(response essay -- poststructuralism)

Central to structuralist thought is the notion of a system with an underlying structure responsible for its workings. Theoretically, the structure keeps the system intact and running. As a system, an educational institution, for example, functions by a set of rules. The members of the institution must comply with specified rules; their actions are consequently limited by these rules. The rules that regulate a system turn out a set of possible phenomena. To contain potential phenomena, the underlying structure of a system conceptually creates an area, which resembles that limited by the parameter of a circle. Whatever constitutes the system’s underlying structure sits in the center of that circle, playing hub. Such a representation of a system presupposes the center (the underlying structure) to be fixed and stable. The center needs to be, in order to allow for and control activities in the area surrounding it. The key to structuralist thought is this presupposition. As long as the conjecture of a stable center is maintained, the structuralist is at ease.

When Derrida in “Structure, Sign and Play” questions the assumed stability of the center of the structuralist’s circle, he inevitably challenges the validity of the structuralist’s idea of a system. What really keeps the center in place – the substance the center contains or the system’s consensus? The field of physics is an instance of the structuralist’s model of a system. The center of the system is in this case fixed, since the center must necessarily derive from realistic, observable facts. Studies and hypotheses in the system are based on the theory of physics, which is formulated on account of natural occurrences. In the case of human sciences, the ‘center’ is more conceptual. One may assume poetics to be the underlying structure of the study (or system) of Literature, but poetics is a theoretical construct. Its subsistence is not as irrefutable as that of natural occurrences. For its continuation, poetics rely on the consent of those involved in the study of Literature. Should questions on its authority arise, the center is at risk of being dislodged – if not without difficulty. If the center’s authority relies on the system’s consensus, an instance of dissent can prove damaging. According to Derrida, the center of any system always ‘escapes structurality’. In any system of religious belief, the idea of God constitutes the center. The idea of God is a part of the system in that it regulates the system, yet to maintain its central position (its authority), it cannot be regulated by the system. The center of the system is at once inside and outside the system, like the authority in a capitalist system of society.

The recognition of the paradox provokes the ‘rupture’ that Derrida speaks of in the beginning of the essay. The paradox itself can be recognized only when the underlying structure of a system is challenged. If students of an educational institution never challenge the institution’s policies, they either believe that the rules serve a creditable purpose or they know that cases of disagreement result in distasteful consequences. Either way, it’s compliance. The instance of ‘decentering’ happens when dissent occurs within a system. An act of dissent should naturally follow the recognition of a system as a construct. To perform an act of dissent is to therefore de-construct a system. If the center of a system has been recognized as arbitrary, an instance of deconstruction is not likely to entail reconstruction of the center. In the absence of policies (embodied by the center of the system), dissent ceases to be dissent. An instance of decentering produces, therefore, a liberated arena where multiplicity of perspectives is possible.
As Foucault portrays it, the link between narrative (before poststructuralism) and capitalist ideology is the assumption of a central authority. To place an author’s intention at the center of his writing is to comply with the theory that a text contains an essential truth that only the author is privy to. This of course contrasts with the poststructuralist policy of ‘differance’: if there is such a thing as an essential truth within a text, it cannot possibly turn out interpretations other than those that allegedly support the author’s policies.

Analogous to the capitalist society, the text – viewed in this manner – becomes a closed, totalitarian system. The metaphorical death of the author approximates an act of dissent in a capitalist system, where an authoritarian power is recognized as a construct and challenged. Orwell’s pigs don’t have a place in the new system.
Meanwhile, the image of the negative and the figure of the castrato from “Sarrasine” in “The Death of the Author” assist in pointing up the quality of ‘differance’ that poststructuralism believes is latent in every text.

