Category: Jacques Derrida

Deconstruction theory, derived from the works of philosopher Jacques Derrida, is a theory of literary analysis that opposes the assumptions of structuralism. Its primary purpose is to discern the relationship between text and meaning. In performing this task, deconstruction theory is critical of the structuralist ideas of logocentrism and binary oppositions and instead seeks to understand the meaning as abstract and fluid.

Deconstruction may be seen as a means to understand the relationship between text and meaning, institution and nature, dichotomies and the hierarchies created by language. It stands as a form of literary and philosophical analysis that has been derived from the works of the post-structuralist philosopher Jaques Derrida. His work asserts that meaning is not static and instead continually evolves and varies across time and space. Furthermore, he maintains that language is derivative, i.e., words derive meaning from other words rather than from some absolute truth. While explaining the dynamic quality of meaning in language, Derrida writes about binary oppositions and how meaning exists as an inherently unstable force. In illustrating the idea of deconstruction, Derrida critiques the Western philosophical notion of logocentrism and instead argues that linguistic signs must be treated as distinct from the concepts that they represent.

Derrida coined the term “differance”, which forms the basis of the deconstruction theory. It means both a difference and an act of deferring, which together help us understand the meaning. We understand the meaning of words in contrast to the meaning of other words. For example, happiness is understood as an emotion that is not sadness. This takes care of the “difference” aspect of differance. Derrida also argues that the meaning of any word is understood through a continuous process of deferring. He says that in order to understand the definition or meaning of one word, we rely on the meanings of other words that define it. This constant process of competing interpretations and eternal deferring is a testament to the fact that meaning is not fixed.

Derrida was critical of the idea of logocentrism – the traditional Western philosophical belief that writing and language are indicative of some external reality. Derrida opines that a central aspect of traditional Western philosophy is the belief that there exists an absolute, undeniable truth that is then used to theorise meaning. What this means is that this “truth” becomes the centre around which all meaning is created. The idea/term being accorded the title of “truth” is called logos whichis made known to society using language, which translates the term into words. Here, it is essential to note that logocentrism emphasises the difference between the natural (logos) meaning of a term (as it exists abstractly in our thoughts) and its institutionalised meaning (as it exists in writing). For example, while justice is an abstract idea that births subsequent meanings and knowledge, it is institutionalised as law which is a written manifestation of the idea. Derrida, however, opines that the natural and institutionalised meanings of terms cannot be so easily separated. Instead, he says that nature and institution are intricately linked, with one influencing the meaning of the other. Rather than viewing law as an embodiment of justice, we can understand both concepts through their interplay because, as Derrida suggests, nature is constructed with reference to institutions. If we continue to view law as an embodiment of justice, we ignore all the other possible meanings of justice that are not reflected in written law. As a result, deconstruction celebrates the heterogeneity of meaning contained within texts. Deconstruction stands true to the phrase, “There is nothing outside of the text”, by refuting the notion that there is a transcendental origin of meaning. Instead, Derrida says that origin is not independent of its institution but rather a function of it.

Derrida argues that Western culture teaches individuals to think and perceive the world in binaries (good & evil, masculine & feminine, black & white). When we understand the world in terms of such binary oppositions, we inadvertently create hierarchies by according the title of superiority to one half of the binary while deeming the other to be “subordinate”. The existence of such binaries in language reinforces the hierarchies created by them in reality. One of the primary roles of deconstruction is to question such orders by rejecting the idea of ‘fixed meaning’. However, it does not seek to do so by reversing the hierarchies because it would allow a dominant and subordinate dynamic to persist and continue to accept an alternate manifestation of fixed meaning. Instead, deconstruction aims to venture out the borders of oppositional meaning and analyse the origin of ideas so as to impede dominant structures from reasserting themselves. In this sense, deconstruction may be looked at as a process of questioning rather than one that is pursuing “truth”.

Derrida insists that deconstruction should not be viewed as a method because it is not something that can be applied to prove or disprove hypotheses. He also adds that deconstruction is not performed with a particular aim or even deliberately; it is something that just happens around us. As discussed, deconstruction does not strive to dismantle existing structures but instead only seeks to reveal the logic of such systems so that one may understand them better. The process itself is indeterminate and will not help you arrive at a determinate outcome or an absolute truth. It will only open up possibilities of meaning and different ways to understand the ideas and concepts that govern us.

Opposed to the suggestions of structuralism and formalism, Derrida rejects the notion that all texts are structured around a single central idea or reality. Instead, deconstruction seeks to understand texts by negating dichotomies and instead focusing on their undecidability. A deconstructed text, therefore, does not arrive at any permanent and definite meanings. As literary difference critic, J. Hillis Miller wrote in his essay Stevens’ Rock and Criticism as Cure (1976), “Deconstruction is not a dismantling of the structure of a text, but a demonstration that it has already dismantled itself. Its apparently solid ground is no rock but thin air.”

Commonly known as inversion of hierarchy theory, this theory was put forward by Jacques Derrida which gave rise to a seismic shift in critical thought. Jacques Derrida introduced the concept of ‘deconstruction’ in his book Of Grammatology, published in France in 1967 and translated into English in 1976. ‘Deconstruction’ became a banner for the advance guard in American literary studies in the 1970s and 80s, scandalising departments of English, French, and comparative literature. Deconstruction rejected the project of modern criticism: to uncover the meaning of a literary work by studying the way its form and content communicate essential humanistic messages.

Deconstruction, like critical strategies based on Marxism, feminism, semiotics, and anthropology, focuses not on the themes and imagery of its objects but rather on the linguistic and institutional systems that frame the production of texts.

As an aesthetic theory pertaining to Postmodernism, Deconstruction enables us toslice through the history of art and lay bare all preconceived notion, forcing us toexamine every aspect of our relation to the world, to the notion of culture and each other.

Deconstructionism is basically a theory of textual criticism or interpretation that denies there is any single correct meaning or interpretation of a passage or text.

The heart of the deconstructionist theory of interpretation are two primary ideas: First is the idea that no passage or text can possibly convey a single reliable, consistent, and coherent message to everyone who reads or hears it. The second is that the author who wrote the text is less responsible for the piece’s content than are the impersonal forces of culture such as language and the author’s unconscious ideology- that is “Separate text from the Author”.

It is better to explain what deconstruction is not than what it is. According to Derrida, deconstruction is not an analysis, a critique, or a method. Deconstruction is a constant reminder of the etymological link between ‘crisis’ and ‘criticism’. It’s a theory to bring out the hidden falacity of law. There are various fields in which we regularly commit mistakes, but are unable to find those out, this theory by its inherent nature helps to find the loopholes.

Deconstruction’s reception was coloured by its intellectual predecessors, most notably structuralismand New Criticism. Beginning in France in the 1950s, the structuralist movement in anthropology analyzed various cultural phenomena as general systems of “signs” and attempted to develop “metalanguages” of terms and concepts in which the different sign systems could be described. Structuralist methods were soon applied to other areas of the social sciences and humanities, including literary studies. Deconstruction offered a powerful critique of the possibility of creating detached, scientific metalanguages and was thus categorized (along with kindred efforts) as “post-structuralist.” Anglo-American New Criticism sought to understand verbal works of art (especially poetry) as complex constructions made up of different and contrasting levels of literal and nonliteral meanings, and it emphasized the role of paradox and irony in these artifacts. Deconstructive readings, in contrast, treated works of art not as the harmonious fusion of literal and figurative meanings but as instances of the intractable conflicts between meanings of different types. They generally examined the individual work not as a self-contained artifact but as a product of relations with other texts or discourses, literary and nonliterary. Finally, these readings placed special emphasis on the ways in which the works themselves offered implicit critiques of the categories that critics used to analyze them.

‘Deconstruction’ takes apart such oppositions by showing how the devalued, empty concept lives inside the valued, positive one. The outside inhabits the inside. Consider, for example, the opposition between nature and culture. The idea of ‘nature’ depends on the idea of ‘culture’, and yet culture is part of nature. It’s a fantasy to conceive of the non-human environment as a pristine, innocent setting fenced off and protected from the products of human endeavour—cities, roads, farms, landfills.

The fact that we have produced a concept of ‘nature’ in opposition to ‘culture’ is a symptom of our alienation from the ecological systems that civilisation depletes and transforms.

A crucial opposition for deconstruction is speech/writing. The Western philosophical tradition has denigrated writing as an inferior copy of the spoken word. Speech draws on interior consciousness, but writing is dead and abstract. The written word loses its connection to the inner self. Language is set adrift, untethered from the speaking subject. In the process of embodying language, writing steals its soul. Deconstruction views writing as an active rather than passive form of representation. Writing is not merely a bad copy, a faulty transcription, of the spoken word; writing, in fact, invades thought and speech, transforming the sacred realms of memory, knowledge, and spirit. Any memory system, in fact, is a form of writing, since it records thought for the purpose of future transmissions.

