Poststructuralism and Deconstruction. ( Jacques Derrida, Michel Foucault, and Gayatri Spivak)

Assignment

Name: Dave NIMESH B

M.A. Sem: 2

Paper No. (8-c) Cultural Studies

Assignment Topic: Poststructuralism and Deconstruction-Jacques Derrida-Michel Foucault-Gayatri Spivak

• Introduction

        Poststructuralism and Deconstruction terms  are mainly associated with the work of the French philosopher Jacques Derrida.  Deconstruction and Poststructuralism provided a radically new approach to language, narratives and interpretation.

Derrida and difference

For,  Poststructuralism

‘language is never stable’.

Meaning is the result of the difference, and this process of differentiation is endless.

Meaning is never present in the sign, simply because the sign refers to (yet) another sign, which is not here.

For example:-

In order to understand the term ‘cat’, we need more words like ‘animal’, or  ‘four-legged’, or ‘organism’.

Then we  need to understand ‘animal’, ‘organism’ using words like ‘living’ or ‘non-human’, which in turn requires an explanation and understanding of ‘human’ and ‘life’.

Notice how each term can be explained through newer terms.

Thus reading or interpretation is the movement through the chain of signs, seeking a temporary meaning from/at halt.

This suggests that  Every signifier (word/sign) leads not to a stable  end- signified, but  to more signifiers.

This implies that Meaning is never fully graspable, and the final meaning is always postponed (differed).

A sign may be reproduced any time any place ( the iterability or repeatability of sign).

Thus it can be made to mean differently each time it repeats in a different context.

It is never absolutely same sign that we encounter at each moment of its repetition.

It follows that if meaning is never fully present  then human identity- which is the result and the product of the language- is also never stable or unified.

The ‘presence’ of identities or meaning is an illusion, for all presence is tainted with the impurity of the absent and the excluded.

The very term ‘ Structure’ presupposes a Unity, a centre and the  margin.

‘there is never centre without margin’

In fact, if we did not have margins, we cannot locate a centre.

This means the existence of the centre is never definite and unified: it depends on the existence of the margin.

The centre is identified in its difference from the margin.

And in order to understand/ explain centre we need to refer to the margin.

That is, the meaning of the term ‘centre’ is differed (postponed) until we explain the term ‘margin’.

Hence meaning is available only  difference and diference. To suggest the togetherness of these two features of the sign and meaning Derrida coins the term differAnce.

For Derrida the entire field of signs of ‘writing’ or, ecriture. Here writing is not restricted to the graphic sense of the word, but refers to the Figural sense: writing is the term used to denote any system that Is based on difference and diference (differAnce).

To study such writings, Derrida terms ‘ Grammatology’, the very science of ‘difference’.

In short.. his key ideas  are…..

·         Identity and meaning are never stable or unified.

·         Identity and meaning are based on difference.

·         Identity and meaning always depend on some other term or concept which is not present in this term.

·         There is no final meaning because each time you arrive at a ‘set of key terms’, or meanings, you discover that you need to move on to more words.

MICHEL FOUCAULT

·         Michel Foucault and power/ knowledge

Michel Foucault was interested in the way power structures depends upon structures of knowledge. ( arts, science, medicine, demography)  and how,Once they acquire knowledge, creates subjects to be controlled.

Foucault’s methodology seeks to understand how some sections of the population have been classified as criminals or insane.

That is, he is interested in understanding the processes of classification that helped exclude some people from society.

Foucault argues that certain authorities who  possess  power in society produce knowledge about those who lack power. Such a system of knowledge is called ‘Discourse’The arts, religion, science and the law are discourses that produces particular subjects.

Let us look at a concept- map of designation of deviance and their remedies inn histories as produced by specific ‘authorities’.

Category	Discourse	Authority	‘Corrective’
Immortality	Religion	Priest	Penitence
Vagrancy	Economics	Economist/ Social commentator	Forced Employment
Criminal	Law	Police/ Jury	Imprisonment
Insane	Psychiatry	Psychiatrist/ Psychoanalyst	Asylum
Sick	Medicine	Physician	Hospital

The last column, ‘corrective’ marks the actual enforcement of power or process/ act, where  the ‘authorities’ ensures that the deviance is rectified according to what they think is right.

