|
Perhaps this is why some poets lack academic speak, but perhaps should be glad to know what not to write like.
This is the epitome of academic speak dlw might now'n ever ifn' get. Please excuse the extreamin' leftist elbow screw bent diction 'n verse. The Kids are all alright.
For FTC
The contrasts between structuralism and post-structuralism are oddly always open to debate by their own definitions of interpretation. No genuine answer or absolute truth can be considered fact in terms of given situations distinguished apart from, or connected to, exclusive and ultimate understructures of an argument. Such pursuits of knowledge –to understand exact meanings from textual interpretation – combine intricate methods with individual perspective and, in doing so, appears to nullify the possibility of shared agreement. Structuralism sought to organize and identify the focus of its subjects (e.g. society, language, literature) according to the precise parts that manipulate, add to, or disqualify a knowledge constructed theory, whereas post-structuralism questioned the questions themselves and declared any singular web of analysis as uncertain, biased, even ambiguously immaterial to reality. In light of such debate, words become subsumed interdependent parts and thus reduced to conditional identity mechanisms by Jacques Derrida’s post-structuralist notion of the surrogate – referential loops of semiotic meaning trapped in repetitive and incessantly reorganized definitions, i.e. words should be recognized in relation to their accompanied words rather than narrowed by independent definition. To take on a complete meaning from a text is impractical; instead, readers must settle for approximate linkages created from socially relevant engagement with the text.
In comparing structuralism to post-structuralism, a surface value of artificial or authentic meaning demands attention to the contextual references of the expressed symbols. Each theory, of course, depends on variable systems of language (e.g. Engligh, Spanish, French, etc.) to relate their ideas as it is language that theory must use to process, combine with, and interpret such communal operations. Language, and the independent criticism that naturally follows, must converge into understandable and relevant methods of conversation or risk what Michael Foucault labels the useless and “disqualified knowledges” of the psychotic (30). Accused of a scrutiny of detail at the expense of cataloging irrelevant information, Structuralism seeks to identify and catalog the particulars of a text’s source, which in turn becomes part of an exterior meaning of the subject. It is through this exterior lens of perceptual attention that we begin to see Derrida’s surrogate make its formless claims.
Born from a desire to recognize coherent layers present in any literary work, the goal of the structuralist is to indentify similarities and differences of a text and to compare findings to the text aside the literary cannon and beyond. For instance, Peter Barry writes, “instead of going straight to the content…the structuralist presents a series of parallels, echoes, reflections, contrasts, [and] patterns” which search for connections to “plot, structure, character, motive, situation, circumstance” in an effort to minimize ambiguities of content and in favor of a “highly schematized verbal diagram” (51). In seeking to list binary oppositions of cultural and historical connections, and to identify organizational conventions in relation to other texts, structuralists attempt to make a science of textual analysis that can examine the perspectives of the larger core structure that created it. For example, according to structuralism, criticism of Kurt Vonnegut’s novel Slaughterhouse-Five should be considered analogous to the actual bombing of Dresden – regardless of the writer’s fictionalization of the historical occurrence. The method structuralism undertakes categorizes relatable traits both within and outside of the text being in order to present evidence and provide weight for its argument.
Post-structuralism, in contrast, theorizes a total absence of foundational aspect from anything that can be, or attempts to be, named by language; that no center of agreement can be reached due to the multitude of references, abstractions, or claims of a decisive truth. A knowledge base that claims to wield expertise – a local university’s collection of dissertations, for instance – becomes relevant only during the act of language engagement and, due to its temporary status as the established authority, risks being replaced by updated information or a general disinterest. Information then, over time, becomes passed over by a naturally occurring change of attention, focus, or community relevancy. Few dissertations withstand the test of time not because they are irrelevant to knowledge, which itself may be the case, but because they are simply not used to produce further scholarship.
