PAUL DE MAN AND RHETORIC
Paul de Man- a deconstructive literary critic.
De Man argued that there was no referential language because all signifiers referred not to a reality ‘out there’ but to other signifiers.
All language is, figurative because it refers to more and more words rather than reality.
The linguistic sign is a site of conflict, and instability.
J. HILLIS MILLER'S DECONSTRUCTION
A colleague of Hartman at Yale, and one of the central figures in American
deconstruction, Hillis Miller did readings of Victorian fiction.
Miller's first major deconstructive essay, ‘The Critic as Host’ (a response
to M. H. Abrams’ ‘The Deconstructive Angel’, in which Abrams attacked the
deconstructive strategy of leaving a text undecidable) remains his best, and
best-known, writing on the subject.
BINARIES, REVERSALS AND DECONSTRUCTIVE READING
Deconstruction is interested in the hierarchic binaries set up within texts.
These could be: man/woman, speech/writing, white/black, inside/outside, full/empty, identity/difference, light/dark, presence/absence,
similarity/difference.
In each of these binaries, one term is privileged over the other. A deconstructive reading would show how, even when a text appears
to privilege one term over the other
dominant term.
By showing this centrality deconstruction reverses the
hierarchy, for if the inside can exist only if there is an outside it means that
the outside is the dominant element.
In its next stage, deconstruction
destabilizes this reversed hierarchy too. It questions the new hierarchy and
thus leaves even the displaced one unstable. Thus, the text remains unresolvable where neither term is privileged, and where both terms are
privileged—a situation termed ‘aporia’.
Let's summarize. In a typical deconstructive reading of texts
i. A text proposes a literal meaning and a hierarchy.
ii. The deconstructive reading reveals a figural meaning and reverses the hierarchy.
iii. It then displaces even the reversed hierarchy, leaving the text open.
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