To clarify the analogy of the negative, it helps to return to semiotics. Writing, like an object (as opposed to a ‘sign’), is essentially neutral. The process of sign-making happens when neutral objects are associated with familiar systems of conventions: the object is supplied with connotations, therefore converted into a sign. A parallel process happens with writing: in the reading process, the reader rewrites the writing. The reader introduces her beliefs into the writing, so that what comes out of the process of reading is a text already imbued with intentions. Each interpretation of ‘neutral writing’ (interpretations convert writing into ‘text’) acquires its significance on account of its difference from other interpretations. The ‘negative’ has the latent potential to turn out various interpretations, but in itself, the negative is neutral.
The figure of the castrato from Balzac’s “Sarrasine” helps to illustrate disunity of the text. In the story, at the point where La Zambinella speaks (her) sentence: “It was Woman, with her sudden fears, her irrational whims, her instinctive fears, her unprovoked bravado, her daring and her delicious delicacy of feeling…”, there is no indication whatsoever that Zambinella is, in fact, not a woman. Following Sarrasine’s discovery of Zambinella’s identity, the sentence acquires rather cynical connotation. Crucially, the connotation is deferred up to the point where Zambinella’s identity is exposed. If spoken by a woman, the sentence is hardly unusual. The context in which the sentence is spoken decides its connotation. In the same way, connotational meanings of a text (subtexts) depend on the context in which the text is read. It is clear then, that the text cannot be a closed unit: the text is always read in the present (although in different temporal contexts), and it therefore has to always allow space for ‘deferred subtexts’.

In a structural textual analysis, the play of semiotics is significant because the idea of an underlying structure is really what makes semiotics possible in the first place. The conversion of an object into a sign involves an individual’s investment of her socio-cultural experience onto the object. The structuralist engages in the process of analysis and anticipates certain images in a text to be perceived as signs because she trusts in certain collective cultural conventions, which act as an underlying structure in a system where the text and the readers are brought together. When there is an assumption of an underlying structure, there is already a perimeter of possible readings. The text is a united whole that contains these readings.

The poststructuralist, on the other hand, distrusts the theory of an underlying structure. Conventions cannot be underlying structures because their mutability has been recognized. For the poststructuralist, the text is also an arena that contains multiple readings, but it is not a united whole because there are always possibilities of deferred subtexts. The poststructuralist textual analysis will, therefore, seek to show textual disunity.

Here is Kolatkar’s “Chaitanya”:

sweet as grapes
are the stones of jejuri
said chaitanya

he popped a stone
in his mouth
and spat out gods

The structuralist interpretation of the poem will read: “The stones in Jejuri possess connotation of holiness owing to conventions – as outlined, for example, in the Shilpasastras - and perception. Chaitanya, predictably conversant in the conventions, imply that, as the stones acquire the connotation of holiness, they can be given the qualities of a grape. Consequently, the grape seeds will quite effortlessly acquire godlike quality. The poem illustrates a little too clearly how conventions shape individual perception and how, conversely, collective perceptions grant conventions authority.

The question that the poem asks is: if it is impossible to believe that stones are grapes and grape seeds are gods, why is it possible to believe that stones are gods? One must cling stubbornly to one’s copy of the sastras and insist that while the later statement is inscribed in it, the former is not. But one must, finally concede to the fact that it is one’s willingness to believe (one’s faith, in other words) that validates statements in the sastras. For that reason, if the transformations that the poem proposes appear preposterous (how must a man spit out gods?), the poem has then succeeded in destabilizing the notion of absolute authority assigned to conventions.

The poststructuralist, on the other hand, will concentrate on the crucial paradox the poem carries – that in the process of undermining the authority of conventions, the poem must acknowledge that very authority. It is the old atheist’s argument – that in order to challenge the existence of God, one must necessarily concede to it. Beginning with this argument, it is impossible to point at any ‘essence’ in “Chaitanya”: it is neither the non-existence of conventional authority nor the existence of it. The poem must incorporate both notions in order to make sense. In the hunt for essence, one finds only a state of aporia, where conflicting notions lead to an impasse. In accentuating textual disunity, a deconstructionist reading of a text seeks to point out the nonexistence of textual essence.


Works Cited:

Barthes, Roland. “The Death of the Author.” Modern Criticism and Theory: A Reader. Ed. David Lodge. London: Longman, 1988. 146-150.

Derrida, Jacques. “Structure, Sign and Play in the Discourse of the Human Sciences.” Modern Criticism and Theory: A Reader. Ed. David Lodge. London: Longman, 1988. 89-103.

Kolatkar, Arun. “Chaitanya.” The Oxford India Anthology of Twelve Modern Indian Poets. Ed. Arvind Krishna Mehrotra. New Delhi: OUP, 1992. 66.