        Discourse and Knowledge produce certain category of ‘subjects’ (people) who are then treated in particular ways: 

the immoral are ‘remedied’ by priests, criminals are jailed by thelaw, the sick are treated by the doctors and insane shut away in asylums by Psychiatrist.

What happens, therefore, is that  the production of knowledge about those who lack power leads to very effective practices of power on the part of the authorities.Knowledge and classification systems such as medicine, law, or religion are therefore modes of social control.        Power and knowledge help to identify and classify individual subjects as mad or ill.The task is to analyze the working of the power and knowledge within a social set-up.These can be at  the level of the family or at the level of the nation- state. There is therefore,
No such things as neutral or objective knowledge because knowledge is always used to serve the interests of the Dominant group.        Now after Foucault we know that discourse produce particular subject, who are subjects to no control.*concept of Subaltern:-People who lack the power to determine their lives and future are said to lack agency. They are called ‘Subaltern’.Every social formation has its own social subalterns.The dominant groups in social structures that construct subalterns also use particular modes to ensure that the subalterns remain powerless.
*Ideology:-One such means of keeping the power relation in favor of dominant category is ideology.-ideology is a system of belief and ideas that permeates social formationsIdeology justifies oppressions and social inequalities by suggesting that the lower classes have always been inferior and persuades them of the validity of this belief.That is, ideology circulates as a system of representation and images that ‘naturalizes’ oppressions and creates the illusion that oppression is natural.

• GAYATRI SPIVAK

Gayatri Spivak and the Subaltern

A distinguished literary and cultural critic Gayatri Spivak utilizes methods and approach from Marxism, Feminism and Deconstruction. Her work in postcolonial studies, especially those dealing with formerly colonized nations.        The ‘Subalterns’ is a term Spivak borrows from the Italian Marxist ANTONIO GRAMSCI to signify the oppressed class.

Spivak’s well known (and controversial) argument is that “ the Subalterns cannot speak for him/herself because the very ‘structures’ of colonized power prevents the speaking”

For the colonized woman speaking is even more impossible because both colonialism and patriarchy ensure that she keeps quite. The Subaltern therefore cannot represent herself.Spivak argues that the work of intellectuals is to make visible the position of the marginalized. The Subalterns must be ‘Spoken For’.Spivak points out that during colonialism the British assumed the authority and prerogative to speak for the oppressed native women.The construction of the oppressed native woman was necessary to justify the presence of the modernizing, savior Britisher.        The native woman apparently ‘called out’  for liberation, which the white colonial master was supposed to provide.The nationalists also resurrected the voice of the native woman for their own ends,  but as Spivak points out , the voice of the woman is effaced in the discourse of both nationalism and colonialism: she is only spoken for.Building on this notion of the Subaltern a new mode of writing history, the subaltern studies project, was launched in 1982, under the leadership of Ranajit Guha.This project argued that traditional historiography only celebrated the actions of the Elite.Thus, the ‘freedom struggle’, in traditional  history  was represented as the story of the actions of the selected leaders like Gandhi, Nehru and Tilak. It is ignored the peasant and tribal rebellions that preceded the     formation of the Indian National Congress.That is , such an elitist history ignored or marginalized  certain kinds of revolt against the British in favors of the Dominant.The project therefore, explored and recorded smaller rebellions and tried to redress this balance. It gave voice to the subalterns within the freedom struggle.Let us look at another concept- map of various kinds of social formations(Context)  and the subalterns they construct.

Social Formation	Subalterns	Dominant Group	Ideology
Class	Working class	Capitalist- bourgeois	Capitalism
Empire	Natives	Europeans	Colonialism
Patriarchy	Women	Men	Gender
Nation	Ethnic minorities	Majority	Homogenization and Nationalism

In a capitalist society THE CAPITALISTS HOLDS THE POWER.        The working class, toiling to generate profits for the  capitalists, locks any agency, but is made to believe it is happy because Capitalism is an ideology spreads the illusion that the exploitative capitalist system is actually generous, benevolent and caring patron of the working class.