The “privileging” of speech over writing is based on what Derrida considers a distorted (though very pervasive) picture of meaning in natural language, one that identifies the meanings of words with certain ideas or intentions in the mind of the speaker or author. Derrida’s argument against this picture is an extension of an insight by the Swiss linguist Ferdinand de Saussure. For Saussure, the concepts we associate with linguistic signs (their “meanings”) are only arbitrarily related to reality, in the sense that the ways in which they divide and group the world are not natural or necessary, reflecting objectively existing categories, but variable (in principle) from language to language. Hence, meanings can be adequately understood only with reference to the specific contrasts and differences they display with other, related meanings.

This deconstruction is effected in two ways:

First attempts to compensate for these historical power imbalances, undertaking the difficult project of thinking through the philosophical implications of questioning and presenting complications to show the contingency of such divisions.

The second way involves the emergence or eruption of a new conception. The oppositions challenged by deconstruction, which have been inherent in Western philosophy since the time of the ancient Greeks, are characteristically “binary” and “hierarchical,” involving a pair of terms in which one member of the pair is assumed to be primary or fundamental, the other secondary or derivative.

Examples include nature and culture, speech and writing, mind and body, presence and absence, inside and outside, literal and metaphorical, intelligible and sensible, and form and meaning, among many others.

Deconstruction can be called upon to reveal the contradiction that emerge when thinking is pushed against its limitations in various problematic situations. Law can be seen as the discourse which more than any other translates the effect of self legitimising power into a knowledge. Deconstruction is chiefly concerned with logic of value laden binary distinctions, contrasting terms which always can be shown to exist in a state of reciprocal dependence.

For example:- To a normal person it is a very common noting that light is the base of our existence. But 24 hours light will definitely hamper the normal being of a human. So there are contrasting truth of existence, that both light and darkness is foundational.

The “privileging” of speech over writing is based on what Derrida considers a distorted (though very pervasive) picture of meaning in natural language, one that identifies the meanings of words with certain ideas or intentions in the mind of the speaker or author.

In the United States, the Critical Legal Studies movement applied deconstruction to legal writing in an effort to reveal conflicts between principles and counter principles in legal theory. The movement explored fundamental oppositions such as public and private, essence and accident, and substance and form.

One can use deconstructive arguments to attack categorical distinctions in law by showing that the justifications for the distinction undermine themselves, that categorical boundaries are unclear, or that these boundaries shift radically as they are placed in new contexts of judgment.

Any hierarchical opposition of ideas, no matter how trivial, can be deconstructed. Deconstruction is more than a clever intellectual parlour game. It is a means of intellectual discovery, which operates by wrenching us from our accustomed modes of thought.

The basic technique of reversing conceptual privileging has obvious applications to legal and policy argument. Law is full of conceptual oppositions because it is full of distinctions. A distinction creates a conceptual opposition because it separates things inside the category from things that fall outside it.

Critics take issue with what they believe is a lack of seriousness and transparency in deconstructive writings, and with what they interpret as a political stance against traditional modernism.

In addition, critics often equate deconstruction with nihilism or relativism and criticize deconstruction accordingly. Deconstructionism is part of a movement called post structuralism. Like deconstructionism, this movement has many problems with it. Post structuralism builds on many ideas developed by structuralism, its precursor.

Deconstruction theory questions the fundamental conceptual distinctions, or “oppositions,” in Western philosophy through a close examination of the language and logic of philosophical and literary texts.

A common criticism of deconstruction is that it is inherently self-contradictory because while it asserts that all linguistic meaning is indeterminate or uncertain, this assertion is strongly believed to be determinate or certain.

Also, while it maintains that nothing is true, this relativist statement is treated like an absolutely true canon. This criticism, however, may be incorrect, since people who adhere to deconstruction are usually aware that it cannot escape itself.

The diffusion of the theory was met with a sizeable body of opposition. Some philosophers, especially those in the Anglo-American tradition, dismissed it as obscurantist wordplay whose major claims, when intelligible, were either trivial or false. Others accused it of being ahistorical and apolitical. Still others regarded it as a nihilistic endorsement of radical epistemic relativism. Despite such attacks, deconstruction has had an enormous impact on a variety of intellectual enterprises.

Since the surfacing of the term ‘deconstruction’ in design journalism in the mid-1980s, the word has served to label architecture, graphic design, products, and fashion featuring chopped up, layered, and fragmented forms imbued with ambiguous futuristic overtones.

In all the fields it influenced, deconstruction called attention to rhetorical and performative aspects of language use, and it encouraged scholars to consider not merely what a text says but rather on the relationship—and potential conflict—between what a text says and what it “does.” In various disciplines, deconstruction also prompted an exploration of fundamental oppositions and critical terms and a re-examination of ultimate goals.

We argue that deconstruction is not a style or ‘attitude’ but rather a mode of questioning through and about the technologies, formal devices, social institutions, and founding metaphors of representation. Deconstruction belongs to both history and theory. It is embedded in recent visual and academic culture, but it describes a strategy of critical form-making which is performed across a range of artefacts and practices, both historical and contemporary. Deconstruction does not show that all texts are meaningless, but rather that they are overflowing with multiple and often conflicting meanings. Either reality is objectively knowable or reality is not objectively knowable. Either absolute truth exists or absolute truth does not exist. Either there is one way to truth or there is no one way to truth. Either there is one way to God or there is no one way to God. Since the second statements in each of these four sentences are clearly false, we must conclude, therefore, that reality is indeed objectively knowable, that absolute truth does indeed exist, that there is indeed one way to truth, and that there is indeed one way to God.

Similarly, deconstruction does not claim that concepts have no boundaries, but that their boundaries can be parsed in many different ways as they are inserted into new contexts of judgment.

Although people use deconstructive analyses to show that particular distinctions and arguments lack normative coherence, deconstruction does not show that all legal distinctions are incoherent. Deconstructive arguments do not necessarily destroy conceptual oppositions or conceptual distinctions. Rather, they tend to show that conceptual oppositions can be reinterpreted as a form of nested opposition.

A nested opposition is an opposition in which the two terms bear a relationship of conceptual dependence or similarity as well as conceptual difference or distinction. Deconstructive analysis attempts to explore how this similarity or this difference is suppressed or overlooked.

Hence deconstructive analysis often emphasizes the importance of context in judgment, and the many changes in meaning that accompany changes in contexts of judgment. Although deconstructive arguments show that conceptual oppositions are not fully stable, they do not and cannot show that all such oppositions can be jettisoned or abolished, for the principle of nested opposition suggests that a suppressed conceptual opposition will usually reappear in a new guise.

Moreover, although all conceptual oppositions are potentially deconstructible in theory, not all are equally incoherent or unhelpful in practice. Rather, deconstructive analysis studies how the use of conceptual oppositions in legal thought has ideological effects: how their instability or fuzziness is disguised or suppressed so that they lend unwarranted plausibility to legal arguments and doctrines. Because all legal distinctions are potentially deconstructible, the question when a particular conceptual opposition or legal distinction is just or appropriate turns on pragmatic considerations.

Hence, deconstructive arguments and techniques often overlap with and may even be in the service of other approaches, such as pragmatism, feminism or critical race theory.

Some philosophers, especially those in the Anglo-American tradition, dismissed it as obscurantist wordplay whose major claims, when intelligible, were either trivial or false. Others accused it of being ahistorical and apolitical. Still others regarded it as a nihilistic endorsement of radical epistemic relativism. Despite such attacks, deconstruction has had an enormous impact on a variety of intellectual enterprises.

Derrida was involved in a number of high-profile disagreements with prominent philosophers, including Michel Foucault, John Searle, Willard Van Orman Quine, Peter Kreeft, and Jürgen Habermas. Most of the criticism of deconstruction were first articulated by these philosophers then repeated elsewhere.

John Searle

In the early 1970s, Searle had a brief exchange with Jacques Derrida regarding speech-act theory. The exchange was characterized by a degree of mutual hostility between the philosophers, each of whom accused the other of having misunderstood his basic points. Searle was particularly hostile to Derrida’s deconstructionist framework and much later refused to let his response to Derrida be printed along with Derrida’s papers in the 1988 collection Limited Inc. Searle did not consider Derrida’s approach to be legitimate philosophy or even intelligible writing, and argued that he did not want to legitimize the deconstructionist point of view by paying any attention to it. Consequently, some critics have considered the exchange to be a series of elaborate misunderstandings rather than a debate, while others have seen either Derrida or Searle gaining the upper hand. The level of hostility can be seen from Searle’s statement that ‘It would be a mistake to regard Derrida’s discussion of Austin as a confrontation between two prominent philosophical traditions, to which Derrida replied that that sentence was ‘the only sentence of the ‘reply’ to which I can subscribe”. Commentators have frequently interpreted the exchange as a prominent example of a confrontation between analytic and continental philosophies.

