Binary Opposition

Binary opposition
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In critical theory, a binary opposition (also binary system) is a pair of related terms or concepts that are opposite in meaning. Binary opposition is the system by which, in language and thought, two theoretical opposites are strictly defined and set off against one another.[1] It is the contrast between two mutually exclusive terms, such as on and off, up and down, left and right.[2] Binary opposition is an important concept of structuralism, which sees such distinctions as fundamental to all language and thought [3] In structuralism, a binary opposition is seen as a fundamental organizer of human philosophy, culture, and language. In the community of philosophers and scholars, most believe that, as Derrida put it, "unless a distinction can be made rigorous and precise it isn't really a distinction."[4] Binary opposition originated in Saussurean structuralist theory.[5] According to Ferdinand de Saussure, the binary opposition is the means by which the units of language have value or meaning; each unit is defined against what it is not.[6] Saussure demonstrated that a sign's meaning is derived from its context (syntagmatic dimension) and the group (paradigm) to which it belongs.[7] An example of this is that one cannot conceive of 'good' if we do not understand 'evil'.[8] In post-structuralism, it is seen as one of several influential characteristics or tendencies of Western and Western-derived thought,[citation needed] and that typically, one of the two opposites assumes a role of dominance over the other. The categorization of binary oppositions is "often value-laden and ethnocentric", with an illusory order and superficial meaning.[9]
Contents
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1 Theory of binaries in Western thought 2 Deconstruction of Western binaries 3 See also 4 Notes 5 References
[edit] Theory of binaries in Western thought

A classic example of a binary opposition is the presence-absence dichotomy. In much of Western thought, including structuralism, distinguishing between presence and absence, viewed as polar opposites, is a fundamental element of thought in many cultures. In addition, according to post-structuralist criticisms, presence occupies a position of dominance in Western thought over absence, because absence is traditionally seen as what you get when you take away presence. (Had absence been dominant, presence might have
most naturally been seen as what you get when you take away an absence.) It has been maintained that the human brain has a preference for binary oppositions, if this is so it will help explain the numerous pairs of related antonyms that are found such as hot and cold, right and wrong and good and bad[10] Essentially the concept of the binary opposition is prompted by the Western tendency to organise everything into a hierarchal structure; terms and concepts are related to positives and negatives with no apparent leeway for deviation for example man and woman, black and white.[11] Therefore many binary oppositions are organised in a hierarchy.[12] According to Jacques Derrida, meaning in the West is defined in terms of binary oppositions, a violent hierarchy where one of the two terms governs the other. Within the white/ black binary opposition in the West, the African American is defined as a devalued other.[13] Therefore binary oppositions are often organised in a hierarchy. The concept of binary oppositions is also evident in biblical thought and ideology. An explanatory combination of biblical versus in the scrolls turn a term of divine compassion into a measure of binary opposition- innocence versus guilt[14] A more concrete example of a binary opposition is the male-female dichotomy. Some western thinkers, including structuralists, believe that the world is organized according to male and female constructs, roles, words, and ideas. A post-structuralist view is that male can be seen, according to traditional Western thought, as dominant over female because male is the presence of a phallus, while the vagina is an absence or loss. (Alternatively, Western thought could have viewed female as a presence, and male, subordinately, as the absence, or loss, of an invagination or theoretical "hole" of some kind.) The correspondence between each of the dominant Western concepts such as presence and male, as well as others such as rational (vs. emotional), mind (vs. body), thoughts and speech (vs. writings) are claimed to show a tendency of Western thought called logocentrism or phallogocentrism.[15][page needed] John Searle has suggested that the concept of binary oppositionsas taught and practiced by postmodernists and poststructuralistis specious and lacking in rigor.[16]
[edit] Deconstruction of Western binaries

The critique of binary oppositions is an important part of third wave feminism, postcolonialism, post-anarchism, and critical race theory, which argue that the perceived binary dichotomy between man/woman, civilized/savage, and caucasian/non-caucasian have perpetuated and legitimized Western power structures favoring "civilized" white men.In the last fifteen years it has become almost routine for any good social and or historical analysis to address the variables of gender, class, sexuality race and ethnicity.[17] Within each of these categories there is usually an unequal binary opposition: bourgeoisie/ working class man; white/people of colour; men/women; heterosexual/homosexual[18] Post-structural criticism of binary oppositions is not simply the reversal of the opposition, but its deconstruction, which is described as apoliticalthat is, not intrinsically favoring one arm of a binary opposition over the other. Deconstruction is the "event" or "moment" at which a binary opposition is thought to contradict itself, and undermine its own authority.