        In Patriarchal society the women is assigned particular roles – as wife, as mother, as daughter. All of which make her dependent upon the male, and reduce her identity  to her relationship within men.

The ideology of gender is such that the woman is trained, right from childhood, to believe that motherhood and wifely roles are the goals to aspire to. IT NATURALIZES THE UNEQUAL RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN THE GENDERS.

In a nation- state, the minorities are asked to believe in the ideal of the nation, even when the nation does not respect their cultural rights, or to solve their problems. Any attempt to seek cultural right  or protection or recognitions seen and treated as a threat to the nation itself.

Further, the nation is supposedly unified an ideology that ignores through a process of homogenization, all cultural, ethnic and regional differences.

POSTSTRUCTURALISM AND CULTURAL STUDIES PROPOSES:

 difference as intrinsic  to identity, the contingency of meaning, and the linkage of all knowledge with the exercise of power where the dominant group generates the meaning and knowledge in order to keep sections of people under control through ideology’s system of representation.

William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge.- a critical study.

Assignment

Name: Dave NIMESH B
M.A. Semester: 2
Paper No. (5) Romantic Literature
Assignment Topic: Wordsworth and Coleridge( as a Romantic Poet): a critical study.
*Biography.
*works
*features of poetry
* comparison and contrast  in Wordsworth and Coleridge.
*conclusion

• Introduction

                The age of Romanticism is known as the second creative period of English Literature. The poetry of this age was marked by intense human sympathy and a consequent understanding  of the human heart. Wordsworth and Coleridge were the two great poets of Romanticism and it was by their joint effort  that the romantic revival in poetry was brought about  during nineteenth century. So let’s study  William Wordsworth and Samuel Taylor Coleridge in detail.

*WILLIAM WORDSWORTH ( 1770-1850)

*biography

William Wordsworth ( 7 April- 1770- 23 April- 1850) a major English romantic poet, was born at Cockermouth, Cumberland, a town outside the Lake district.His father was a lawyer, died when he was thirteen years old. So  the orphan was the orphan was taken in charge by some relatives, who sent him to school at Hawkshed in the beautiful lake region.

Born	7,April, 1770 Cockermouth, Cumberland England.
Died	23, April, 1850 (aged 80) Cumberland, England.
Occupation	Poet
Almamater	Cambridge University
Literary Movement	Romanticism
Notable works	‘lyrical Ballads’, ‘ Poems in two Volumes’, ‘ The Excursion’,’ The Prelude’, ‘I wandered lonely as a cloud’

 Here apparently,  the unroofed school of nature attracted him more than the discipline of the classics, and he learned more eagerly from flowers and hills and stars than  from his books.

              

  Wordsworth went  Cambridge, entering St. John’s college in 1787, and having graduated in 1791 He left  with no foxed career in view. After spending few months in London he crossed over to France (1791), and stayed at Orleans and Blois for nearly a year. An enthusiasm for the revolution was aroused in him; he himself has chronicled the mood in one of his happiest passages.

Bliss was it in that dawn to be alive,But to be young was very heaven !

Three things in his poems must impress the casual reader

1.       Wordsworth loves to be alone, and is never lonely with nature

2.       Like every other child who spends much time alone in the  woods and fields, he feels the presence of some living spirit.

His impressions are exactly like our own, and delightfully familiar when he tells  of the long summer day spent in swimming, basking in the sun,  and questing over the hills or of the winter night  when, on hid skates he chased the reflection of a star in the black ice, or of his exploring the lake in a boat.

                The second period of Wordsworth’s life begins with his university course at Cambridge. All his life he was poor, and lived in an atmosphere of “ Plain living and High thinking” In 1839 Oxford conferred upon him the degree of D.C.L., in 1842 the crown awarded him a pension of  £300 a year.On the death of Southey in 1843 he became the Poet Laureate. 