The debate began in 1972, when, in his paper ‘Signature Event Context’, Derrida analyzed J. L. Austin’s theory of the illocutionary act. While sympathetic to Austin’s departure from a purely denotational account of language to one that includes ‘force’, Derrida was skeptical of the framework of normativity employed by Austin. Derrida argued that Austin had missed the fact that any speech event is framed by a ‘structure of absence’ (the words that are left unsaid due to contextual constraints) and by ‘iterability’ (the constraints on what can be said, imposed by what has been said in the past). Derrida argued that the focus on intentionality in speech-act theory was misguided because intentionality is restricted to that which is already established as a possible intention. He also took issue with the way Austin had excluded the study of fiction, non-serious, or ‘parasitic’ speech, wondering whether this exclusion was because Austin had considered these speech genres as governed by different structures of meaning, or hadn’t considered them due to a lack of interest. In his brief reply to Derrida, ‘Reiterating the Differences: A Reply to Derrida, Searle argued that Derrida’s critique was unwarranted because it assumed that Austin’s theory attempted to give a full account of language and meaning when its aim was much narrower. Searle considered the omission of parasitic discourse forms to be justified by the narrow scope of Austin’s inquiry. Searle agreed with Derrida’s proposal that intentionality presupposes iterability, but did not apply the same concept of intentionality used by Derrida, being unable or unwilling to engage with the continental conceptual apparatus. This, in turn, caused Derrida to criticize Searle for not being sufficiently familiar with phenomenological perspectives on intentionality. Searle also argued that Derrida’s disagreement with Austin turned on Derrida’s having misunderstood Austin’s type-token distinction and having failed to understand Austin’s concept of failure in relation to performativity. Some critics have suggested that Searle, by being so grounded in the analytical tradition that he was unable to engage with Derrida’s continental phenomenological tradition, was at fault for the unsuccessful nature of the exchange.

Derrida, in his response to Searle (a b c …’ in Limited Inc), ridiculed Searle’s positions. Claiming that a clear sender of Searle’s message could not be established, Derrida suggested that Searle had formed with Austin a société à responsabilité limitée (a ‘limited liability company) due to the ways in which the ambiguities of authorship within Searle’s reply circumvented the very speech act of his reply. Searle did not reply. Later in 1988, Derrida tried to review his position and his critiques of Austin and Searle, reiterating that he found the constant appeal to ‘normality’ in the analytical tradition to be problematic.

In the debate, Derrida praised Austin’s work but argued that Austin is wrong to banish what Austin calls ‘infelicities’ from the ‘normal’ operation of language. One ‘infelicity’, for instance, occurs when it cannot be known whether a given speech act is ‘sincere’ or ‘merely citational’ (and therefore possibly ironic). Derrida argues that every iteration is necessarily ‘citational’, due to the graphemic nature of speech and writing, and that language could not work at all without the ever-present and ineradicable possibility of such alternate readings. Derrida takes Searle to task for attempting to get around this issue by grounding final authority in the speaker’s inaccessible ‘intention’. Derrida argues that intention cannot possibly govern how an iteration signifies, once it becomes hearable or readable. All speech acts borrow from a language whose significance is determined by historical-linguistic context, and by the alternate possibilities that this context makes possible. This significance, Derrida argues, cannot be altered or governed by the whims of intention.

Derrida argued against the constant appeal to ‘normality’ in the analytical tradition of which Austin and Searle were paradigmatic examples.

In the description of the structure called ‘normal,’ ‘normative,’ ‘central,’ ‘ideal,’ this possibility must be integrated as an essential possibility. The possibility cannot be treated as though it were a simple accident–marginal or parasitic. It cannot be, and hence ought not to be, and this passage from can to ought reflects the entire difficulty. In the analysis of so-called normal cases, one neither can nor ought, in all theoretical rigor, to exclude the possibility of transgression. Not even provisionally, or out of allegedly methodological considerations. It would be a poor method since this possibility of transgression tells us immediately and indispensably about the structure of the act said to be normal as well as about the structure of law in general.

Derrida argued that it was problematic to establish the relation between ‘nonfiction or standard discourse’ and ‘fiction,’ defined as its ‘parasite,’ ‘for part of the most original essence of the latter is to allow fiction, the simulacrum, parasitism, to take place—and in so doing to ‘de-essentialize’ itself as it were”. He would finally argue that the indispensable question would then become:

what is ‘nonfiction standard discourse,’ what must it be, and what does this name evoke, once its fictionality or its fictionalization, its transgressive ‘parasitism,’ is always possible (and moreover by virtue of the very same words, the same phrases, the same grammar, etc.)? This question is all the more indispensable since the rules, and even the statements of the rules governing the relations of ‘nonfiction standard discourse and its fictional ‘parasites,’ are not things found in nature, but laws, symbolic inventions, conventions, institutions that, in their very normality as well as in their normativity, entail something of the fictional.

In 1995, Searle gave a brief reply to Derrida in The Construction of Social Reality. He called Derrida’s conclusion ‘preposterous’ and stated that ‘Derrida, as far as I can tell, does not have an argument. He simply declares that there is nothing outside of texts…’ Searle’s reference here is not to anything forwarded in the debate, but to a mistranslation of the phrase, ‘il n’y a pas dehors du texte,’ (‘There is no outside text) which appears in Derrida’s Of Grammatology.

Jürgen Habermas

In The Philosophical Discourse of Modernity, Jürgen Habermas criticized what he considered Derrida’s opposition to rational discourse. Further, in an essay on religion and religious language, Habermas criticized Derrida’s emphasis on etymology and philology.

Walter A. Davis

The American philosopher Walter A. Davis, in Inwardness and Existence: Subjectivity in/and Hegel, Heidegger, Marx, and Freud, argues that both deconstruction and structuralism are prematurely arrested moments of a dialectical movement that issues from Hegelian ‘unhappy consciousness.

In popular media

A popular criticism of deconstruction intensified following the Sokal affair, which many people took as an indicator of the quality of deconstruction as a whole, despite the absence of Derrida from Sokal’s follow-up book Impostures intellectuelles.

Chip Morningstar holds a view critical of deconstruction, believing it to be ‘epistemologically challenged. He claims the humanities are subject to isolation and genetic drift due to their unaccountability to the world outside academia. During the Second International Conference on Cyberspace (Santa Cruz, California, 1991), he reportedly heckled deconstructionists off the stage. He subsequently presented his views in the article ‘How to Deconstruct Almost Anything’, where he stated, ‘Contrary to the report given in the ‘Hype List’ column of issue #1 of Wired (‘Po-Mo Gets Tek-No’, page 87), we did not shout down the postmodernists. We made fun of them.’

Introduction

The reflexive game of cultural production invites lawyers and the common hero to use tactics to influence and disrupt the competition to control meaning which underpins the force of law. Legal professionals and ordinary people can interrupt the reflexive structure of the game which perpetuates patterns of cultural production and inequality but only to the extent that they can interpret texts and perform subversive acts to intervene in the production of meaning. This essay explores the regulation of unlawful graffiti and reveals that tactics or other techniques of gamesmanship may not be adequate to substantively reform the rules of this contest. This is because the reflexive relationship between law and society reinforces and reproduces dominant norms created by enclaves of privilege. While de Certeau reveals that the common hero may use oppositional practices and maneuvers to resist the dominant structures of power, Bourdieu, Foucault, and Derrida overlook the power of every day in facilitating social and cultural change. This essay examines the distinction between unlawful graffiti and street art to illustrate how the law has been amended in response to shifting social values and perceptions. Accordingly, it is not overly optimistic to assume that lawyers and the common hero can use tactics to interrupt the game of cultural production, however, these techniques may not be sufficient to facilitate fundamental changes to the reflexive structure of the game.

(i) The ‘force of law’ and Pierre Bourdieu

The regularising and universalizing effects of law and legal norms may reinforce and perpetuate dominant social standards and culture (Bourdieu, p. 846). From my perspective, the reflexive relationship between law and society reveals that while law controls the social field, society also shapes the effectiveness of the law. In my view, the standard metaphor of the force of law assumes that law has authority and power by virtue of being law and because it is legitimate to enforce the law by imposing coercive sanctions. However, this standard meaning problematically forgets the reflexivity between law and society by overlooking how law functions as an instrument of society. In particular, this formalistic approach fails to recognize that law has force because it is an implement of the enclaves of privilege which possess social and economic power. From my interpretation, Bourdieu demonstrates that law is not merely a product of social relations, but rather, law manifests its own social field. Consequently, the juridical field is a discrete social field that functions relatively autonomously in competition with other social fields (Bourdieu, p. 814). In my view, Bourdieu reveals that the juridical field’s relative independence presents the solution to the problematic pattern of dominant norms and culture being reproduced and reinforced by the structures of privilege. As law can be considered a function of society, lawyers may use tactics to interpret and influence the meaning of legal and social rules.