[19]
[edit] See also
Dichotomy
[edit] Notes
1. ^ Smith, G 1996, 'Binary opposition and sexual power in Paradise Lost', The Midwest Quarterly, vol.27, no.4, p. 383, (online Infotrac). 2. ^ Baldick, C 2004. The concise Oxford Dictionary of literary terms, viewed 8 March 2011, http://www.highbeam.com/doc/1056-binaryopposition.html 3. ^ Baldick, C 2004, The concise Oxford Dictionary of literary terms, viewed 8 March 2011, http://www.highbeam.com/doc/1056-binaryopposition.html 4. ^ Jacques Derrida (1991) Afterword: Toward An Ethic of Discussion, published in the English translation of Limited Inc., pp.123-4, 126 5. ^ Fogarty, S 2005, The literary encyclopedia, viewed 6 March 2011, http://www.litencyc.com/php/stopics.php?pec=true&UID=122 6. ^ Fogarty, S 2005Fogerty, S 2005, The literacy enclyclopedia, viewed 6 March 2011, http://www.litencyc.com/php/stopics.php?pec=true&UID=122 7. ^ Lacey, N 2000, Narrative and Genre, p.64, Palgrave, New York. 8. ^ Lacey, N 2000, Narrative and Genre, p. 65, Palgrave, New York 9. ^ Goody 1977, p. 36 10.^ Britannica 2011, Binary opposition, viewed 9 March 2011, http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/65552/binary-opposition 11.^ Fogarty, S 2005, Binary opposition, viewed 8 March 2011, http://www.litencyc.com/php/stopics.php?pec=true&UID=122 12.^ Hanson, K 2008, 'The dead sea scrolls and the languageof binary opposition: a structuralist/ post structuralist approach', The Australian Journal of Jewish Studies, vol. 22, p. 26, (online Infotrac). 13.^ Hogue, W 2008, 'Radical democracy, African American subjectivity and John Edgar Wideman's Philadelphia Fire', Melus, vol.33, no. 3, p. 48, (online Infotrac). 14.^ Hanson, K 2008, 'The dead sea scrolls and the language of binary opposition: a structuralist/ post structuralist approach', The Australian Journal of Jewish Studies, vol. 22, p. 26, (online Infotrac). 15.^ See the work of Jacques Derrida 16.^ In 1983, American philosopher John Searle reviewed Johnathan Culler's On Deconstruction: Theory and Criticism after Structuralism for the New York Review of Books, writing, "In Culler's book, we get the following examples of knowledge and mastery [attained from analysis of binary opposites and deconstruction]: speech is a form of writing (passim), presence is a certain type of absence (p. 106), the marginal is in fact central (p. 140), the literal is metaphorical (p. 148), truth is a kind of fiction (p. 181), reading is a form of misreading (p. 176), understanding is a form of misunderstanding (p. 176), sanity is a kind of neurosis (p. 160), and man is a form of woman (p. 171). Some readers may feel that such a list generates not so much feelings of mastery as of monotony. There is in deconstructive writing a constant straining of the prose to attain something that sounds profound by giving it the air of a paradox, e.g., "truths are fictions whose fictionality has been forgotten" (p. 181). 17.^ Dunk, T 1997, 'White guys: studies in post-modern domination and difference', Labour, vol. 40, p. 306, (online Infotrac). 18.^ Dunk, T 1997, 'White guys: studies in post-modern domination and difference', Labour, vol. 40, p. 306, (online Infotrac
19.^ "One sometimes gets the impression that deconstruction is a kind of game that anyone can play. One could, for example, invent a deconstruction of deconstructionism as follows: In the hierarchical opposition, deconstruction/logocentrism (phono-phallo-logocentrism), the privileged term "deconstruction" is in fact subordinate to the devalued term "logocentrism," for, in order to establish the hierarchical superiority of deconstruction, the deconstructionist is forced to attempt to represent its superiority, its axiological primacy, by argument and persuasion, by appealing to the logocentric values he tries to devalue. But his efforts to do this are doomed to failure because of the internal inconsistency in the concept of deconstructionism itself, because of its very self-referential dependence on the authority of a prior logic. By an aporetical Aufhebung, deconstruction deconstructs itself." Searle, ibid.