    William Wordsworth died from an aggravated care of pleurisy on 23, April, 1850, and was buried at St. Oswald’s church, Grasmere.Wordsworth was hailed by critics as the first living poet, and one of the greatest  that England had ever produced.  

          Poetry was his life, his soul was in all his works.Outwardly his long and uneventful life divides naturally into four periods.1.      His childhood and youth, in the Cumberland Hills, from 1770 to 1787.

2.      A period of uncertainty, of storm and stress, including his university life at Cambridge, his travels abroad and his revolutionary experience from 1787 to 1797.

3.      A short but significant period of finding himself, and his work, from 1797 to 1799.
A long period of retirement in the northern lake region, where he was born, and where for a full half century he lived so close to nature that her influence is reflected in all his poetry.

His Major works

1. ‘Lyrical Ballads’, with a few other poems (1798)
2. “simon Lee”
3. ‘we are seven’
4. ‘lines written in  early spring’
5. ‘expostulation and reply’
6. ‘The Thorn’
7. ‘The Tables Turned’
8. “Lines composed A few Miles above Tintern Abbey’
9. ‘Lyrical Ballads’ with other poems (1800)
10. ‘Preface to the Lyrical Ballad’
11. ‘Strange Fits of Passion have I Known’
12. ‘She Dwelt among the Untrodden Ways’’
13. ‘Three Years she Grew’
14. ‘A slumber did my spirit seal’
15. ‘I travelled among unknown men’
16. ‘Lucy Gray’
17. ‘The two April Mornings’
18. ‘Nuttuing’
19. ‘ The Ruined Cottage’
20. ‘Michael’
21. ‘The Kitten at Play’
22. ‘Poems, in two Volumes’ (1807)
23. ‘Resolution and Independence’
24. ‘I Wandered Lonely As a Cloud’ also known as “DAFFODILS”
25. ‘my heart leaps up’
26. ‘Ode to Duty’
27. ‘The solitary Reaper’
28. ‘London’
29. ‘Elegiac Stanzas’
30. ‘Guide to the Lakes’
31. ‘To the Cuckoo’
32. ‘Ode: Intimation to Immortality’
33. ‘The Prelude’
34. ‘Laodamia’
35. ‘The world is too much with us’
36. ‘Composed upon Westminster Bridge’, September  3, 1802’.

                At the university he composed some poetry, which appeared as ‘An Evening walk’ (1793) and ‘Descriptive Sketches’ (1793). In style this poems have little originality, but they already show the Wordsworthian eye for nature.

The fruits of his genius were seen in the “ Lyrical Ballads” (1798), a joint production by Coleridge and himself, which was published at Bristol.

                Some of his poems as ‘ The Thorn’ and ‘ The Idiot Boy’ are condemned as being  trivial and childish in style.

A few, such as ‘Simon Lee’ and ‘ Expostulation and Reply’ are made adequate  in their expression.  And the concluding piece , ‘Tintern Abbey’, is one of the triumph of his genius.

                Almost the most noteworthy of the new works in this collection were ‘Michael’, ‘ The Old Cumberland Beggar’, ‘She Dwelt among the Untrodden Ways’, ‘Strange fits of passion have I Known’,  and ‘ Nutting’.

                ‘The Prelude’, which was completed in 1805 but not published until 1850, after Wordsworth’s death, is the record of his development as a poet. He describes his experiences with a fullness, closeness, and laborious anxiety that are unique in our literature.

                ‘The prelude’ was intended to form part of a vast philosophical work called ‘The Recluse’, which was never completed.

Next to be published, in 1807, were two volumes of poem which represent the fine flower of his genius. It is impossible here to list even the very great poems  in these volumes, but even in poetic form that he used, with the possible exception of the narrative, Wordsworth is here seen at the height of his powers.