Bourdieu states that ‘the juridical field is the site of a competition for the monopoly of the right to determine the law’ (Bourdieu, p. 817) which indicates, in my understanding, that legal meaning is decided by figures within the legal profession who possess the exclusive privilege to interpret and apply the law. Inequality can be observed within the juridical field as the legal profession manifests its hierarchical system by positioning judges at the apex of the hierarchy. In my view, this arrangement of control and authority within the legal profession provides insights into how power organizes itself in other social fields and the role that law performs in reproducing enclaves of privilege within society. In my opinion, the ‘division of juridical labor’ (Bourdieu, p. 817) mirrors existing groups of privilege and its exclusion of unprivileged groups within society, and this may reflect the division between which groups get to determine the difference between street art and unlawful graffiti. Specific members within the legal profession, being judges, are the ultimate arbiters of juridical meaning. In the context of graffiti-related offenses, the court through the presiding judge may decide, for instance, whether the person has successfully proven that they had a ‘reasonable excuse’ in intentionally marking any premises (section 4(1) of the Graffiti Control Act 2008 (NSW) (“Graffiti Act”)). Lawyers or judges may use techniques such as interpretation to influence the dominant rules of the game of cultural production in artistic contexts. Although it is an offense for a person under the age of 18 years to possess a spray paint can in a public place (section 8B(1)), it is a defense if the person possessed the can for a ‘defined lawful purpose’ (section 8B(2)(a)). Under section 8B(3)(b), a defined lawful purpose includes any artistic activity. Through presenting a case for their client on what satisfies the meaning of ‘artistic activity, it can be argued that the lawyer is using tactics to affect the dominant rules of the game to control meaning by offering new interpretations of what constitutes art. In my opinion, judges could also interpret the provisions differently and may overturn their own precedent or the precedent of a lower court in response to changing societal values such as an increasing appreciation for spontaneous acts of creative expression.

As the juridical field is based on symbolic exclusion because only certain groups are permitted to practice law, the legal profession may be seen as another enclave of privilege. From my perspective, lawyers can be viewed as agents in the reproduction of privilege because the tasks of interpreting the law and assigning meaning to legal concepts is monopolized by the legal profession. It can be argued that the concentration of authority in the legal profession excludes laypersons from contributing to legal meaning (Bourdieu, p. 835). Analogously, the dominant opinion of the distinction between street art and unlawful graffiti perpetuates within society and the views of unprivileged groups is excluded, resulting in inequality in cultural production. Bourdieu strengthens my view that lawyers are able to manipulate language and control the production of meaning during the process of interpreting the law. In my opinion, lawyers are able to disrupt the coercive force of law and interrupt the dominant rules of the game of cultural production by bringing different biases to the production of meaning. From my understanding, Bourdieu observes lawyers as agents who use unconscious habits and belief systems as instruments in the process of producing meaning. Accordingly, this supports my view that by challenging, questioning, and interacting with legal meaning, lawyers are competing with the regimes of privilege from which rules and regulations emerge. Although lawyers may unintentionally perpetuate inequalities that exist in society because they are agents of the enclaves of privilege that maintain the dominant view, once lawyers become alert that they can influence the production of legal meaning, they may use tactics to interrupt the processes which perpetuate inequality. In my opinion, Bourdieu’s theory is persuasive in understanding how legal professionals can deploy tactics to disrupt the competition to control meaning which perpetuates cultural production and inequality.

(ii) The ‘force of law’ and Jaques Derrida

Derrida similarly analyses legal language, practice, and discourse, allowing us to examine how certain enclaves have privileges to interpret the meaning of language and perpetuate patterns of cultural production and inequality. From my perspective, Derrida’s writing reflects the instability and mobility of texts such as meaning, language, institutions, and power and its discourses. From my understanding, Derrida’s theory of deconstruction describes the continuing process of questioning, interrupting, and displacing the foundations of texts and existing patterns of understanding. In my view, Derrida’s work provides us with an opportunity to analyze whether the dominant rules of the game of cultural production can be interrupted and changed because the recording of regulations and norms in writing encapsulates the contest to control meaning and reveals the dominant author of meaning. Derrida observes that all texts and utterances proclaim their own meaning or truth, representing only one view amongst many. As a result, these texts become unstable because there is competition between alternative views, revealing that there is no singular meaning or truth, only constructed meanings. In my opinion, it is not unreasonably optimistic to assume that lawyers and the anonymous hero can deploy tactics or other techniques of gamesmanship to interrupt the competition to control meaning. This is because existing patterns of cultural production and understanding are perpetually subjected to these processes of interruption, interrogation, and displacement. From my perspective, this process of deconstruction allows us to appreciate that all meaning is contingent on the relevant social context and author. Importantly, the context and author are the products of social contests and their status within the relevant cultural field. Consequently, translations are always contextual and in my view, this is emphasized in the context of art because what is considered street art or unlawful graffiti may depend on the society in which the markings appear.

Derrida challenges the standard metaphor of the force of law which credulously assumes the legitimacy of the law’s coercive authority. Law is perceived to have authority because the mystical foundation of law is its assertion to be the perfect translation of abstract concepts (Derrida, p. 943). From my understanding, deconstruction informs us of the error that arises during the process of translating ideals into legal language because alternative perspectives are omitted. In the context of the regulation of graffiti, dominant beliefs about what constitutes street art may be perpetuated while alternative views about the distinction between street art and unlawful graffiti are excluded. My understanding of Derrida’s writing, reveals that the process of translating ideals into text is flawed, resulting in a gap or difference between the ideal and its textual expression. In my opinion, this suggests that the way we understand what is street art or not is unstable and continuously developing. Accordingly, from my perspective, deconstruction demonstrates that lawyers and ordinary people can contribute to the reproduction of meaning.

Derrida’s idea of deconstruction confronts institutional hierarchies by emphasizing the contingency of dominant texts such as law. Deconstruction is pertinent to legal thinking because it can assist lawyers and the common hero in subverting the privileges and inequalities which are perpetuated by law. The dominant patterns of thinking which exist within the cultural field lead to the assumption that meaning is settled. However, in my view, Derrida challenges us to observe that there are opposing perspectives. From my understanding, the task of lawyers and the common hero is to recognize themselves as agents in the process of translation and to preclude the dominant structures from exerting themselves in this process. This requires continuing vigilance by the common hero, however, in my opinion, Derrida does not provide a practical solution for substantive change. Nevertheless, deconstruction alerts us to the way legal practice and discourse control meaning and silences marginal voices. Accordingly, the process of deconstruction invites unheard voices to contribute to the discussion about the meaning of certain ideals and concepts. Relevantly, it allows the anonymous hero to convey their understanding and perception of what constitutes art.

Derrida was concerned that the enclaves of privilege within society interpreted and imposed meaning on universal concepts such as inequality. Under the Graffiti Act, a person under 18 years may possess a spray paint can for a defined lawful purpose such as any artistic activity. It may be argued that what constitutes art is determined by privileged groups such as judges who have the power to impose meaning. As a result, the dominant idea of art and culture excludes the views of subjugated groups who may have different ideas of what constitutes an artistic activity. From my perspective, society must look beyond Derrida who states that meaning is controlled by the dominant culture and that the chances for resistance are limited because of the endless cycle of new regimes of hierarchy. This is because there are opportunities for freedom when the ordinary person interprets products of culture such as street art according to their own perceptions and beliefs. In my opinion, Derrida overlooks every day and forgets that in the process of deconstruction, lawyers and anonymous heroes have a choice to impose their own meaning. Therefore, it is not overly idealistic to assume that lawyers and the ordinary person can apply techniques to interrupt the reflexive structure of the game which perpetuates cultural production and inequality.

