Deconstructing Deconstruction
Discussing the main features of Deconstruction in relation to J. Hillis Miller�s The Critic as Host.
Deconstruction, as applied in the criticism of literature, designates a theory and practice of reading which claims to "subvert" or "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.
(Abrams (1993), p.225)
So, the system of language falls short in bringing across the meaning of the text as originally implied by the author? Or, to put it differently, that the language of the text itself makes a definite reading of the text impossible when looking at it through the eyes of deconstruction? Jacques Derrida, founder of deconstruction, saw it as follows: he says that...
[...] signs cannot incorporate any absolute, univocal meaning, nor do signifiers directly refer to their respective signifieds. Signifiers can do no more than relate to and become other signifiers which are divorced from the world "out there".
(Merrell (1985), p.1)
So it is about the meaning of the signifiers which is not related to anything outside the text: the words are detached from the concept which it means to signify. The expressed form is severed from the referant, from that which is being referred to. Derrida goes further than that by suggesting there is no referant, no signified. There is the system of signifiers, but outside of that are no signified.
This is an important feature of deconstruction because contemporary Western thinking is that there is an �absolute signified in all its fullness.� (Merrell (1985), p1) A notion which Derrida dubbed the "metaphysics of presence", meaning that language is logocentric, focused around words. This lack of signifiers having a signified means that there is nothing for the signifiers to refer to - that is, no absolute meaning and thus only multiple meanings; there is no univocal text and consequently only plurivocal texts.
Derrida expresses his alternative conception on the "undecidable" play of linguistic meanings in terms derived from Saussure�s view that in a linguistic sign-system, both the signifier (the material elements of a language, whether spoken or written) and the signifieds (their conceptual meanings) owe their seeming identity, not to their own "positive" or inherent features, but to their differences from other speech-sounds, written marks, or conceptual significations.
(Abrams (1993), p.226)
Which brings us back to the metaphysics of presence. Because the signified is nothing but a concept, different from other concepts only due to differences in the signifier (so, according to Derrida, not the other way around), it cannot exist as something tangible in the sense that they have an absolute presence to us. The signified is illusory and so signifiers can only relate to other signifiers and thus that we cannot...
[...] in any instance of speech or writing, have a fixed and decidable present meaning. He [Derrida] says that the differential play (jeu) of language does produce the "effects" of decidable meanings in an utterance or text, but asserts that these effects are illusory.
(Abrams (1993), p.227)
In other words, what appears to have only one meaning to us, has in fact multiple meanings due to the absence of a tangible signified. Texts may seem decidable, but they are all in fact undecidable.
But what does this mean for the texts deconstruction would be applied to? Basically what this means is that a text cannot stand on its own due to the absence of the absolute signified and because every signifier is only different from every other signifier due to its conceptual signified. This brings us to the realm of what is called différance. Leaving the etymology of the word out of this essay, what it refers to is, according to Abrams...
[...] the phenomenon that, on the one hand, a text profers the "effect" of having a significance that is the product of its difference, but that on the other hand, since this proferred significance can never come to rest in an actual presence, or extra-linguistic "transcendental signified," its determinate specification is deferred from one linguistic interpretation to another in a movement or "play," as Derrida puts it, en abyme - that is, an endless regress.
(Abrams (1993), p.227)
So everything has the effect of seeming to have a meaning while on the other hand nullifying any specific meaning thus leaving the reader with innumerable unspecific meanings? Following what Derrida says that indeed is the case, simply because of the lack of a �transcedental signified.� In essence what this means is that in whatever way a text is read it is by definition a misreading of the text simply because there is no correct reading of it.
This idea of the effect of meaning and the innumerable unspecific meanings is essentially contained in what is termed trace. This trace is first of all elusive since the reader does not know it is there and "which consists of all the nonpresent meanings whose differences from the present instance are the sole factor which invest the utterance with its "effect" of having a meaning in its own right." (Abrams (1993), p.226) Trace makes it so that the signifier can never have a single fixed interpretation but instead makes it open for countless different interpretations. Taken for what it is, what this comes down to is that no text can mean something specifically thus effectively nullifying the author�s intended meaning. And that seems to be taking things a little too far. Or, as Abrams (1977) said: "I would agree that there are a diversity of sound (though not equally adequate) interpretations of the play King Lear, yet I claim to know precisely what Lear meant when he said, "Pray you undo this button." (p.433) In other words, different interpretations might be able work quite well for a text as a whole, but not for just any part of a text or, as in this case, merely a sentence.
So how can this theory as a form of criticism by applied to a text? How does the deconstructive critic go about interpreting a text? Hillis Miller (as quoted in Abrams (1977), pp.434-435) puts it as follows:
Deconstruction as a mode of interpretation works by a careful and circumspect entering of each textual labyrinth.... The deconstructive critic seeks to find, by this process of retracing, the element in the system studied which is alogical, the thread in the text in question which will unravel it all, or the loose stone which will pull down the whole building. The deconstruction, rather, annihilates the ground on which the building stands by showing that the text has already annihilated that ground, knowingly or unknowingly. Deconstruction is not a dismantling of the structure of a text but a demonstration that it has already dismantled itself.
