Discourse Analysis, file 3 of deconstruction by Sir Sohail Ansari

Many of the things we teach

First two weeks are spent in explaining the following material:

Deconstruction

 A method of critical analysis of philosophical and literary language which emphasizes the internal workings of language and conceptual systems, the relational quality of meaning, and the assumptions implicit in forms of expression.

Deconstruction is actually a way of reading any text and thereby exposing the instability of meaning which the text tries to cover up. At the basic level this instability results from the endless chain of meanings which a word is capable of generating all throughout the existence of that word: its archaic meanings, its modern connotations and denotations, and ever changing implications in changing contexts. Apart from semantics, it also takes one into other aspects of meaning-construction, like phonetics, syntax, grammar,etc. In short, it reveals how the text is always already internally conflicted, and is far from the serenity of any definite meaning.
In a novel, one could try and show how perspectives and ideologies clash; how the authorial voice is unable to contain the paradoxical and contradictory flow of meanings generated by the events, circumscribed as it is by its own ideological suppositions; etc.

Actually, Deconstruction is more a way of reading than a theory of literature and it aims to show how texts deconstruct or contradict themselves. Instead of showing how everything fits together in a hierarchical structure, as other approaches tend to do, deconstruction tries to show how texts unravel themselves, particularly showing how the privileged item in a binary pair can be reversed and subverted. Marxists and Feminists may argue that Deconstruction lacks serious political commitment...

Deconstruction is a mode of reading that can be useful to point out the undecidabilities of any text, including the literary text. Undecidabilities are the moments of a text when it is impossible to chrystalize one single meaning precisely because a multitude of meanings emerge in a single time.

In other words, Deconstruction is less something "applyable", something outside language/text, than an inner textual approach perspective. The language/text must be deconstructive, and that must be point out, not Deconstruction.

Deconstruction can help us to question and revise everything we're told about the world—our received ideas. So it can make us more critical citizens as well as more critical readers of literary texts. They want to teach us about how everything we consider to be a capital-T Truth has been carefully constructed by other heavy-hitting philosophers in the tradition, and how those Truths continue to influence the way we see the world today. Deconstruction values nothing more highly than close reading. The closer the better—by which we mean: the more sophisticated, stylistically elegant, and philosophically literate. In deconstruction, philosophy and literature truly are birds of a feather. There's no telling them apart. Deconstructionists treat philosophers like authors, and vice versa. 

The same goes for the opposition between main dishes and dessert. Deconstructionists are over this artificial division by overturning the received assumption that breakfast is the most important meal of the day, for example. They try posing questions like these: "Who ever said that coffee and cake shouldn't be served before salad? Isn't it time to undo this hierarchical opposition?

Deconstruction has been built on the backs of scholars who lived to wrestle weak arguments to the ground. To find contradictions in even the most apparently coherent of texts..

Nothing bad can be said about these methods: super close reading, nonstop and no-holds-barred attention to detail, massive book learning, and philosophical maturity.

Now we proceed to teach close reading and explain the following:

When we're "close reading" we're not just paying attention to what the text says (content), but how the text says what it does (form).

The reader's response or the author's intentions? The text's historical time period? Political context? None of that matters, people.

close reading, a style of analysis that pays really close attention to the form and structure of texts (in other words, what it says and how it says it).

We help students notice how statements cripple the underlying hierarchy by "deconstructing" the opposition that it depends on.

First, one identifies a binary pair, like black=white, man=woman, subject=object, etc. Then one reverses or deconstructs it, like black is a variation of white, man makes sense when contrasted with woman, subject cannot exist without an object, etc. Deconstruction "'deconstructs' the underlying hierarchy. For example:

·         Our sense of Pooh books is derived from the movies, 

·         Batman is a special kind of villain called a vigilante

·         Men's sense of their intelligence is dependent on a belief that women are bimbos

·         "Cowboy heroism" cannot exist without "bad Indians."

Thus students learn that  Deconstruction doesn't simply reverse the opposition, nor does it destroy it. Instead it demonstrates its inherent instability. It takes it apart from within, and without putting some new, more stable opposition in its place. If you want to really mess with something, deconstruct it."

Now students do exercise based on the above material

Students learn other things such as:

One of the themes in Postmodern philosophy is a denial of universal, objective truth.

Postmodern Philosophy – Language and Deconstruction

Postmodern Philosophy – Anti-Realism and the Construction of Reality

DERRIDA, DECONSTRUCTION AND LITERARY
INTERPRETATION

Now students are required to do practical work. They are taught one poem and then afterward they are given many more to do themselves. Poem is pasted below:

– Deconstruction – using Blake’s The Little Black Boy."