[edit] References
Goody, Jack (1977). The Domestication of the Savage Mind. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 9780521292429. http://books.google.com/books? id=baQtOyscXUwC. [hide]v d eCritical theory Origins Concepts Frankfurt School Freudo-Marxism Critical vocabulary Binary opposition Dominant privilege Phallogocentrism Reconstructivism
New Historicism Technocriticism Critical geography Critical geopolitics Critical management studies Critical psychology Critical legal studies Critical pedagogy Critical ethnography Critical Practice Critical medical anthropology Critical Language Awareness Critical Derivative international relations theory Critical criminology Critical design s Critical cartography Critical applied linguistics Critical discourse analysis Critical historiography Critical psychiatry Critical social thought Critical technical practice Critical race theory Critical Security Studies Critical Terrorism Studies Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Binary_opposition" View page ratings Rate this page
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Third-wave feminism
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Third-wave feminism is a term identified with several diverse strains of feminist activity and study whose exact boundaries in the historiography of feminism are a subject of debate, but often marked as beginning in the 1980s and continuing to the present. The movement arose as a response to the perceived failures of and backlash against initiatives and movements created by second-wave feminism of c. 1960s through the 1970s, and the realization that women are of "many colors, ethnicities, nationalities, religions and cultural backgrounds".[1] The third wave embraces contradictions, conflict and irrationality and attempts to accommodate diversity and change.[1] There is, in this wave as in previous ones, no all-encompassing single feminist idea as all social movements resist static and unitary definition.[1]
Contents
[hide]

1 Overview 2 History 3 Activism and the third-wave agenda

3.1 Reproductive rights 3.2 Reclaiming derogatory terms 3.3 Other areas of concern
4 The riot grrrl movement 5 Criticism of the third wave
6 Applied liberal equity discourse
6.1 Women, technology and progress
7 See also 8 References 9 Further reading 10 External links
[edit] Overview
Third-wave feminism seeks to challenge or avoid what it deems the second wave's "essentialist" definitions of femininity, which often assumed a universal female identity and over-emphasized the experiences of upper-middle-class white women. A post-structuralist interpretation of gender and sexuality is central to third wave ideology. Emphasizing discursive power and the ambiguity of gender, third-wave theory usually incorporates elements of queer theory; anti-racism and women-of-color consciousness; womanism; postcolonial theory; critical theory; postmodernism; transnationalism; ecofeminism; libertarian feminism; new feminist theory, transgender politics and a rejection of the gender binary. Also considered part of the third wave is sex-positivity, a celebration of sexuality as a positive aspect of life, with broader definitions of what sex means and what oppression and empowerment may imply in the context of sex. For example, many third-wave feminists have reconsidered opposition to pornography and to sex work of the second wave and challenge existing beliefs that participants in pornography and in sex work cannot be empowered.[2] Third-wave feminists such as Elle Green often focus on "micro-politics", and challenge the second wave's paradigm as to what is, or is not, good for women.[3][4][5][6] Proponents of third-wave feminism claim that it allows feminists to define feminism for themselves by incorporating their own identities into the belief system of what feminism is and what it can become through one's own perspective. In their introduction to the idea of third-wave feminism in Manifesta, authors Jennifer Baumgardner and Amy Richards suggest that feminism can change with every generation and individual: "The fact that feminism is no longer limited to arenas where we expect to see itNOW, Ms., women's studies, and redsuited Congresswomenperhaps means that young women today have really reaped what feminism has sown. Raised after Title IX and William Wants a Doll [sic], young women emerged from college or high school or two years of marriage or their first job and began challenging some of the received wisdom of the past ten or twenty years of feminism. We're not doing feminism the same way that the seventies feminists did it; being liberated doesn't mean copying what came before but finding one's own way-- a way that is genuine to one's own generation."[7]
[edit] History
