Deconstruction / Poststructuralism by Derrida

 My interpretation of the questions about Deconstruction by Derrida is as follow.

First of all Deconstruction is really a bit difficult to understand, and one reason is that Derrida does not define the Deconstruction. First of all he asks that question that is it possible to define anything once and for all??  Or at what extent can we define something??? So he denies to define  deconstruction.

Derrida’s position is more  philosophical than real. He proves theoretically, not practically.

First of all Deconstruction is not a destructive activity, but it is an inquiry into the foundations of every thing. Deconstructionist critics goes deep into the foundation of text and then they try to subvert , undermine it. Derrida says that every text contains element which  can deconstruct itself.

Structuralist critics says that there is a meaning in the text but Poststructuralist critics says that there is no meaning at all. He talks about free play of meaning. And they also gave idea of supplementarity or decentering the center.

Derrida says that same text cannot be read in the same way. He also talks about free play of meaning that any word can be used for word. It is we who have given the meanings to everything.

We think that words takes us towards the meaning, but at the same time it also takes us away from the meaning. For example what is the meaning of the word “interest”??   we don’t know the meaning of this word, so we go to dictionary to find its meaning. And from dictionary we can get following meaning like…hobby, share in business etc. are meaning. If we take another word BAT, then we will find its meaning like…a kind of mammal,  an old woman, cricket bat  all this meaning we will get.   So what he tries to say that when we go to dictionary then we will find another word for that. The meaning of one word is set of another word, then what is the meaning of those words??.   So he says  FINAL MEANING IS ALWAYS POSTPONED.  According to him FINAL MEANING IS MYTH.

He also talks about phonocentricism and logocentricism  as well as metaphysics of  presence  and metaphysics of absence. He denies western tendency to privilege speech over writing. When we say I am man it means I am this not and that. So presence of one thing is absence of many things.

For example     FESTIVAL OF VASANTPANCHAMI  can be deconstructed.  At this day all the Muhurts  marriages are good. And at the same day  we worship goddess SARASVATI – symbol of education.  But both these opposite things    ( science VS  Nature,  Raw VS  cocked  debate) now a day Raw is corruption but actually it is natural .same way marriage is natural and education is  corruption.   When we go deep into the foundation at that time we found that puja , worship of Saraswati is problematic.  But somebody has merged this both. So when  we go deep into the foundations of this rituals we c an subvert, undermine,  blast the basic ritual.  This is the Deconstruction.

We can go deep into the foundation of anything and then we can deconstruct  it, subvert it, blast it, undermine it.

Thank you