(iii) The ‘force of law’ and Michel Foucault

Foucault’s analysis of knowledge and power supports the examination of the role of law in responding to social phenomena and challenges society to reconsider the way new techniques of power supplement law. In my view, Foucault invites us to explore the way law facilitates new technologies and how technological innovations have changed the cultural experience. In my opinion, as law can be viewed as a discourse produced by society, it does not encompass all views. Instead, it advocates the dominant views of culture and this perpetuates inequalities. The modern surveillance system may be understood as a contemporary version of Bentham’s Panopticon (Foucault, p. 200). Accordingly, surveillance is an insidious technique of power that emerges from society itself and controls the human experience. Similar to the panopticon which induces in the prisoner a state of ‘permanent visibility’ (Foucault, p. 201), it can be argued that ordinary people perpetually self-regulate their behavior and act in accordance with social norms because they believe that they are continuously being surveilled. This reinforces and perpetuates dominant social standards, causing the everyday person to internalize regulation. From my perspective, this misleads us to believe that the reflexive structure of the game cannot be influenced and that patterns of cultural production and inequality cannot be interrupted. It is not overly optimistic to assume lawyers and the common hero can deploy tactics to interrupt the competition of cultural production because the relevance of the law may be diminished by regulatory techniques which supplement the law. In Sydney, compliance with graffiti laws is at least partially monitored and managed by surveillance cameras. As a result, members of society may comply with the dominant rules and regulations perpetuated by the force of law because they are conscious of being surveilled. However, the common hero may subvert the law by identifying places where surveillance cameras are inoperative and subsequently engage in unlawful graffiti.

Foucault’s study of knowledge and power challenges the significance of the force of law.

In accordance with Foucault’s end of law thesis, it could be argued that law is merely a reduction of the two categories, where knowledge is produced through language or discourse and power is produced through discipline and governmentality. Surveillance is an example of governmentality where group behavior may be regulated without the existence of a law. However, in my view, this new technique of power does not replace the law but transforms its function and significance. From my perspective, the law is not irrelevant because it is necessary to support these new forms of disciplinary power. Analogous to the asymmetrical surveillance of prisoners in the panopticon, present-day disciplinary power similarly controls social deviance by monitoring behavior. In my opinion, the asymmetry of surveillance is exemplified in modern society because the ordinary person could be continuously being observed but are unaware of it. Accordingly, the ordinary person internalizes control by self-regulating and altering their behavior. The effectiveness of this disciplinary power depends on whether it removes the delinquent behaviors within society by eliminating future breaches of the legislation. Similar to Foucault’s analysis of the change in punishment and discipline over time, the Graffiti Act illustrates that punishment for committing an offense relating to graffiti is an administrative practice where the offender is reformed to minimize the possibility of recidivism. Under s 9H of the Graffiti Act, an offender must participate in a ‘graffiti prevention program’, the purpose of which is to prevent reoffending. This reflects a change in society’s attitude because society is taking responsibility for the offender. The surveillance of graffiti suggests that this disciplinary power may not be successful because graffiti still occurs in society, even in public spaces where surveillance technology is operating. Nevertheless, it can be argued that these new forms of power result in more effective graffiti laws because individuals self-regulate in the belief that they are being surveilled.

Foucault alerts us to the problem that dominant discourses may conceal alternative or subjugated knowledge. Street art can be perceived as a way of inviting marginalized individuals into the cultural field to contribute to the meaning of what is street art and what is unlawful graffiti. It can be argued that the regulation of unlawful graffiti and the relaxation of bureaucratic processes under the Sydney Local Environmental Plan Amendment (Street Art) 2017 may not leave adequate space for spontaneous expressions of art. Although the removal of several administrative steps simplified the process to obtain consent to display street art, the Graffiti Act was not amended, leaving insufficient space for society to determine what constitutes art. While the common hero may use oppositional tactics such as vandalism to subvert the graffiti laws, these gaps or opportunities are not sufficient to incite substantive revision of the rules of the game. Nevertheless, it can be argued that the existence of restrictive graffiti laws, which may be perceived to perpetuate inequality, provides society with a discourse that explicitly articulates the rule. Accordingly, society understands the law it is subject to and has a clear basis for resistance against the rule. The common hero may interrupt the competition for meaning by campaigning for reform. In my opinion, although cultural production is automated which causes the endless loop of regularisation of dominant norms, the subversive interventions of the common hero are also automated and this means that tactics can be deployed to interrupt the reflexive structure of the game.

(iv) The ‘force of law’ and Michel de Certeau

As the ordinary person can make interventions against dominant norms in their daily life, it is not unrealistic to assume that lawyers and the common hero can use subversive tactics to interrupt the competition to control meaning which underpins the force of law and which perpetuates patterns of cultural production and inequality. From my understanding, the game of cultural production is the competition to control meaning between those who produce culture and those who use culture. Every day people are marginalized by the reflexive structure of the game because they do not embody an enclave of privilege. Although Bourdieu, Derrida, and Foucault recognized that the inextricable reflexive relationship between law and society produced a complex loop that offered no way of escape, de Certeau, in my opinion, recognizes that the anonymous hero can perform acts of resistance or disruption in everyday life. From my understanding, de Certeau expounds that the rules of the game are the ‘strategies’ that the structures of power use to achieve their objectives, and ‘tactics’ are the actions exercised to resist the structure of the game (de Certeau, p. 6). The regulation of graffiti under the Graffiti Act is an institutional ‘strategy’ imposed by the state to establish acceptable standards of behavior. In my view, de Certeau allows us to observe that the common hero may exercise resistance against the reflexive structure of the game by construing meaning according to their own beliefs within this framework of ‘strategies’ constructed by the dominant producers of culture. Every day provides a context for observing the spontaneous opportunities and ritualistic encounters which allow the common hero to interpret and reflect on patterns of cultural production. From my perspective, de Certeau illustrates that the potential for change lies in the random acts of interruption by the common hero who has moments to reflect on the meaning of the system and its laws. This is because the ordinary hero has an opportunity to interpret and resist the dominant structures of cultural production and inequality when they encounter rules and regulations. In my view, this allows the everyday person to determine whether or not they will obey that particular rule.

From my understanding, de Certeau was concerned about the perpetuation and imposition of patterns of cultural production on the lives of ordinary people. However, de Certeau informs us that the common hero can overcome the enclaves of privilege because the ordinary person can manipulate their social setting through their everyday maneuvers. In contrast to Bourdieu and Foucault’s idea of regularisation and naturalization where the process of cultural production is automated, de Certeau recognizes that it is feasible to interrupt this process of shaping meaning. The use of subversive tactics by the common hero to resist the ruling structures of power occurs subtly. By deducing their own meaning after reading texts, the anonymous hero is engaged in a form of ongoing resistance which may be internal and silent. In this moment of interaction with the text, there is a gap for the ordinary person to interpret the text in their own way and this represents an opportunity for resistance. The distinction between unlawful graffiti and street art may reflect an example of moving in a gap to change the perceived rules of the game. The intentional marking of premises without consent may constitute vandalism, or it may reflect a gap in the system where there is a chance to challenge the dominant regime. In the moment that the common hero decides their next action, they are provided with an opportunity to resist the graffiti laws. Therefore, these opportunistic acts of textual interpretation allow the common hero to interrupt the reflexive structure of the game which perpetuates patterns of cultural production and inequality.

The regulation of graffiti presents an opportunity for us to observe how the competition between law and society is dynamic and continuing. Street art is a phenomenon that invites unprivileged groups to challenge the dominant assumption of what art and culture mean, thereby placing these marginalized voices in competition with the structures of power. Although there are strict anti-graffiti laws in NSW, there are certain exemptions for street art under the Sydney Local Environmental Plan Amendment (Street Art) 2017. This raises the question of which groups in society get to determine what is considered street art as distinct from unlawful graffiti. The 2017 amendment reclassified street art as exempt development which meant that some bureaucratic steps required to obtain consent were removed. In my view, this amendment facilitates the production of street art and illustrates the way the government has encountered the issue of unlawful graffiti in public spaces. Importantly, it demonstrates how the government addressed the issue about the distinction between street art and unlawful graffiti. In my opinion, this change highlights a relaxation of the regulatory regime by the state. As a result of street art gaining increasing acceptance in the social domain, the law responded by altering the rules, illustrating the reflexivity between law and society. It illustrates that the government responded to the wishes of society by recognizing the social value of street art, thereby revealing that society can force legal changes. Importantly, the Graffiti Act remains unchanged and the requirement of consent has not been removed, meaning that the spontaneity of street art is still restricted by law. Nevertheless, from my perspective, having these gaps in the law that leave space for oppositional practices is critical because it is in these moments where there is potential for confrontation between the common hero and the structures of privilege and authority. Accordingly, when lawyers or the common hero encounter and interact with texts such as laws, there are opportunities and gaps for resisting and interrupting the dominant rules of the game.

Conclusion

An examination of the production of culture in everyday life facilitates an understanding of how lawyers and the common hero can interpret, challenge, and evaluate dominant norms, and question the legitimacy of law. Although Bourdieu, Derrida, and Foucault highlight the normalizing and universalizing effects of law which may lead to the reproduction of inequality, de Certeau reveals that the ordinary person can use tactics to subvert the dominant rules. Ultimately, the regulation of unlawful graffiti demonstrates that the law responds to changing social perceptions and may create new gaps in the law for oppositional practices. However, this may not be sufficient to incite significant change to the reflexive structure of the game.

