What is deconstruction? This question is difficult to answer. Derrida would be critical and say, "What is ...?" There is something wrong with this syntax itself, which implies that there is something in the world, and this thing can not only be understood, but also be labeled with different names or labels. Deconstructionism rejects this rigid definition, calling itself a criticism of metaphysics and a set of strategies to dispel the certainty of language and its meaning. These critical theories and strategies include: anti-logocentrism, différance, supplementarity and intertextuality.
background explanation
at the end of 19th century, Nietzsche declared that "God is dead" and demanded "re-evaluating all values". His rebellious thoughts have had a far-reaching influence on the west since then. As an ideological trend of questioning rationality and subverting tradition, Nietzsche's philosophy has become one of the ideological sources of deconstruction. The other two important ideological movements that enlighten and nourish deconstruction are Heidegger's phenomenology and European left-wing critical theory.
in p>1968, a radical student movement swept across the capitalist world in Europe and America. In France, the protest movement is called "May Storm". Sadly, this vigorous revolution is short-lived and fleeting. In the depressed years that followed, the revolutionary passion that radical scholars could not suppress was forced to turn to the deep dismantling of academic thoughts. It may be said that they know that capitalism is deeply rooted and hard to shake, but they are determined to destroy and disintegrate the powerful and developed foundations on which it depends, from its language, beliefs, institutions and systems to academic norms and power networks.
deconstruction came into being under this background. In order to oppose metaphysics, logos center and even all closed and rigid systems, the deconstruction movement vigorously advocates the dissipation of subject, the extension of meaning and the freedom of signifier. In other words, it emphasizes the free play of language and thought, even if this freedom is only a "dance with shackles". Besides its natural rebellious character, deconstruction is a self-contradictory theory. In Derrida's words, deconstruction is not a presence, but a trace. It is hard to define, invisible, but everywhere. In other words, once deconstruction is defined or defined as what it is, it will be deconstructed itself. The two basic characteristics of deconstruction are openness and non-termination. Deconstructing a sentence, a proposition, or a traditional belief is to destroy the philosophical basis it claims and the hierarchical opposition it relies on by analyzing the rhetorical methods.
At the same time, we must see that the logic, methods and theories used by deconstruction are mostly borrowed from the metaphysical tradition. From this point of view, deconstruction is just a typical expedient measure, or a confrontational strategy of attacking one's own shield with one's own spear.
Heidegger's exploration of logos
Derrida's deconstruction thought was first inspired by the German philosopher Heidegger. As one of the leaders of phenomenological movement, Heidegger took the lead in exploring the problems of existence and logos in the history of western philosophy in Introduction to Metaphysics. In Heidegger's view, the issue of logos is very important, which not only involves the origin of western thought and language, but also fundamentally affects the relationship between modern westerners and the present. Heidegger made a famous question about this: How did ancient logos become modern logic, and then separated from existence? How can it achieve a dominant position in western thought in the name of rationality?
By analyzing the remnants of parmenides, an ancient Greek philosopher, Heidegger claimed that he had discovered the original meaning of "logos and existence". In the ancient manuscripts, Logos does not represent Logic or Idee, but it originally represents an aggregation state in continuous operation. Interestingly, this gathering in the process of occurrence coincides with the ancient Greek view of being. In their minds, existence is an activity that constantly emerges, aggregates and dissipates. In other words, it means the continuous presence and departure of the existence. Heidegger concluded that the original meaning of Physis and Logos was the same, but their flesh-and-blood relationship was greatly separated by Plato.
ever since Plato founded metaphysics, Logos has been forcibly interpreted by westerners as a kind of "logical statement". In this regard, Heidegger sharply criticized that this historical misinterpretation not only caused the divorce between existence and thought, but also led to the opposition between subject and object in western thought that lasted for thousands of years. There is a concrete example related to the translation of parmenides's famous saying "Being is the same as thinking": the word "thinking" in the sentence was originally written as Noein, which was interpreted by modern westerners as subjective thinking, which undoubtedly seriously deviated from parmenides's original intention. Heidegger said that Noein is consciousness, or a cognitive process of constantly detecting, awakening and adjusting itself according to external changes. Parmenides's so-called "existence and consciousness are the same" means that "consciousness belongs to existence". In ancient Greece, consciousness was not a conscious ability, and it was still in a chaotic situation where subject and object were not divided. Heidegger said that it was precisely because the ancient Greeks were under the control of existence that they were able to constantly realize and truly become human beings.
