Oppositions of Texts

DECONSTRUCTION APPROACH

I.INTRODUCTION

Different forms of Structionalism dominated the 50’s and 60’s. The application of the structionalist principle depends on the theorician who proposed a principle but they all agreed to one thing that language is the primary means of how a reader achieves meaning and language has its own rule-governed system to achieve such meaning. According to Ferdinand de Saussure, structuralists seek to discover the overall system that accounts for an individual interpretation of a text. But with the emergence of the deconstruction theory, the structuralist assumption that a text’s meaning can be discovered through an examination of its structural codes was challenged. Deconstructionism declares that a text has an almost infinite number of possible interpretations and the interpretations themselves are just as creative and important as the text being depressed.

Deconstructionism was coined by Jacques Derrida. Derrida was a French philosopher, a teacher and the father of Deconstructionism. It emerged on the American literary stage in 1996 Derrida read his paper “Symposium, Sign, and Play”. In his paper, he questioned the metaphysical assumptions held to be true by Western philosophy since Plato’s time. Derrida launch a method of textual analysis in which most critics believed to be the most intricate and most challenging but Derrida himself did not want to include Deconstructionism as a school of criticism or a philosophy. He believed that he cannot develop a formalized statement of his rules for reading, interpretation and writing and he claimed that his approach to reading is a more strategic device than a methodology. This approach coined new words and established new ideas held in Western culture.

Derridean deconstruction affirms Saussure’s judgment that language is a system based on differences. He agrees with what Saussure said that readers can know the meaning of the signifiers because of their relationship and their differences among themselves. But Derrida applied this reasoning to signified. He declared that the signified cannot make a meaning of the signifier permanent because the relationship between the signifier and signified are arbitrary and conventional. Since signification is arbitrary and conventional, Derrida asserted that the Western metaphysics from Plato up to the present is found upon a classic, fundamental error which is the Transcendental signified. Transcendental signified is an external point of reference on which one may build a concept or philosophy. It can provide ultimate meaning, being the origins of the origin and provides a reassuring end to the reference from sign to sign.

Words like God, reason, origin, being, essence, truth, humanity, beginning, end, and self was invented in Western metaphysics and they function as center. Center meaning they can operate as a concept that is self-sufficient and self-originating and can serve as a transcendental signified. The inclination towards center is called logocentrism. Logocentrism is the belief that there is an ultimate center of truth that can serve as the basis for all thoughts and actions. Establishing something as center means that there is another that is being decentered that’s why Derrida concludes that Western metaphysics is based on binary opposition. Binary opposition is the opposite of something. Since binary opposition is about the opposite of something, Derrida declared that in binary opposition, there is the superior element called privileged and the inferior element is called unprivileged. One can say that in a binary supposition, the privileged there are the first or in top while the unprivileged are the second. For example in man/woman: man is privileged and woman is unprivileged, human/animal: human is privileged while animal is unprivileged.

Using deconstructionism in reading requires the reader to recognize first the existence of the binary opposition. The example binary opposition that was derived from Platonic and Aristotelian thought and is considered as the most violent hierarchy is speech/writing. Speech is the privileged and writing is unprivileged. After recognizing the binary opposition, readers can now reverse its elements. Reversal is possible because truth is indescribable or mysterious. Reversing the elements will help the readers to examine the values and belief that give rise to the original hierarchy and the reversed one and the examination reveals how the meaning of terms arise from the differences between them. Derrida explained why speech/writing can and must be reversed. He argued that by redefining writing, he can give a new meaning to it, that writing is actually a precondition for and prior to knowledge. For Derrida, language is a special kind of writing which he called arche-writing. He also used the term supplement to refer to the unstable relationship between the elements of the binary opposition. Another term was coined by Derrida and it is differance which comes the French word differer. This term is the basic keys in understanding deconstructionism. It is about the what if’s.

Using deconstructionism as an approach to textual analysis requires the reader to reread and reinterpret the text for a couple of times. Since there is no correct interpretation in using deconstructionism, the reader may enjoy creating lots of interpretation in the chosen text. Deconstructionism as a reading strategy creates commotion in the minds of the readers for it is not neat, complete package wherein follow the steps will lead the readers to the meaning of the text.

II. DISCUSSION

In this article, there will be two literary pieces that will be introduced and the said approach will be used in criticizing both pieces. The first literary piece to use is Mrs. Dalloway written by Virginia Wolf. She was born into a privileged English household in 1882, author Virginia Woolf was raised by free-thinking parents. She began writing as a young girl and published her first novel, The Voyage Out, in 1915. She wrote modernist classics including Mrs. Dalloway, To the Lighthouse and Orlando, as well as pioneering feminist works, A Room of One's Own and Three Guineas. In her personal life, she suffered bouts of deep depression. She committed suicide in 1941, at the age of 59.

The other story was entitled Doctor Zhivago by Boris Pasternak. Boris Pasternak was a Russian poet and novelist whose Doctor Zhivago helped win him the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1958, but it was a controversial work in Russia. Pasternak’s main livelihood was translating, and his work included renderings of William Shakespeare, among others. In 1987 the Union of Soviet Writers posthumously reinstated Pasternak, giving him legitimacy in his home country.