This is all very nice and symbolical, but being symbolblind the question arises what it all means. How does one go about finding that �alogical element� in a text? One way in which Hillis Miller goes about deconstructing a text is via the use of etymology. He looks up the word in his etymology dictionary and applies the alternate meanings of the root-form of the words to the text from which he took the words in the first place, thus giving several different interpretations to what is being said, as shown in his article The Critic as Host (1977). So what would happen if a similar procedure was followed concerning his article? In it he deconstructs the word �parasitical,� names it as an example "of the deconstructive strategy of interpretation" and then says:
This complexity and equivocal richness, my discussion of "parasite" implies, resides in part in the fact that there is no conceptual expression without figure, and no intertwining of concept and figure without an implied story, narrative, or myth, in this case the story of the alien guest in the home. Deconstruction is an investigation of what is implied by this inherence of figure, concept, and narrative in one another. Deconstruction is therefore a rhetorical discipline.
(Hillis Miller (1977), p.443)
Now let�s focus on the last sentence and especially on the word rhetorical within that sentence. In his use of the word �rhetorical� Hillis Miller at once appears to both illustrate his point and at the same time annihilate it. First of all there�s the �effect of a decidable meaning�, the great rhetorical discipline of deconstruction, showing that which is already there, with the deconstructive critic studying the elements of the writings in detail, deconstructing every little bit of it until he comes to "that impasse which is the end point of interpretation." It also shows the deconstructive critic trying oratorically to persuade his audience by "discovering all the available means of persuasion in any given case," in this case by relentlessly examining the word �parasite,� until he has convinced them to "think or act in a particular way," the way of the deconstuctionalist. By deconstructing the word �parasite� Hillis Miller turns the whole �effective meaning� of the word upside down by demonstrating its innumerable unspecific meanings. But what happens when investigating the trace meanings of the word �rhetorical� and its noun �rhetoric�?
Next to the meanings of the word as being the "study of the elements, as structure or style used in writing and speaking" and as the "art of effective expression and the persuasive use of language," there is the meaning of �rhetoric� as "affected or pretentious language." The thesaurus gives among others the word �bombastic� as an alternative for �rhetorical.� Deconstruction as a bombastic discipline and the deconstructive critic using important-sounding, insincere words with little meaning, pretentiously trying to illustrate his point. Not exactly the best way to go about convincing your audience, let alone to be taken seriously as a critic. However, as deconstruction tries to show there is no univocal meaning and thus only plurivocal meanings, this meaning is imbedded within the sentence as well as the others.
There is also something inherently anti-deconstructionalist about the word �rhetoric,� in its meaning of "verbal communication" since deconstruction states that there is no �absolute signified� and belief therein is typical for logocentric Western thinking ("the metaphysics of presence") and which is based upon it being Phonocentric: founded on speech rather than writings. Deconstructive criticism is naturally focused on the written text, thus disclaiming the spoken word. The implications of the word �rhetoric� in terms of dubbing deconstruction a �verbally communicative discipline� here seem to suggest totally otherwise.
It appears from this example it is the goal of the deconstructive critic to turn the meaning of a text against its author, but although this would invariably happen, it is not what the deconstructive critic necessarily sets out to do. Or, to quote Barbara Johnson:
Deconstruction is not synonymous with destruction.... The de-construction of a text does not proceed by random doubt or arbitrary subversion, 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 to unequivocal domination of one mode of signifying over the other.
It should not be in the deconstructive critic�s intention to destroy a text as such. Destruction is not a part of the deconstructive critics modus operandi because the �effective meaning� of a text as its only meaning is merely subverted so that multiple, alternative, meanings take place alongside it and thus not replacing the �effective meaning� which is what destruction implies.
In conclusion, deconstruction is a method of interpreting the text in an alternative way by looking at the different meanings hidden within the text, which is possible due to the deconstructive critic�s belief there is no set signified at the origin of the signifier. However, deconstruction has its flaws and the most noticeable one of these is of course that the deconstructive critic is obliged to use the same signifiers with its lack of �absolute signified� as the texts that are deconstructed and thus, within the deconstructive principle, would be unable to bring the intended meaning across whilst at the same time exemplifying the point which the critic is trying to bring across; that no text has a set meaning.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Abrams, M.H. (1977), The Deconstructive Angel, in: Critical Inquiry 3, 425-438.
Abrams, M.H. (1993), A Glossary of Literary Terms; Sixth Edition, Harcourt Brace and Company, Orlando, USA.
Hillis Miller, J. (1977), The Critic as Host, in: Critical Inquiry 3, 439-447.
Merrell, F. (1985), Deconstruction Reframed, Purdue Research Foundation, Indiana, USA.
Note: All dictionary definitions takes from: Webster�s Dictionary at http://civil.colorado.edu/htbin/dictionary