Let me remind you that, when discussing the relationship between man and existence, Heidegger, like parmenides, obviously refuses to put man in the first place. He abandoned the subject, opposed logic and questioned the way of thinking of the opposition between subject and object. At the same time, he repeatedly stressed that people's thoughts must be in harmony with existence, not separated and conflicted. Heidegger firmly believes that the existence of Greeks means accepting logos, that is, the consciousness naturally generated in the process of gathering. In other words, where existence occurs, consciousness naturally occurs, and people's thoughts can only rely on existence from the beginning and change with the change of existence.
however, this wonderful start did not last forever. After Plato, westerners began to confront existence. They are more and more confident that they have the subjectivity and knowledge ability to dominate existence, which is quite different from the original simple and natural ancient Greek thought. Heidegger tried to express this change with two formulas: at the beginning, the aggregation process of existence established human existence; At the end, man has become a rational animal. The key turning point is that Plato personally translated Physis into Idee, which abandoned its original meaning of "emergent occurrence". In this regard, Heidegger sighed: "Truth becomes correctness, Logos becomes statement, where truth or correctness lies, and ideas and categories have governed western thoughts and behaviors since then."
Derrida's deconstruction strategy
As a successor of Heidegger's thoughts in France, Derrida was deeply influenced by Heidegger's anti-metaphysics and anti-Loguism theory. On the other hand, he absorbed new knowledge, found a new way, and boldly put forward a set of strategies for the erosion and disintegration of Logocentrism from the perspective of linguistics and semiotics. This gave birth to his deconstruction, which was famous all over the world in the mid-196s. Derrida's deconstruction theory is complicated and inconsistent, so it is difficult to make a clear and recognized unified explanation so far. However, some of the most critical concepts and methods, such as anti-logocentrism, variation and substitution, need to be explained in detail.
Criticizing the Logos Center According to Heidegger's critique of Logos mentioned above, we have roughly understood that the tradition of western metaphysical thought originated from Plato's forced misinterpretation of the issue of Logos in ancient Greece. According to Plato and his disciples, truth originates from Logos, that is, the voice of truth or the word of God. This logoism holds that the existence of everything in the world is closely related to its presence. Therefore, the most ideal way is to think directly about "thoughts" and try to avoid the medium of language. But this is just impossible. Therefore, they demand that language should be as transparent as possible, so that human beings can naturally become the spokesmen of truth through their own speech. In other words, Logogism holds that there is a natural and internal direct relationship between words and meaning (that is, truth, the word of God). Speech is the "natural expression" of the speaker's thoughts and the transparent symbol of his "thinking at the moment". Accordingly, Logistism is also called "phonocentrism" by later generations. At the same time, writing is traditionally regarded as the second place, a substitute for sound and a medium of media. Even Saussure's signifier is first and foremost a "sound image". As a signifier, written words are transformed from sounds.
another manifestation of the superiority of words over words is the speaker's "presence". When the speaker is on the spot, he can accurately explain his "intention" and avoid ambiguity. In contrast, words are just a series of symbols, which are easily misunderstood because of the speaker's absence.
Derrida's importance lies in his active and effective methods of subversion and deconstruction based on Heidegger's criticism. He claimed that written words were not inherently inferior to language pronunciation. In order to break the traditional "phonological center" prejudice, he tried to establish a "philology" to highlight and confirm the superiority of written words. The superiority of this kind of writing lies in its "iterability" in the semiotic sense.
Derrida believes that repeatability is a prerequisite for the existence of symbols. Only when a symbol can be recognized as "the same" in different situations can a symbol become a symbol. Another necessary condition of symbols is that when the listener has no knowledge of the original speaker's intention, he can also understand his intention with the help of the symbol system. In other words, symbols should be understood and accepted normally by people regardless of the speaker's intention.
