Peter Barry reminds us of something we all understand as we get older: rebellion often begins when we "accuse [our] predecessors [our elders] of not having the courage of their convictions" (Beginning Theory: An Introduction to Literary and Cultural Theory, 57). Jacques Derrida, revels in the childish rebellion in "Structure, Sign, and Play in the Discourse of the Human Sciences." He calls linguistic theory a "game" and the nonstandard manipulation of language "freeplay" (116).
He bases his arguments (his rebellion) on the idea that language has no inherent ("transcendental or privileged" (117)) meaning. Concluding, therefore, that the organized structure of language can have "no access to any fixed landmark which is beyond linguistic processing" (Barry, 57). There is no linguistic reality except that which we create, which, by our own (standard) definition, means it's not real at all.
Everything we know or have learned through language, then, is construct - not a particularly arguable thought for either Structuralists or Post-Structuralists. In fact, Barry differentiates between the attitude of the two not by whether or not they buy into constructed language as a concept, but by whether or not they are willing to accept it as a foundation for defining meaning (61)regardless. For Post-Structuralists, says Barry, language is too "liquid" to rely on even provisionally (62).
But, Derrida defines it as a game - possibly a "quasi-religious" game(Barry 65) from which he and his compatriots derive "a certain masochistic, intellectual pleasure" (Barry, 61) - but, still, just a game. The pieces are signifiers and are moved around in hopes of disproving any hypothetical center that can be defined by the language that creates them. But, even Derrida understands we can't "[refuse the concept]" of sign and signifier completely (Derrida, 117).
We can choose to play with the difference between signifier and signified - that is, we can know that the word "tree" is not the same as the actual concrete, sensually recognized entity which is created outside of our minds, therefore outside of our language - but that doesn't negate the fact that, until an as yet undiscovered alternative comes along, we will continue to use systems of language to communicate using the word "tree" to describe certain plant life - even when it means communicating about what it is or isn't actually being communicated.
Theory is a form of mental gymnastics - Post-Structuralists like Jacques Derrida acknowledge and play with this fact. Now that he has gone, however, into a place "as yet unnameable" to the rest of us, we might never know if he took the game seriously or is now laughing as we try desperately to figure out what sort of "formless, mute, infant" monster he was attempting to give birth to (Derrida, 119).
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
The more I read the Derrida piece, the less I tried to find definitive examples of what his signs signified and what things might constitute a "center." I think in a discussion of a matter, one might define the center of something differently than another. The different centers of discussion would ultimately (theoretically probably)reveal the lack of a true center at all. I think Derrida's tip-toeing-around explicit examples allows readers to draw such conclusions from his arguments and others.
ReplyDelete