
Derrida: Outline
-- Jacque Derrida:
1. Prologue: Instability of Meaning
(discussed)
2. Writing as Diffrance
3. Center as Transcendental Signified
and Binarism
4. Deconstruction: Literary Practice
http://203.198.70.29/subject/chlt/tangci.htm
Signifier 1
(rose)
presence/absence of traces
* Derrida sees the signifieds also in a relation
Signified
1
(flower)
Signified
2
(love)
Signified 2
(rose=love)
Signified 3
(rose=
woman in
love)
Signified 4
(rose = weak,
vain &
dependent
woman in love)
Signifier
Signified 2
Asian People
Yellow
Questions
Signified 3
White Americans
White
Innocent, Strong
and Civilized
Manifest Destiny
God
(Textbook: p. 124)
Light
Reason
Culture
Woman
Darkness
Emotion Nature
The
Public;
West,
etc.
The
Private;
East,
etc.
Deconstruction: practices
Critique of Metaphysics:
logocentrism, & phallogocentrism
(textbook p. 131)
1.
2.
3.
Deconstruction of
Binary Opposition: Example (2)
Ode on Melancholy
Binaries:
1.
No to active pursuits of sleep or suicide (
drowns the soul, turns it passive);
2.
Savor the contraries and transience in life;
3.
1. She (active) dominates where all the
senses are quickened; you
He burst joys grape against his palate; hung
as one of his trophies (passive)
When senses are active, the poet seems
powerless and passive.
Wordsworths poems:
I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud;
Undecidability: example 3
1.
2.
3.
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Derridian Deconstruction
in Context
Undecidability: example 4
A slumber did my spirit seal;
I had no human fears:
She seemed a thing that could not feel
The touch of earthly years.
<Gap>
No motion has she now, no force;
She neither hears nor sees;
Rolled round in earth's diurnal course,
With rocks, and stones, and trees.
(William Wordsworth )
Self-Conscious Texts in
Contemporary Popular Culture
Undecidability: example 4
A slumber
present
death
the cosmic
peacefulness and
regularity
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Assignments
"The Blind Man"
2. Chap 6 (123-33)
3. Into the Woods
1.
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