The above two essential characteristics of symbols, namely "repeatability" and "disregarding the speaker's intention", verify the superiority of Derrida's words. On a larger scale, the overall character includes the whole linguistic symbol system, so it is also the basic condition for the existence of words and characters in a narrow sense. This is what Derrida called "arch-writing". Once the concept of meta-writing is established, it will inevitably break the phonological center theory of Logogism.
Disintegration of Two Contradictions We know that the whole western metaphysical thought tradition, from Plato's idea to Descartes' "I think therefore I am" and then to Hegel's "absolute idea", is based on westerners' rationality and self-awareness. In the eyes of modern westerners, with the development and prosperity of western civilization, their subjective consciousness has been endowed with supreme lofty status and leadership. Derrida dared to take the world by storm and launch a tenacious and unremitting attack on the foundation of this powerful ideological tradition, which undoubtedly has a positive and critical significance.
As we all know, the traditional Logocentrism is embodied in the hierarchical binary opposition. In this regard, Derrida severely condemned in his Position: "In the traditional binary opposition, the two opposing projects are not peaceful, but in a distinct hierarchical order. One of them occupies a mandatory position in logic and value, and it dominates the other. "
Look at the following two familiar opposites: speech/writing, nature/culture, man/woman, soul/body, consciousness/unconsciousness, reason/madness, truth/fallacy, advanced/backward, enlightened/ignorant, West/East, subject/other, master/slave, and so on. In each pair of projects, the former is often superior to the latter and exists at a higher level. That is to say, they represent or belong to logos, so they are also the center, benchmark or so-called "first principle" to establish the relationship between them. The latter is based on the former, and they are obviously subordinate, negative, negative and secondary things.
Aiming at binary opposition and its hierarchy, Derrida issued a mobilization order for disintegration: "To deconstruct binary opposition, at a specific moment, we must first reverse this hierarchical order." He not only spoke fiercely, but also took the lead in launching a number of deconstruction efforts. One of the most successful examples of linguistic deconstruction is the relentless destruction of the project by "words/characters". As Derrida said, words are not inferior to words. As a "meta-writing", words in turn include words in a generous way.
It should be noted that Derrida's deconstruction efforts are not the first time in history. Long before him, we have seen Freud's similar contributions in the field of psychology. The goal of Derrida's deconstruction is "speech/writing", while Freud's deconstruction is "consciousness/unconsciousness". Similar to Derrida's efforts, Freudian psychology has proved that unconsciousness is a broader field of thinking, which includes consciousness, and consciousness is only a part of unconsciousness. In other words, the unconscious is our real psychological reality. The obvious difference is that Freud's practice of reversing the binary opposition is not Derrida's deconstruction in the strict sense, because it "has neither neutrality nor reformed the traditional old order".
in Derrida's view, deconstruction is not simply to reverse their original opposing positions. The fundamental problem is that deconstruction holds that there are only some differences between the two opposites, and there is no hierarchical order of which is superior and which is inferior. Not only that, but there are also a lot of mutual infiltration and tolerance between the two opposites. In the eyes of deconstructionists, anything that is conscious has passed the initial unconscious stage, and unconsciousness is a kind of repressed or delayed consciousness. Consciousness and unconsciousness permeate each other, and there is no clear boundary between them. It can even be said that there is still a pre-conscious vague area between the two.
Saussure's linguistics believes that symbols are composed of two parts: concept and sound. The concrete things in reality are reflected and embodied in people's minds (concept/signified), and then expressed by concrete language symbols (signifier, that is, signifier). This leads to two important opposites in structural linguistics: signifier/signified. It is not difficult to see that in these two opposites, what can be referred to is initiative and dominance.
according to traditional linguistics, there is a one-to-one correspondence between signified and objective things in reality. Their expression in language is speech. The signifier includes not only words, but also words. However, writing, as the only reason for the existence of signifier, is to express words. This reflects the traditional philosophy's concept of attaching importance to words and neglecting words. In this regard, American critic Leitch made an accurate explanation in Criticism of Deconstruction:
The signifier of a symbol corresponds to the signified of a concept. In other words, sound represents a complete concept. They are all realized by people. For example, the pronunciation
refers to the concept of "chair", which reflects people's minds. The real chair was not there.