His Finest Sonnets

• ‘The Green Linnet’
• ‘The Solitary Reaper’
• ‘Ode to Duty’
• ‘I wandered Lonely as a Cloud’
• ‘Ode on Intimations of Immortality’
• ‘Resolution and Independence’
• ‘Sonnets dedicated to National  Independence and Liberty’

All this are of a quality which has led many critics to hail them as the finest sonnets in the language.

                After the publication of The Excursion Wordsworth’s poetical power was clearly on the wane, but his productivity was unimpaired. His later volumes include ‘The White Doe of Rylstone’ (1815), ‘The Waggoner, (1819) ‘Peter Bell’ (1819), ‘Yarrow Revisited' (1835) and ‘The Borderers’ (1842) a drama.

Wordsworth’s theory of poetry:-

In the Preface to the second edition of the Lyrical Ballads (1800), Wordsworth set out his theory of poetry. Wordsworthian dogma can be divided into two portions concerning (1) the subject and (2) the style of poetry.Wordsworth’s Definition of poetry:-

“poetry is a spontaneous overflow of powerful feeling, recollected in tranquility”

*object- ( Subject Matter of Poetry)

-to choose incidents and situations from common life

-a selection of language really used by men, and to throw over them a certain coloring of imagination.

Subject matter of poetry:-

• Humble and rustic life

Language/ Diction of poetry ( style of poetry)

Wordsworth’s views on poetical style are the most revolutionary of all the ideas in his preface.

• He discarded the gaudiness and inane phraseology of many modern writers.

He insist that ‘ his poems are written in selection of language really used by men in a state of vivid sensation.

His views on poetic diction can be summed up as “ there  neither is nor can be any essential difference between the language of prose and metrical composition.

·         What is a poet?

He is a man speaking to men, endowed with more lively sensibility, more enthusiasm and tenderness. He has a greater knowledge of human nature and a more comprehensive soul.

*Some of his beautiful poems

The following lyrics illustrates this mood of perfection.

Rainbow

My heart leaps up when I behold

A rainbow in the sky

So was it when my life began;

So is it now I am a man;

So be it when I shall grow old,

Or let me die !

The child is the father of the man;

And I could wish my days to be

Bound each to each by natural piety.

The series of Lucy poems are typical of their kind:

She dwelt among the untrodden waysBeside the spring of Dove,A maid whom there where none to praise,And very few to love.A violet by mossy stoneHalf hidden from the eye!Fair as a star, when only oneIs shining in the sky.She lived unknown, and few could knowWhen Lucy ceased to br;But she is in her grave, and oh,The difference to me !

In this sonnets his lyrical mood burns clear and strong, and as a result they rank among the best in English poetry. Wordsworth’s use of Petrarchan form was so striking that he re-established its supremacy over the Shakespearean sonnet , which had eclipsed it in popularity during the last great age of sonneteering- the Elizabethans.

• His treatment of Nature:

 his dealing with nature are his chief glory as a poet. Even the slightest of his poems have evidence of close observation.

The cattle are grazing,
Their heads never raising;
There are forty feeding like one.

He tries to see more deeply and to find the secret spring of this joy and thanksgiving. 

He says:

To me the meanest flower that blow can giveThoughts that do often lie to deep for tears.

Let’s see his another beautiful poem..

Our birth is but a sleep and a foregetting:

The soul that rises with us, our life’s star

Hath had elsewhere its seting,

And cometh from a far;

Not in entire forgetfulness,

And not in utter nakedness,

But trailing clouds of glory do we come

From god, who is our home.

-Ode: Intimations of Immortality

And also the most famous poem among all  ‘Daffodils’
‘I wandered lonely as a cloud…..

• Conclusion

It is always to be remembered that at his best Wordsworth can unite simplicity with sublimity. He has a kind of middle style, at its best it has grace and dignity, a heart searching simplicity, and a certain enlightenment of phrase that is all his own.


SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE (1772-1834)

*Biography

Born	21, October, 1772Devonshire, ENGLAND.
Died	25, July 1834 (aged 61) Highgate, Middlesex, England.
Occupation	Poet, Critic, Philosopher
Almamater	Jesus college, Cambridge
Literary movement	Romanticism
Notable works	‘The Rime of the Ancient mariner’ ‘Kubla Khan’.