One of the examples of deconstructionism approach is a Novel entitled Mrs. Dalloway which was written by Virginia Wolf. This is about the events that happened only in one day. Where Clarissa Dalloway had realizations about her past. On that day, she unexpectedly met her former suitor Peter Walsh in the flower shop where she bought flower for the event she wouldn't host that night. Realizations about her marriage with Richard Dalloway, a noble and respective man. On the second line of the story was Septimus Smith a shell-shocked war veteran, out on the street with his wife Lucrezia. He had extreme struggles with the after effects of war and hearing voices.

In reading the novel, readers will definitely have different conclusions because the story produced different ideas. Just for example, the realization that Clarissa had as she met again her former suitor is not really stated if what have she realized. It was just said that she realized something about her marriage with Richard Dalloway. On the other part of the novel where Richard was thinking to surprise his wife Clarissa with a bouquet of flower and tell her he loves him for it has been a long time since he last tell her about his love. Readers would come up with the idea that Clarissa realized that she should have marry Peter instead rather than Richard. Because she is not happy and doesn't feel love from her husband. Readers would conclude that she might leave Richard for Peter.

This novel is unique because it has multiple events that happened in the within a single day which means there are a lot of ideas the author focused which made the readers think if what is really its point. In the story there happened the death of Septimus where he jumped off from the window of the medical building, Richard's breakfast with Lady Burton, Clarissa's daughter Elizabeth with her tutor. In these parts of the novel readers will find complexity with the message or with the idea of the story which makes the story an example of deconstructionism because there would be opposing ideas between the author and the readers. In deconstruction by Jacques Derrida, there is no outside texts. Which means there will be no other meaning of the text but only the given idea of the author. Deconstruction is also disambiguation because it sends different meaning to the readers about the text. Deconstruction type of literature leaves readers multiple complicated questions about the main idea of the story. In order to understand a deconstruction literature one should not use metaphysical and ethnocentrism. Metaphysical which means beyond nature. One should only focus on what is on the text and the reality of the text. While with ethnocentrism which is the evaluating or judging other culture and beliefs.

In reading the novel there are two parts of the story which oppose at each other. The character who was Clarissa Galloway had flashback from her past through her present situation. An example of that was when she met her suitor before who was Peter at the flower shop. She suddenly remembers the time where Peter was really into her. It seemed that at that moment where she was standing, she felt like she's lifted and thrown to her past. These two parts are the Past and present. These words are obviously opposing but they are working as partners at the story and that makes the story more complicated to the readers.

The other story is entitled Dr Zhivago, a literary piece written by Boris Pasternak. The story revolves around the life of a Russian physician and poet who, although married to another, falls in love with a political activist's wife and experiences hardship during the First World War and then the October Revolution (LVJeff). Aside from him, and his family together with his lovers, various names were included in the story. It does create confusion to the readers because it does not only focus on the life of the main character but various stories from the various characters were included. There’s a lot of shifting happening in the story that would interrupt the plot of the story making the reader be confused on the flow of the story.

Different writers and critics explained briefly the complexity on Pasternak’s work. Slater argues that Pasternak's work is also difficult because his mind-set is unpredictably complex, evocatively associative, synaesthetic and polysemous. Pevear found out that there was no real plot to the novel, that its chronology was confused, that the main characters were oddly effaced, that the author relied far too much on contrived coincidences. It was never meant to be a moving love story, or a lyrical biography of a poet in which the individual is set against the grim realities of Soviet life. Scammel, citing Vladimir Nabokov saying that it was "a sorry thing, clumsy, trite and melodramatic, with stock situations, voluptuous lawyers, unbelievable girls, romantic robbers and trite coincidences but Pasternak defended the numerous coincidences in the plot, saying that they are "traits to characterize that somewhat wilful, free, fanciful flow of reality.”

III. CONCLUSION

Readers tend to apply multiple approaches and various interpretations that were injected into criticizing a text that’s why deconstructionism refers instability of meaning, the way it was constructed was the main root to bring complexity to readers. In the two stories, a lot of events happened and if they would try to conclude, there will be a lot of questions unanswered and philosophies inserted to attempt to align their ideas with the author. But remember that “there is no outside text” meaning, the text itself is the meaning itself in which readers and other critics would always try to oppose ideas making the totality of the meaning of the text unstable. Deconstructionism simultaneously embodies the desired meaning as intended by the author, and the constraints placed on that meaning through the act of interpretation of the text.

LIST OF REFERENCES

Pasternak, B. (2013) Dr. Zhivago. Retrieved on September 5, 2017 from

https://bookmate.com/reader/huHwgwkn

Pevear R. (n.d) Introduction, Pevear & Volokhonsky trans. Retrieved on September 5, 2017 from

https://Doctor_Zhivago_(novel)#cite_ref-ReferenceA_29-1

Scammell, M. (2014) The CIA's 'Zhivago', The New York Review of Books. Retrieved on

September 5, 2017 from http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2014/jul/10/cias-zhivago/?insrc=hpss

Slater, A. (2010) Rereading: Doctor Zhivago. Retrieved on September 5, 2017 from

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2010/nov/06/doctor-zhivago-boris-pasternak-translation

Woolf, V. (2015) Mrs. Dalloway. Retrieved on September 5, 2107 from

https://ebooks.adelaide.edu.au/w/woolf/virginia/w91md/