Critic speak is tough, but we've got you covered.
Quote :"Structure, Sign, and Play in the Discourse of the Human Sciences"
Structure—or rather the structurality of structure—although it has always been involved, has always been neutralized or reduced, and this is by giving it a center or referring it to a point of presence, a fixed origin. The function of this center was not only to orient, balance, and organize the structure—but above all to make sure that the organizing principle of the structure would limit what we might call the free-play of the structure.
Whoa, right?
So here Derrida is giving cred to his homies who have been saying for a lot of years now that language is basically like a giant chess game—you know, limited number of moves, infinite number of combinations and all that jazz. He gets it. But he secretly things they don't really get it. When it comes right down to it, all that noise about structures and systems is still implying that there's an end to the structure somewhere—some way to get out of the game.
And yeah, that's maybe comforting or something, but it's time to cut the crap. When you pretend that the structure has an endpoint somewhere, these folks are just fooling themselves. If we really wanna see what these ideas can do, we gotta let go of the apron strings.
With these words, Derrida launched his famous critique of structuralism. He pointed out that big-wig structuralists like Saussure and Lévi-Strauss were being self-contradictory when they described how human lives are structured by systems of meaning. No matter how much credit they gave to the systems, they always held onto some small kernel of "real truth"—the thing that Derrida would later call the transcendental signified. In a voice dripping with disdain.
Quote :Of Grammatology
The writer writes in a language and in a logic whose proper system, laws, and life his discourse by definition cannot dominate absolutely. He uses them only by letting himself, after a fashion and up to a point, be governed by the system. And the reading must always aim at a certain relationship, unperceived by the writer, between what he commands and what he does not command of the patterns of the language he uses.
There goes Derrida again, writing about writing. Here's he's basically saying that when a writer writes, he (or she) isn't just putting words on a page. Those words belong to a system that's been around a lot longer than the writer has, and on top of that—if we're gonna be really serious about this—that system has shaped that writer. Growing up in a language is like growing up in any other culture: it defines how you see the world.
So let's agree that when writers write, they're using a system they don't fully control. How could they? And our job, as readers, is to find the places where control breaks down. The places where the system, not the writer,is the one doing the writing.
Why's It Matter? Come now. This is deconstruction's quintessential method. If there's one thing Derrida loves, it's to point it out when writers have NO idea what's going on. But keep in mind, Derrida's not just doing this to be a jerk (well, maybe a little). The "system" he's talking about isn't just language: it's all of Western culture. And Western culture, according to him, is oppressive.
By pointing out the places where the system takes over, Derrida is waging a rebel resistance. He doesn't think we can escape the system, but he thinks it's possible to change it from within. How? By taking it apart (de-constructing it) over and over again.