This poem has been difficult for many readers to deal with and has been interpreted as racist et cetera. However, Blake was anti-slavery – an abolitionist – and a Deconstruction analysis of this poem is an excellent way to illustrate a very pro-abolitionist reading of this poem.

William Blake's "The Little Black Boy"

My mother bore me in the southern wild,
And I am black, but O! my soul is white;
White as an angel is the English child:
But I am black as if bereav'd of light.

My mother taught me underneath a tree
And sitting down before the heat of day,
She took me on her lap and kissed me,
And pointing to the east began to say.

Look on the rising sun: there God does live
And gives his light, and gives his heat away.
And flowers and trees and beasts and men receive
Comfort in morning joy in the noonday.

And we are put on earth a little space,
That we may learn to bear the beams of love,
And these black bodies and this sun-burnt face
Is but a cloud, and like a shady grove.

For when our souls have learn'd the heat to bear
The cloud will vanish we shall hear his voice.
Saying: come out from the grove my love & care,
And round my golden tent like lambs rejoice.

Thus did my mother say and kissed me,
And thus I say to little English boy.
When I from black and he from white cloud free,
And round the tent of God like lambs we joy:

I'll shade him from the heat till he can bear,
To lean in joy upon our fathers knee.
And then I'll stand and stroke his silver hair,
And be like him and he will then love me.



William Blake’s “The Little Black Boy” contains several clear binary oppositions – primarily: white/black, lighted/shaded and saved/unsaved. The speaker identifies the tension between all three of these issues in the opening quatrain (“I am black, but O! my soul is white; / White as an angel is the English child, / But I am black, as if bereav’d of light) (2-4). Light is clearly a privileged term as it is tied to God (“Look on the rising sun: there God does live / and gives his light”) while shade and black are clearly non-privileged (“these black bodies and this sunburnt face / is but a cloud, and like a shady grove. / For when our souls have learn’d the heat to bear, / The cloud will vanish”) (9-10, 15-18). Only pure souls that have learned God’s love will be saved, since only after “our souls have learn’d the heat to bear” will “the cloud . . . vanish” so that “we shall hear [God’s] voice” inviting us to “rejoice” (17, 18, 20). The text seems to be promoting an ideology revolving around the concept that one must “learn to bear the beams of love” so that “our souls” can “come out from the grove” (which is shaded) and join God “round [His] golden tent like lambs rejoice” (14, 17, 19, 20); only white, lighted souls will be saved.

However, the text undermines itself in multiple ways. The speaker is taught the poem’s ideological concept by his presumably black “mother” “underneath” the implied shade of “a tree” (tree’s make up “shady grove[s]” – so the truth about the soul needing to be freed from shade is learned while under shade, and the issue of colour is addressed by a speaker of colour (5, 16). Furthermore, shade as a non-privileged term is undermined by the fact it is needed to “shade [the little English boy] from the heat, till he can bear / to lean in joy upon our father’s knee” – so in essence, both blackness and shade are necessary to save anyone (25-26) The poem cannot seem to decide that white is superior to black, as at first only black is implicated as “bereav’d of light” but later on the “white as an angel” “ little English boy” is also trapped by a “white cloud” (clouds cast shade in the poemand being black “is but a cloud” in the mother’s words) from which he must become “free” (3, 4, 16, 22, 23).

The text/speaker also seems utterly ambivalent to being saved. The final lines state that after the eponymous little black boy saves the “little English boy” that he will “stand and stroke [the boy’s] hair, / and be like him, and he will then love me” – showing the “little black boy” really simply wishes to “be like” the “white as an angel . . . English child” rather than be saved (3, 22, 26, 27). The text’s own ambivalence and contradictions pull apart its proposed ideology.

The collapsed ideology creates new implications – black and white are equal, being saved is not the ultimate goal (in the speaker’s mind) and while light seems superior, shade is a required and necessary precursor to light. The text therefore forefronts issues such as race and whether or not white is superior to black in a time period where this was a major question (in 1789) - Parliament began holding meetings regarding slavery during this time. “The Little Black Boy”’s initial overt ideological projection collapses in on itself and creates both ambivalence in the case of being saved or light and shade and support for equality (or even superiority) of black instead of white (the black boy is needed to “shade [the white boy] from the heat, till he can bear / to lean in joy upon our father’s knee” – implying the black boy is vital to saving the white boy rather than vice versa) (25-26).

Anna (April): Fantastic! Do you thinking in the structuralists and post-structuralists more explicitly might also add something useful here (giving that deconstruction is a post-structuralist concept)?