Post-structuralism denies structuralism because it cannot address the biases and misinterpretations of the myriad contributions to such literary theory. To communicate in everyday language, freed from the confines of a text, risks an alienation from coherency and what Barry calls a “linguistic skepticism” (62). Should a speaker turn phobic of being misunderstood, it is post-structuralism that accounts for such fears by paradoxically labeling it as a common, yet arbitrarily located, dilemma. Changes to language constantly readjust conceptions of actual reality and, as Barry claims, “post-structuralism develops what threaten to become terminal anxieties about the possibility of achieving any knowledge through language. The verbal sign…is constantly floating free of the concept it is supposed to designate” (62). Words, and the theory they communicate, become incapable of agreement because what they signify cannot be accurately translated into a non-inquisitive and wholly empirical reality. To the post-structuralist, words and their flexible and ever-changing definitions are the reason no system of interpretation can be deemed the authority. As Foucault reminds us: “the attempt to think in terms of a totality has in fact proved a hindrance to research,” and therefore must develop conditional and transformative processes that do not limit accesses to knowledge (129). Derrida’s notion of the surrogate identifies words, verbal messages, and even knowledge itself, as double bind signifiers that are manipulated through language use (even at its most simplistic level) and then randomly broadened to entail further complex systems of usage that nullifies any original sense of meaning. In a few words: there is no alpha.
By again using Slaughterhouse-Five, Vonnegut’s protagonist, Billy Pilgrim, is forced to recognize himself as a surrogate human being when encased in the sealed glass bubble of observation on the planet Tralfamadore. Introduced to a Tralfamadorian book, Billy learns that a text has “no beginning, no middle, no end, no suspense, no moral, no cause, no effect” and, it would appear, no agenda to persuade through its use of language (Vonnegut 112). On this fictional planet, as in post-structuralism, symbols communicate instant and randomly ordered scenes which produce the effect of a non-linear sensation of experience. Conversely, back on earth, and thrust into a prison camp, “Billy Pilgrim’s name,” the signification of his body, “was inscribed into the ledger…he was given a number, too, and an iron dog tag in which that number was stamped” (Vonnegut 116). Billy’s dog tag takes the surrogate meaning of his identity and, regardless of its representation, presents an inaccurate and even inhuman relationship between his name, the dog tag which signifies the message of “Billy,” and the sentient person seeking to reach a self coherent meaning from an existence suddenly entrenched in the chaos of war.
Although manifestations of personal experiences vary considerably, readers must always remain cautious of the meanings that they choose to relate with words. Jonathan Culler approaches a text by confronting the interpretive processes that semiotic readings entail. His interests are concerned with the gestures that a critical reading makes use of, the methods readers engages in, and, through these “acts of interpretation,” the manners applied in order to form meaning (98). The signifier may not reach meaning if there is no reliable connection between the sign and its receiver. That is to say, what a written word suggests by the writer may not be so easily recognized by the person reading the symbol, even though both share a chosen language. Culler points out the difficulty of exact meaning due to miscellaneous structural intentions whereby “each individual literary work involves the futile attempt to impose a particular standard and a single goal upon the activity of reading” (99). The creation of what Culler calls a “methodological clarity” seeks to introduce viable interpretations as the most relevant objective to literary criticism, and produce accessible, interactive, and more easily understood content (99).
Due to shifting interpretations of literary works, there remains a disconnect between the methods criticism makes use of and any singular understanding of the chosen text. The notion that individuals are able to understand and agree upon every literary ambiguity is impossible; however, recognizing this as an inherent flaw related to interpretive competency, Culler offers “a theory of reading [by which] its object would not be literary works themselves but their intelligibility: the ways in which they make sense [and] the ways in which readers have made sense of them” (100). In seeking to expose the singular and normative approaches to criticism as contradictory to effective discourse, Culler calls for more fluid methods in order to bring about clearly defined, and thus positive, responses to literature.
While post-structuralism may not solve such problems, it does address the lack of a structuralist attention to what Derrida terms the freeplay between word meaning and the word signal itself. In writing that a “concept of centered structure is in fact the concept of a freeplay based on a fundamental ground, a freeplay which is constituted upon a fundamental immobility and a reassuring certitude,” Derrida points out that even a centralized or universal method of analysis must concede to alternate and widely varied meanings of words in which, however temporary, the base structure is soon recycled through this freeplay and hence itself redefined according to communal need(116). In doing so, the theory that a single, agreeable consensus of functional interpretation can be reached begins to emerge as an impossibility and therefore leaves readers, the receivers of a given information, at the service of a writer’s ability to transpose open source variables rather than a text of final and definite significance.
Information begins to take on contingent, even unsupportive constructs of meaning through different levels of knowledge interrogation. Yury Lotman’s contribution holds that functions of a text must first be distinguished as non-literary or literary so that readers can interpret meaning in accordance with their own cultural awareness. A non-literary text, Lotman argues, creates a straight forward and singular code for interpretation whereas literature carries ambiguous and multifaceted codifications which signify a creative exposition based upon “a recipient’s knowledge of [such] double coding” (103). The ability to recognize the aesthetic positioning a literary work attempts to express remains vital to artistic meaning as criticism rests on a both writer and reader cultural awareness of the textual codes implied.