Derrida stemmed from Heidegger’s pattern of deleting words after the word has written Beings, (Being) and let both deletion and stand because the word was insufficient but required. Heidegger likewise believed in the difference in the system of language Unlike Heidegger, Derrida discovers the much deeper concept of distinction as difference.

Derrida also discovers Heidegger’s dedication to the metaphysics of presence. Heidegger’s review of the concern of the significance of being itself breaks one’s self-confidence in the logocentric custom that presumes an identity of ‘being’ and ‘meaning’. Therefore, Derrida composes in Of Grammatology: ‘destroying the securities of onto-theology such a mediation contributes rather as much as the most contemporary linguistics’.46 Similarly, with Heidegger, Derrida likewise thinks in the power of language.

to make thoughts and also concurs with Heidegger that language speaks guy. That is to state, humans, do not produce significance but rather occupy the universe by impersonal impulses on language.

The word ‘deconstruction’ was obtained by Derrida from Heidegger’s idea of destruction which is the desire for the chilling out of the old tradition of Ontology. According to Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, ‘one difference in between the Heideggerian approach of ‘damage’ and

Derrida’s ‘deconstruction’ is the latter’s attention to the minute detailing of a text, not only to the syntax but to the shapes of the words in it.

In building up the strategies of deconstruction, Derrida took its sources from various theorists and linguists. One such was Ferdinand de Saussure (1857 − 1913), the Swiss linguist and the leader of structuralism. Derrida discovered structuralism as being captured in phonocentrism because of Saussure fortunate the spoken sign over and against the composed sign and mentioned a natural bond in between a sound and its sense. In reality, Saussure asserted that language and writing were various systems of indications and began the argument by not consisting of the written signs from consideration. The writing was thought about as something secondary because it was representative and not initial. The letters of the written indication took us far from the genuine phenomenon of language. Saussure, even more, declared that the essence of language lies not about phonemes. According to Saussure, there were 2 essential features of language the distinction and arbitrary nature of signs. It suggested our ability to use the same phoneme as spoken by various individuals in terms of sound, tension, pitch etc. however for a similar alphabet, Saussure concluded that phonemes were determined by distinction from other phonemes. So, Saussure mentioned in language, there were distinctions without positive terms. This was what Derrida studied as the differential function of the indication. The approximate nature of indication was the 2nd function of language. Derrida declared:

There can be arbitrariness only because the system of signs is constituted by the differences in terms and not by their plentitude. (Derrida, Margins of Philosophy 10)

For example, it is simply arbitrary that the sound cow in English, gai in Hindi and Shanbi in Manipuri referred to a fully grown female domestic bovine animal. All sounds referred to animals in their particular language. Therefore, Derrida obtained from Saussure that the arbitrary and differential nature of language were correlative. Both of them agreed that the two features of the sign were connected. There was an arbitrary nature of indication due to the differential function of language.

Derrida likewise followed Saussure’s view on the basis for the meaning of language. Saussure’s concept was vital for comprehending the differences’ insignificance. For Saussure significance and any signifier was related to another signifier in the language. For example, the difference between the signifier ‘train’ (series of railway carriages or tracks drawn by the engine) and ‘tram’ (electrically powered traveller road vehicle working on a rail) are revealed quickly by comparing ‘train’ with ‘tram’. From Saussure, Derrida got this idea and concluded that each principle was included in a network of principles. The principle described each

other through the play of distinctions. Therefore, Derrida put his view that signifier and represented might not be separated. This was expressed in the book, Positions.

There was no signified out the play of signifiers and, for that reason, there was no transcendental represented. Derrida exposed this truth that every represented was also in the position of the signifier. Derrida embraced this view from Saussure that play of distinction was required to every indication. This led Derrida to further studies leading to the intro of a new principle difference.

Norris’ Framework

Christopher Norris explains the difference in between the strenuous (thoughtful) kind of deconstruction and also the non-rigorous (literary-wild) kind of deconstruction. There’s a reason for its difference versus the wild range is that they cannot supply a version for literary objection. They are captives to bad luck in the way that postmodernists are. Both are counter-theorists. His strike on post-modernism is intended to show ‘what is incorrect with it’ (Norris, 1999). While the wild selection infers no user interface of approach and also literary works or the absence of it, the Derridean selection is a prospect for such a user interface, as high as the very early analytic approach. The last 2 phases adhered specifically to recognising Wittgenstein’s advances to a deconstructivist setting (textual fondness thesis) and also Quine and also Davidson’s deconstructivist reasoning (reasoning of indeterminacy). In a feeling, this recommends jointly that Derrida can become close to from the side of evaluation. Yet it does not adhere to that Derrida is an analytic thinker. What on the various other hand requires to be taken a look at is whether Derrida can roam in the direction of the institution of a logical idea. This is the prime concept of Norris to show deconstruction is sensible as well as logical and adequate to maintain rigour in the approach. (Norris, Deconstruction, 9)

Norris’s fundamental purpose is to absolve a sight according to which there is a ‘logical divide’, in between deconstruction on the one hand and also hermeneutics on the various other. Such an analytic divide recommends a comparison which lugs significant ramifications for the user interface in between approaches as well as literary works. One principal effect is that while deconstruction can maintain such a user interface, post-modernism threatens and also unleashed it. This is the factor behind the essential philosophers’ feedback as seen in their progression of the category difference by providing transcendental kinds of a meta-narrative. The thesis concerning the logical divide is received by holding that while deconstruction has the theoretical resources to endure a user interface, post-modernist lacks them. This inevitably brings about the final thought that deconstruction comes from the same variety of discussion that Habermas terms as the thoughtful discussion of modernity, yet it stresses one’s credulity to point so. Therefore Norris is required to decide on these advancements however inevitably he makes an unsuccessful effort to fit whatever is right into his system.

In this context, the advancements an ‘alleviating’ debate, yet falls short. The disagreement is specified as adheres to:

1. Counter-postmodernist property: Deconstruction is not a thoughtful spin-off of the larger post-modernist or counter-enlightenment drift;
2. Lead character Habermasian facility: Deconstruction comes from the very same genre of thoughtful discussion on modernity (innovation is considered an incomplete task);
3. Traditional facility: Approach is still self-control with its known- unique setting of theoretical or logical rigour (to which Derrida can adjust);.
4. The analytic facility: Kant is the basis for the ‘rigour’ in analytic expectation.

Norris continues to fix (1 ); propels Derrida to the Habermasian setting of discussion. So Derrida is a minimal Habermasian that can review the myriad domain names of logical discussion that consists of deconstruction along with postmodernism. He intends to press back Derrida to the logical layer in (3) as well as presses logical viewpoint likewise right into the layer of thoughtful discussion of modernity so regarding attracting the final thought that Derrida is a Kantian logical theorist as any type of various other; so it takes place that Derrida is an ersatz Kantian whereas Habermas is a shallow one.

Norris misses what exists confined within the vortices, particularly, language. While the mainstream (or very early) analytic approach takes it toward language-world user interface, deconstructionists take it towards ‘techniques’ (the user interface of writing (ecriture)/ talking or logocentric/phonocentric) (we take the later binary connection as the prompt ensuing of the previous binary connection). The previous feeling of evaluation needs a particular deep framework (rational types) while the last feeling of ‘evaluation’ calls for particular ‘deepness’ types (binary recommendation). Thus they are to be situated on the borders of various vortices. Yet after that postmodernists in addition to essential philosophers can be claimed to be taken part in comparable endeavours of binary resistance without catching any type of Kantian perfects of problems of an opportunity of language, interaction, or guideline- complying with. If we extend better, the video game of binary resistance, we discover that the problems of opportunity and also problems of unfeasibility supply a port for a binary resistance (at the ‘quasi-transcendental degree’), as well as therefore the underlying Kantianism, which passes default. What Norris overlooks right here is that the binary resistance in between regular (severe)/ deviant (no major) or rule-following as well as rule-violating (Kripke) serves throughout a range of gadgets consisting of the design of human cognition.

Derrida begins his text with a reference to a recent event in the history of the concept of structure, but immediately retreats to question the use of the word “event.” He is concerned that the word “event” is too loaded with meaning. This is a problem because the function of thinking about structure is to reduce the notion of events. Why is it so? The reason is: thinking about structure must be abstract and exclude concretes such as events. Still, Derrida wants to report on something that happened, which is relevant to the concept of structure, so he allows the event to be admitted into the discussion, provided it is enclosed in quotation marks, as a word and not an actual event. The event is now identified as that of “rupture” and “redoubling.” Of what? The reader will not find out until the end of the essay. Derrida writes: “The appearance of a new structure, of an original system, always comes about–and this is the very condition of its structural specificity–by a rupture with its past, its origin, and its cause” (290). Then this is what has recently happened in the history of the concept of structure: a nascent structure is struggling to be born out of the old one, and it collides with the old structure—its origin and cause. The reader, however, is still in the beginning of the essay and has no clue what the rupture is about.

