02 Tuesday Jan 25

Christine Grilliot Wiki Notes 1/25/11 This class began with a discussion about how the same words in the English language can be interpreted differently if it is not punctuated. An example of this is “Slow Down Your Neighbors,” could be interpreted as literally stopping your neighbors from moving. If a semicolon is placed between “slow down” and “your neighbors” then it could be interpreted that you should slow down because your neighbors are watching. This is called differance; when writing does not correspond clearly into spoken form. The word “differ” itself is an example of this as it could mean either “to postpone” or “to be different from.” The reader needs the author to be clear in explaining their meaning so that difference does not occur and cause confusion. The term differance originated from Jacques Derrida. He said, “Languages are made to be spoken; writing serves only as a supplement to speech.” He is a post-structuralist that believed that language was not relational. As an example of this, we discussed binary oppositions such as fast/slow, up/down, God/man and light/dark. In general, structuralists would pick the left word in each grouping as more important between the two. Derrida said that if language was relational then hierarchy would be important and God would be of central importance. He argued that this is a problem and consequently the way words are related is completely arbitrary. The three key terms of deconstruction are transcendental Signified, logocentrism and phonocentrism. Roland Barthes said, “a text is made up of multiple writings, drawn from many cultures and entering into mutual relations of dialogue, parody, contestation, but there is one place where this multiplicity is focused and that place is the reader.” Barthes explains that traditionally all people have needed to understand a book is to know what the author meant. He does not agree with this and believes that one should look at the just words on the page and divorce them from the author so that the reader can interact however they want. That is what he means by the quote above: that a book can carry of different meaning for different readers. In summary, the difference between structuralists and post-structuralists is like the difference between scientifically approaching a novel like in Linguistics or more abstractly like Philosophy. Structuralists look for parallels, are concerned with coherence, have rules or a scientific explanation for language, have definite answers and use binary opposites. Post-structuralists are more playful and emotive in their tone, are skeptical and look for contradictions, looks for gaps and slips or inconsistencies and always challenge binaries and the rules that structuralists use. Structuralism is less complicated than post-structuralism. Finally, we discussed the poems “Lord Randall” and “His Coy Mistress” by looking at the surface plot or story that structuralists would look at. Then we used binary opposites to find deeper meaning under the surface of the poem that the author may not have done intentionally, which is the way a post-structuralists would approach analyzing a text.

Laila Almahdali January 25, 2011: Topic (Power Point): Post Structuralism and Deconstruction (or Derrida for Beginners) Today we started class with the phrase “SLOW DOWN YOUR NEIGHBORS” from the popular show Modern Family. We discussed, first, that this phrase can have two meanings to it depending on punctuation. We then talked about how a structuralist would approach the analysis of this phrase using binaries. Which a structuralsit would then follow by choosing between the two set of binaries, forming a hierarchy of sorts between the two sets. For Derrida (a deconstrutionalist) this method is a problem. Derrida believes that there should not be any fix point or center. In class we related structuralism to a dictionary, something with a fixed meaning. While de-structuralism or post structuralism was related to a thesaurus; where we keep on getting and getting more words. We then went on to discuss some key terms which included: transcendental signified, longcentrism, phonocentrism, Supplement, and Difference. Three of these terms are ones the Derrida, himself, has a issues with. These being transcendental signified, logocentrism and phoncentris. The meanings for these words, respectively, are an external point of reference, the ultimate reality or truth, and the idea of “writing being a mere imitation of speech.” The reason for Derrida disliking the first two are obvious, the idea of reference points giving a higher meaning to the words in the literature instead of just being. The rest of the terms (supplement and difference) Derrida coined himself to better explain himself. Supplement (addition or substitution) is the where there is no center to refer to, but not because of lack for a center but because there are too many reference points. The next term, difference, came from the word “differer” and was coined to show that there is no difference between writing and speech. To Derrida the idea of continuously referencing another word will just keep on going with a system of signification. We then talked about Roland Barthes and and his opinion of the “Author”, Bathers pointed out how the author was creating fixed points that the audience had to follow. Bathers believed that the readers should be the ones who create the meaning to the story. We then went on to compare structuralism and poststructuralism methods and views. Please check out the power point of the table comparing structuralsim and poststructuralsim. This chart compares the origins, tone and style, attitude to language, goals, and practice. We practices with the poems from 100 best loved poems, Lord Randal and To His Coy Mistress. For Loard Randal we started by making a list of repeated words in the poem and attempted to analysis the meaning of the repeated words. For example, “my son” is repeated many times throughout the poem which obviously shows a personal, endearing re relationship. Another one is “make my bed” which has the obvious meaning of the son being tired but in the context of the poem it could also have a sexual connotation or even one of death. For To His Coy Mistress we got as far as discussion how the speaker is trying to convince his beloved to sleep with him. In the poem he has three parts, each part a different point arguing why they should sleep together. The first expressing how beautiful the action would be, the second one noting that this do wither way and change therefore (the third part) we should take advantage of today. The third part expresses how they should make use of today. It was also noted that the poem is an iambic pentameter.