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.