Coleridge was born in Devonshire in 1772. As a child he was unusually precocious. He was a poet, literary critic and a philosopher who, with his friend William Wordsworth , was a founder of the ROMANTIC  movement in ENGLAND  and a member of the LAKE POETS.

                At Bristol Coleridge lecture and issued a newspaper called ‘ The Watchman’ (1796). At this time(1797) he met Wordsworth, and as has already been noticed , planned their joint production of the ‘Lyrical Ballads’, which was published at Bristol.

If Wordsworth represents the central pillar of early Romanticism, Coleridge is nevertheless an important structural support. His emphasis on the imagination, its independence from the outside world and its creation of fantastic pictures such as those found in the “Rime” exerted a profound influence on later writers such as Shelley.
                His depiction of feelings if alienation and numbness helped to define more sharply the Romantics idealized contrast between the emptiness of the city-where such feelings are experienced and the joys of nature.
                Coleridge’s intellect was quick, versatile and penetrating. He was idealistic and ranged for in the abstract thought.
Coleridge went to the Medieval period for creating the atmosphere of magic and mystery.
In 1792, he won the Brown Gold Medal for ode that he wrote on the slave trade.

• *His poetry:-

The real blossoming of Coleridge’s poetical genius was brief indeed, but the fruit of it was rich and wonderful.
                His first book was “Poems on Various Subjects” (1796), issued at Bristol. Then, in collaboration with Wordsworth he produced the ‘Lyrical Ballads’ (1798). This remarkable volume contains nineteen poems by Wordsworth and four by Coleridge, and of these four by far the most noteworthy is “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner”.

Wordsworth has set on record the origin of ‘The Ancient Mariner’. He and Coleridge discussed the poem during their walk on the Quantock Hills. The main idea of the voyage, founded on a dream of his own, was Coleridge’s, Wordsworth suggested details, and they thought of working on it together. Very soon, however, Coleridge’s imagination was fired with the story, and his friend was sensibly left him to write it all. Hence we have that marvelous series of that dissolving pictures, so curiously distinct and yet so strangely fused into one. The voyage through the polar ice, the death of the Albatross, the amazing scenes during the calm and the storm, and the return home. In style, in swift stealthiness of narrative speed , and in its weird and compelling strength of imagination the poem is without parallel.

In 1797 Coleridge also wrote the first part of ‘Christabel’, but though the second part was added in 1800. Christabel is the tale of a kind of witch, who by taking the shape of a lovely lady, wins the confidence of the heroine Christabel.
                ‘KUBLA KHAN’, written in 1798 but remained unpublished until 1816. It is the echo of a dream- the shadow of a shadow. Coleridge averts that he dreamt the lines, awoke in a fever of inspiration, threw the words on paper, but before the fit was over was distracted from the composition, so that the glory of the dream never returned  and Kubla Khan remained unfinished.
                In the same year Coleridge composed several other poems, including the fine ‘Frost at Midnight’ and ‘France: an ode.
In 1802 he wrote the great ode ‘Dejection’, in which he already bewails the suspension of his “shaping spirit of imagination”
                                His play “Remorse” was on recommendation of Byron, accepted by the management of the Drury Lane Theatre and produced in 1813. It succeeded on stage, but as literature it is of little importance.

*features of his poetry:-

• ·         Intense imaginative power
• ·         Witchery of language
• ·         Simplicity of diction.

His prose work

“ The Morning post”

“the Watchman”

“the Friend”

“Biographia Literaria”

“Table Talk

‘ Aids to Reflection’

‘Lectures on Shakespeare and other poet’

 To sum up……..

• At its best Coleridge’s prose has much of the evocative suggestiveness of his finest poetry, and is an admirable stimulus to keener perception in the reader, while his choice of language is discriminating, particularly in the fine distinction he makes while describing the process of artistic creation.