Transcript of Deconstruction and Poststructuralism
Poststructuralism
An approach to literature that states words have no absolute meaning, any text is open to a unlimited range of interpretations.
The main concern of the the deconstructive method is to show that the meaning of a literary text is not fixed and stable. Instead, by exploring the dynamic tension within a text's language, literary deconstruction reveals the literary work to be not a determinate object with a single correct meaning but an expanding semantic field that is open to multiple, sometimes conflicting interpretations
M.H Abrahms on Deconstruction
According to Abrams, deconstruction designates a theory and practice of reading that claims to undermine the assumption that the system of language provides grounds that are adequate to establish the boundaries, the coherence or unity, and the determinate meanings of a text.
Deconstruction
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Poststructuralism
Deconstruction
Deconstruction is a literary criticism movement originated by French critic Jacques Derrida in the 1960s
Hamlet and Deconstruction
Deconstruction Theory embraces the idea that the meaning in a work is always uncertain and it is not the literary critics job to illuminate meaning of it.
Derrida originated the theory but it borrows the ideas of many. Sigmund Freud and Jacques Lacan, Ferdinand de Saussure and more.
For Derrida, Deconstructive reading opens inevitable, unavoidable gaps of meaning that readers fill with their own interpretations. In this way, reading is a strong activity. Readers help give writing its sense by filling in these gaps and conflicts of meaning.
Emerged in France during the 1960's as a movement meant to critique structuralism.
Theorists include Jacques Derrida and Ronald Barthes who was originally a structuralist before he wrote "Death of the Author" a piece encouraging critics to forgo the analysis of the author's intention.
No two readers are alike. He or she will bring their own life experiences to the work and with that decide what his or her own interpretation is.
Deconstruction has been viewed by its opponents as an intellectually obscure. M. H. Abrams wrote a particularly devastating essay on deconstruction, concerns include:
To the deconstructive critic, the language cannot accurately represent reality
Text often contradicts itself
No one can have one meaning
Deconstructionists value close readings of the text and find it more interesting when they focus on meanings implicit in a text that were not necessarily intended by the author.
This causes them to take apart a text piece by piece in order to search for a missing element that may reveal a whole new series of meanings.
Similar to New Criticism
Deconstruction would look at the text and see the conflict in Hamlet’s words, before when he is speaking to himself and then after when he is speaking to his mother or to Ophelia. The way he switches between blank verse and iambic pentameter
The Tempest and Deconstruction
Through Deconstruction you would say that there is no one true meaning, so there is not one reason why Prospero was kicked out of Milan nor why he made slaves of the spirits.
They read the text against itself so as to expose what might be thought of as the textual subconscious, where meanings are expressed which may be directly contrary to the surface meaning.
Hamlet and Poststructuralism
In looking at it through post-structural criticism there is no one way to look at Hamlet going mad or why he did, if there really is a ghost or if it is all in his head. There are missing pieces in the text that, you as the reader have to fill in and think up your own conclusions
The Tempest and Poststructuralism
Looking at through Post-structuralism there is also no one truth to Prospero, how he was run out of the kingdom, in giving up his magic you aren’t sure if he is going to be a good king. It would also look at the opposites that are portrayed in the play, nature/society, human/nonhuman
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M.H Abrams on
Post-structuralism
One of the most fascinating things about the Post-Structuralist movements is that they are impossible to classify under any one of the categories. For example. Some psychoanalytic critics, such as Jaques Lacan, continue to focus on the author, but now are interested in analyzing how the structure of the language itself can subvert authorial intention, which is in a sense an objective analysis.
Post- Structuralists main concern is to act as an approach to literature proceeding from the tenets of structuralism. It maintains that, as words have no absolute meaning, any text is open to an unlimited range of interpretations
The word “différance,” which refers to the process of words deriving meaning form other words. Since words are meaningless symbols that can never fully represent the ideas they are meant to convey, they are always at a