To say that expression alone constitutes any artistic relevance would be contrary to the purpose of non-literary meaning. Instead, according to Lotman, literature functions through the realization of “a whole hierarchy of supplemental codes” within a culture’s “natural language” and, in doing so, is often pejoratively complicated by any insistence for aesthetic meaning to be accurate (103). It is here that we can begin to see problems with the structuralist use of binary oppositions due to the unworkable task of considering all words, and thus individual and conjunctive meaning, as explained by alternate definitions. Lotman later contends that “culture, being only a part of human existence, needs the dynamic process of correlation with the sphere of non-culture exterior to it ― the non-sign, non-text, non-semiotic life of man,” and thus points to extremes in interpretation that can only serve dualistic and uncertain comparisons (105). Such claims lead to Derrida’s denial of a centralized structure base of knowledge. While non-literary texts serve a functional purpose of instructing the reader, it is vital that these significations not be considered as opposing cultural forces to literary texts; to do so conceals the actual role that words, language, and semiotics play in everyday life.
It is through an aware interaction with Derrida’s surrogate that words condition the human senses to adopt and agree upon the language system that surrounds a receiver. Morse Peckham argues that word meanings must be first defined by the community that uses its language. The local authority of a region creates laws and social mores for its subjects to recognize through the vehicle of language, and therefore reaches an agreement, in theory, on a correct and acceptable behavior for the group. Without language, and words to specify laws, the communication breakdown that would proceed endangers the functionality of communal living. In the same manner, the community is burdened to translate and make use of the local authority’s written laws. As Peckham points out, “one cannot stop with words, or verbal behavior, because verbal behavior always takes place in some kind of situational context, and that context obviously plays a part in the act of interpretation” (106). Should citizens fail to understand the semiotic quirks and demands of a parking meter, for instance, the local law seeks to correct such behavior by exerting its accepted authority through fine or punishment.
It is the law, ultimately, that Derrida questions as it is language that defines notions of law. According to structuralism, the law and its structural center could be interpreted through the identification of the various opposing parts and systems that exerted force over a community. Post-structuralism, with Derrida’s influence, helped identify the awareness that authority could not be classified or localized by the language it used to exhibit its control. Derrida writes that, after structuralism:
…everything became discourse – provided we can agree on the word– that is to say, when everything became a system where the central signified, the original or transcendental signified, is never absolutely present outside a system of difference. The absence of the transcendental signified extends the domain and the interplay of signification ad infinitum (116).
Here Derrida alludes to his theory of Différance which claims that words cannot be fully recognized by their intended meaning because they are always reliant on supplementary words for definition. His notion that word meanings are constantly redistributed by the act of discourse shows the function of the surrogate in that a single word is always surrounded by a cloud of contextual freeplay. That is to say, there can be no central foundation or overriding structure, according to Derrida and post-structuralists, because language cannot be withheld from “the interplay of signification,” nor the subsequent interpretations to follow (116). Foucault reinforces this concept by saying that “power is neither given, nor exchanged, nor recovered, but rather exercised [as a] relation of force” (133). This view imagines words and symbols as dependent upon, contradictorily, an agreement of disagreement, and hence possessing the ability to be perceived according to a diversified use, and not by the power structure that defines itself, though words, as the authority.
The separations between structuralism and post-structuralism are complicated not by their distinctions but instead by the natural progression to compensate for the previous generation and its outmoded ideas. Structuralism, without first constructing its foundations, could not be later denied and further realized by post-structuralist thinkers. In addition, the large role that modern warfare brought to philosophy –Billy Pilgrim’s dilemma of unreasonable and arbitrary violence– helped recreate the need for a theory not limited by the binary coldness of duality. A product of the inevitable misinterpretation of the semiotic codes of language, Derrida’s notion of the surrogate, rather than presenting structural definition which separate words, introduces systems of spontaneous and reciprocal interaction within the imagination, the very mind of community. The freeplay that Derrida and post-structuralism theory calls to action suggests that the human mind be able to conceive words as a means, however bleak, to a more realistic and true existence.
work cited available by request
|