In the beginning of the essay, Derrida proceeds to talk about the center of a structure, which controls the structure by orienting and organizing it. Derrida admits that an unorganized structure is unconceivable and that a structure without a center is unthinkable, but he contends that the center delimits and diminishes the possible play within the structure. Play, then, is whatever goes against the organization and coherence of the structure. Derrida now points out the paradox that the center of the structure must be both inside and outside the structure. It must be a part of the structure, but also independent of it, in order to control it. Derrida appears to delight in refuting the Law of Identity. He exclaims that since the center is both inside and outside the structure, “the center is not the center” (279). Nevertheless, he continues to write about the center, confident that it can exist and function while not being itself. This is therefore a clear rebuttal of Aristotle’s valorization of identity.

Next Derrida surveys the entire history of the concept of structure, up to the recent, still-mysterious, rupture, as a series of substituting one center for another. Never was there a structure without a center, full of nothing but play. What types of centers were there so far? Derrida names a few: essence, existence, substance, subject, consciousness, God, and man. The structure, then, is not just any structure, but a structure of concepts, that is, philosophy, with one central concept that controls it. According to Derrida, the event of the rupture occurred when there was a disruption in the series of substituting one center for another. This disruption occurred when the very idea of the structurality of the structure became the subject of somebody’s thought. However, according to Derrida, a center cannot substitute itself; it cannot be repeated. The old center could not stay and there was no new one. Then, for the first time in the history of the structure, “it was necessary to begin thinking that there was no center.” Instead, “an infinite number of sign-substitutions came into play” (280). In the absence of a center, play finally had its chance. What does play consist of? Derrida describes how, once there was no center, language invaded the scene and everything became discourse. (Instead of a structure of concepts, and philosophy, there was only a collection of signs and language.) The signified became indistinguishable from the signifier, and the play became “a play of signification.” Signs, that is, words, could have any meaning, in a boundless, infinite play. In a half-hearted admission of historical events, Derrida points out several individuals who contributed to the historical elimination of the center (who must have been the ones to rethink the notion of the center). Nietzsche’s critique of the concepts of “being” and “truth”; Freud’s critique of self-presence, consciousness, self-identity, and the subject himself; and finally, Heidegger’s radical destruction of metaphysics. Still, Derrida stops short of embracing Nihilism. He admits that it is impossible to destroy a concept without using it. It is impossible to pronounce a proposition without using the form, the logic, and the postulations of what it attempts to contest. He points out that signs must signify something. Once the signified is eliminated, the very notion of signs must be rejected as well. The endless, boundless play is over.

At this point, Derrida asks: “What is the relevance of this formal scheme when we turn to what are called the ‘human sciences’”? Derrida brings up ethnology as the human science that can benefit from his discussion in part one. He draws out a parallel between the history of ethnology and the history of the concept of structure. Ethnology emerged as science when European culture lost its ethnocentric notion of itself—when the central idea in Western culture, ethnocentrism, lost its control over Western culture. The critique of European ethnocentrism coincided with the destruction of the inherited metaphysics by Nietzsche, Freud, and Heidegger. Ethnology is caught up in a similar paradox as the metaphysics of deconstruction. It depends on that which it seeks to destroy. It originated in Europe and uses European concepts, but it attempts to destroy the notion of European ethnocentrism. At this point, Derrida brings up the opposition between nature and culture, which is an ancient philosophical issue. He uses the ethnological writings of Claude Levi-Strauss as an example of the study of this opposition. Levi-Strauss discovered a scandalous paradox inherent in the nature/culture opposition. The taboo on incest, as Levi-Strauss observed, was both natural and cultural: It was a universal taboo, not particular to a specific culture, but still a part of each culture. The problem, obviously, is not with the taboo on incest, but with Levi-Strauss’s interpretation of its universality as “natural.” As Will Thomas observed his essay, the natural and the universal are not synonymous. Still, Derrida uses this “paradox” in order to commend Levi-Strauss for continuing to use the nature/culture opposition in his ethnological studies while criticizing its inherent paradox. This is an example of deconstruction, which must continue to use what it is deconstructing. The “scandal” of this paradox is like a storm in a teacup, but it is sufficient for Derrida to require that the nature/culture opposition be questioned. Derrida proceeds to claim that once the opposition between nature and culture is questioned, there is no way to separate nature and culture, and they become indistinguishable. Another successful deconstruction has taken place. At this point, Derrida proceeds to search for the origin, or originator, of language. In a conglomeration of linguistic musings, he hypothesizes that if there was such an originator, he must be a myth, because he would be “the absolute origin of his own discourse and supposedly would construct it ‘out of nothing” (285). However, Derrida admitted before that signs could not exist independently of what they signify. The logical conclusion would be that language came into existence out of nothing, but was preceded by the concepts it was about to name. In Objectivist terms, man developed a conceptual capacity before he developed language. Nevertheless, Derrida continues to use Levi-Strauss’s writings to explain that language was preceded and created by mythology. He describes mythology as a structure with no center, that is, no origin or cause. But wasn’t “center” defined before as an overruling concept, which mythology certainly has? In an application of the deconstructing play, the meaning of the word “center” has shifted to “origin.” The origin of mythology is indeed unknown, which qualifies it as a center-less structure. Similarly, the musical works of the archaic societies studied by Levi-Strauss have no known composers, so music qualifies as a center-less structure as well. In another shift of the meaning of “origin,” Derrida quotes Levi-Strauss’s claim that the audience of a musical performance is like “a silent performer,” so the origin of the music is indeterminate. It is in the conductor, the performers, and the audience, everywhere and nowhere. The reader may think that mythology and music still have an overruling concept, they have a meaning, but once they are defined as center-less, their meaning is doomed to be deconstructed as well: “‘Music and mythology bring man face to face with potential objects of which only the shadows are actualized”.

After stating that the mythological discourse has no center, Derrida leaps to the conclusion that the philosophical or epistemological requirements of a center appear as no more than a historical illusion. Philosophy never had a real center, only an illusory one, because it depends on language, which depends on mythology, which, in turn, never had a center. Again, Derrida recoils from the inevitable Nihilism of this conclusion. He prefers to leave open the question of the relationship between philosophy and mythology, so that philosophy may still have a center. He acknowledges that the possibility that philosophy never had a center is a problem that cannot be dismissed, because it may become a fault within the philosophical realm. Such a fault, however, is a species of Empiricism, a doctrine that Derrida obviously holds in great disregard. Derrida is concerned that Empiricism is a menace to the discourse he attempts to formulate here. Derrida wants to save philosophy for the same purpose he wanted to save the sign: for endless deconstruction. He stresses that it is impossible to actually turn the page on philosophy. Even “transphilosophical” concepts that attempt to go beyond philosophy can only amount to reading philosophers in a certain way. There is nothing to be studied beyond philosophy (and there will be nothing left to study once philosophy is completely deconstructed.)

Derrida proceeds to deconstruct Empiricism, the one philosophy he will not miss. He attempts to invalidate the Empiricist critique of Levi-Strauss’s ethnological theories. Levi-Strauss was criticized for not conducting an exhaustive inventory of South American myths before proceeding to write about South American mythology. He defended himself by claiming that a linguist can decipher grammar from only a few sentences and does not need to collect all the sentences of a language. Derrida obviously agrees with him. However, grammar and mythology are not analogous. Each myth is unique and can add more to the study of mythology, whereas all the sentences in a language use the same grammar, so only a sample of sentences is needed for the study of grammar. However, this is empirical evidence, which Derrida disregards. He uses Levi-Strauss’s example of the study of grammar to prove that “totalization” is both useless and impossible. It is useless and impossible to encompass the totality of language in order to study its grammar. In the absence of totalization, what emerges is “nontotalization,” which is again defined as “play.” This time, it is language, not the structure that loses its coherence to “play.” However, the play remains the same: words can now have any meaning.

Introduction to Jacques Derrida

In recent French intellectual history, Jacques Derrida was among the most popular, controversial but also knowledgeable figures. He pioneered a way of philosophy to which he called Deconstruction, that radically changed our comprehension of several academic disciplines, particularly literary studies. Derrida was born in El Biar, an Algiers suburb, what used to be French colonial Algeria, in 1930. At school, he was initially sluggish and harbored aspirations to become a professional football player. As all other Jewish children, Derrida was unfairly excluded from his Lycée and spent much of his time with his mother at home. He was tremendously affected from the anti-Semitism of the majority Muslim community in Algeria, and it was highly influenced by the experience by being in a weaker position in the fulcrum of three distinct religions: Judaism, and Christianity, all of which pretend to speak the reality of the situation that neither of them understood how to treat everyone with specific regard. Derrida at the age of 19 moved to Paris in 1949, to take a seat at the reputable École Normale Supérieure. He was a bright student but was in a strange position. Extremely advantaged in regards to education, but absolutely on the edges in Urban France in his social standing as that of an Algerian Jew. While Derrida wasn’t an autobiographical author, it is difficult not to read his writings as an abstract reply to his understanding of bigotry and exclusion. Derrida started developing the ideas which started his career from the later 1960s onward. Over time he became an intellectual figure in America and Europe. He was absolutely stunning. A fine-looking guy with a nice choice in haircuts and raincoats. He had a love life that was beautiful, varied, and complex. He was convicted on a wholly complete drug smuggling charge in 1980 but was assisted by both the French president and left-wing politicians. He enjoyed playing billiards and spent much of the afternoons at the game which he was exceptionally good at. He passed away at the age of 74 in 2004 due to pancreatic cancer. Derrida has published 40 books which are all esoteric and discreet. The most widely used term associated to Derrida is deconstruction. He used it to explain how he thought, and when others began to use this word he frequently felt as if they had misinterpreted what he implied by it. Deconstruction basically means removing our unnecessary allegiance to some notion and trying to see facets of the reality that might lie hidden in the contrary. Derrida wrote his first significant book in 1967: ‘Of Grammatology”. Derrida was sure that because Socrates and other Western philosophers have consistently preferred speech, which has been viewed as genuine communication, and not writing, which has been perceived as a pure interpretation as to what others may say, a second-hand account devoid of engagement and veracity that comes with the speech. But Derrida’s ultimate goal was to pursue a huge, perplexing proposition. However, once it is investigated closely, most of our thoughts become filled with a hoax, unjust and unhelpful, privileging one aspect over another.Speech is preferred over text, logic over feelings, men, for a long time, women, literature over pictorials, vision over touching. The disregarded opponents and even some of the main counterparts are deserving of love and affection, he insisted. Rationale versus skepticism, masculinity, femininity, the benefit versus charity, etc. He hoped that we could learn to deal with a few of the disagreements that lie under these terms more intelligently, that we could begin to see that there are two sides to everything, that both are a little wrong, that both required each other, and that the conflict between them would inevitably always be irrevocable. It might sound like Derrida was just using Deconstruction to criticize tradition and the capitalist system and push an egalitarian agenda for the left, but it was far more cryptic than that. For instance, in the Deconstruction of the concept of equality, Derrida suggested that the claim that equality is often better than inequality, while this may be a contemporary liberal maxim, is unreliable and vague, and he figured out that some of the best human scenarios we encounter is clearly not representations of equality in practice. To deconstruct any notion is to prove that it’s really uncertain and loaded with fallacies, and we must always bear in mind its mundanity. Derrida criticized a tendency to assume that a nice and tidy answer lies somewhere behind every situation. He stated, for example, that we can reasonably be puzzled about the benefits of socialism and capitalism, or the relation between sex and love, but we must not jump to conclusions on these subjects. For both sides of such equations, there are interesting things to be said. To infer that capitalism would either be wonderful or perverse, or whether sex and love are closely connected or have little to do with each other, is to avoid confrontation with reality’s deception and surrealistic existence. This is not symbolic of weakness or foolishness to be puzzled and unsure about these definitions. It’s the key symbol of maturity for Derrida. MODERNISM Vs. POST-MODERNISM

One group identified as modernism another as post-modernism can be classified as two discrete phases of the twentieth century. The shift of modernism to post-modernism occurred because of the fundamental difference which resides both in way of looking at society and advancement. Both of them are a reaction to Enlightenment. The Enlightenment was a seventeenth-century period in the European past when science and logic apparently prevailed over beliefs and custom as a social steering principle of progression. The actuality was a mosaic and both moves started this confusion.

The Enlightenment’s two core principles were: (1) the perfect capacity of human nature, and (2) the belief in human advancement through the improvement of human knowledge, particularly science.

The Enlightenment is mostly regarded as the beginning of a modern era of mankind’s history by several historians though not by all. In the 19th century, philosophers and artists carefully examined the Enlightenment, and it was reconfirmed but some of the enlightenment values like assurance was detracted. Scientific discoveries, such as quantum physics, severely undermined the idea of a probabilistic model of the universe in the 20th century. The rationale was always upheld as a guiding force, just as was the faith in human evolution. Technology intruded in all facets of life and was seen as indicative of the potential to change human life for measuring purposes. The Modernism project was to explore the hindrances that still held back society. For instance, there was the exclusion of realism as an artistic model in the fine arts and the push toward more abstraction and true self-conscious artwork. It can be seen through painters such as Theodore van Gogh’s artistic endeavors and his captivating landscapes, as well as Picasso and his cubist painting. Such works articulated profound perceptional truth without becoming equivalent to the facts observed. Likewise, modernism in music pointed to a time of change and progress when composers looked away from old music standards by experimenting with harmonic, rhythmic, and melodic elements of the music being modified, organized, and attempted. In the domain of music, the modernist composers contested orthodox reality by experimentation in composition. Literature and architecture were usually considered artists’ eccentric creations during the modernist period. Such works were perceived to have profound significance. It was a period where novels and books dominated.

In the post-modernist period with the advent of microchips, digitization, as well as other technical developments, computers, and televisions became prevalent in society, and digital media started to reproduce and preserve art and literary works. Individuals refused to accept that artwork and literature held a special significance; instead, post-modernists suggest that pieces of art and literary works derive their own significance. Multimedia and the Internet contribute to information exchange. Music by artists like Beethoven and Mozart was less popular in the post-modern period, but it was appreciated during modernism. Post-modernism was characterized by world music, remixes, and DJs. A post-modern blend of various architectural styles substituted architecture types that was common during modernism.

Modernism Overview

Modernism refers to a series of later 19th and nascent 20th-century cultural movements. this was an intellectual and political initiative, with the key premise of conventional ideals and systems were oppressive, discriminatory, and ineffective and should thus be done away by logical values and structures. Modernism was marked by a radical shift in philosophy that used intelligence to enhance the human condition. Through the support of science, innovation, and technology, modernism has brought about a revolution in all realms of life like politics, business, artwork, and literature. That contributed to change in many facets of existence by transforming mankind’s approach to culture. Essentially, with the use of science and philosophy, modernism tried to liberate society from its historical stigma. Liberalism, communism, and socialism for example are prevalent manifestations of modernist politics. Modernists sought to create iconic things in art, architecture, and music that are not bound to orthodoxy but focused on technical mathematical syntaxes instead. Schoenberg’s music, the Baha School of Architecture, and painters like El Lissitzky are common examples of modernist art.

Post-modernism Overview

Post-modernism simply means subsequent to modern. This was a response to modernism and it was inspired by World War II disillusionment. Post-modernism simply refers to the stage lacking a central authority and a complicated, vague, and diverse one. For example, post-modernism impacted the development of the 1960s society, culture, and economy. Post-modernism can also be seen as the cynical reaction to modernism which has been a constructive and positive ideology. Post-modernists attributed to the idea that modernist principles can never be accomplished due to variations between cultures and people in general. In other words, Post-modernist like Derrida, Heidegger, and Lyotard challenged the modernist strong belief in objectivity, rationality, and universalism favoring relativism (the perspective there’s no ultimate truth) and also identity. Strong concepts such as liberty, progress in society, and scientific advancement were dismissed by post-modernists, who instead stressed that diversity should be celebrated rather than imposed unification. This mindset came forward because of certain failures in the Modernist agenda such as World War I, World War II, colonialism, and the inability of both Stalinism and liberal capitalism to achieve what modernity had promised, primarily prosperity and freedom. Postmodernism in a way is the retaliation toward modernity. The two world wars basically marked a significant loss to society. Post-modernists assert that modernism permitted the atrocity of the wars that they saw as the chief architect of the Enlightenment, calculated rationality, and technology. The belief dissolved faith in human growth and human nature’s perfectibility. Tradition’s decline created a terrifying situation where context was difficult to distinguish amid the chaos of societal collapse. This resulted to severe questions regarding the potential role of humanity in the universe. Therefore post-modernism reflected a lack of faith in human rationality. It offers a pensive prognosis of human existence but does not propose any concrete solutions.

In a nutshell

Modernism and post-modernism both were movements that originated from the point of view of the ideals of the Enlightenment through the assessment of occurrences within the modern era. But, although modernism gave credentialed approval of Enlightenment, post-modernism was their unequivocal denouncement. Modernism is an ideology of unification. They united mankind with a quest and common goals. On the contrary, post-modernism was a counter-reaction to modernism. Post-modernist argued that mankind could never accomplish the objective of a united society.