Third-wave feminism began in the early 1990s, arising as a response to perceived failures of the second wave and also as a response to the backlash against initiatives and movements created by the second wave. Feminist leaders rooted in the second wave like Gloria Anzalda, bell hooks, Kerry Ann Kane, Cherre Moraga, Audre Lorde, Maxine
Hong Kingston, and many other feminists of colour, sought to negotiate a space within feminist thought for consideration of subjects related to race.[5][8] In 1981, Cherre Moraga and Gloria E. Anzalda published the anthology This Bridge Called My Back, which, along with All the Women Are White, All the Blacks Are Men, But Some of Us Are Brave: Black Women's Studies (1982), critiqued second-wave feminism, which focused primarily on the problems and political positions of white women. In 1991, Anita Hill accused Clarence Thomas, a man nominated to the United States Supreme Court, of sexual harassment. Thomas denied the accusations and, after extensive debate, the United States Senate voted 5248 in favor of Thomas.[5][8][9] In response to this case, Rebecca Walker published an article entitled "Becoming the Third Wave" in which she stated, "I am not a post-feminism feminist. I am the third-wave."[10] In 1992, the "Year of the Woman" saw four women enter the United States Senate to join the two already there. The following year another woman won a special election, bringing the number to seven. The 1990s also saw the first female United States Attorney General and Secretary of State, as well as the second woman on the Supreme Court, and the first US First Lady (Hillary Rodham Clinton) to have an independent political, legal, corporate executive, activist, and public service career. However, the Equal Rights Amendment, which is supported by second- and third-wave feminists, remains a work in progress. The roots of the third wave had begun, however, in the mid 1980s. Feminist leaders rooted in the second wave called for a new subjectivity in feminist voice. They sought to negotiate prominent space within feminist thought for consideration of race-related subjectivities. This focus on the intersection between race and gender remained prominent through the Hill-Thomas hearings, but was perceived[by whom?] to shift with the Freedom Ride 1992, the first project of the Walker-led Third Wave Direct Action Corporation. This drive to register voters in poor minority communities was surrounded with rhetoric that focused on rallying young women.[11] The fundamental rights and programs gained by feminist activists of the second wave including the creation of domestic-abuse shelters for women and children and the acknowledgment of abuse and rape of women on a public level, access to contraception and other reproductive services (including the legalization of abortion), the creation and enforcement of sexual-harassment policies for women in the workplace, child-care services, equal or greater educational and extracurricular funding for young women, women's studies programs, and much more have served as a foundation and a tool for third-wave feminists.[citation needed] Some third-wave feminists prefer not to call themselves feminists, as the word feminist can be misinterpreted as insensitive to the fluid notion of gender and the potential oppressions inherent in all gender roles, or perhaps misconstrued as exclusive or elitist by critics. Others have kept and redefined the term to include these ideas. Third-wave feminism seeks to challenge any universal definition of femininity. In the introduction of To Be Real, the Third Wave founder and leader writes: "Whether the young women who refuse the feminist label realize it or not, on some level they recognize that an ideal woman born of prevalent notions of how empowered women look, act, or think is simply another impossible contrivance of perfect womanhood, another scripted role to perform in the name of biology and virtue."[9]
Third-wave feminism deals with issues that seem to limit or oppress women, as well as other marginalized identities. Consciousness-raising activism and widespread education is often the first step that feminists take toward social change.[citation needed] In their book Manifesta: Young Women, Feminism and the Future, Jennifer Baumgardner and Amy Richards write: "Consciousness among women is what caused this [change], and consciousness, one's ability to open their mind to the fact that male domination does affect the women of our generation, is what we need... The presence of feminism in our lives is taken for granted. For our generation, feminism is like fluoride. We scarcely notice we have itit's simply in the water."[7] Feminist scholars such as Shira Tarrant object to the "wave construct" because it ignores important progress between the so-called waves. Furthermore, if feminism is a global movement, the fact that the "first-, second-, and third waves time periods correspond most closely to American feminist developments" raises serious problems about how feminism recognizes the history of political issues around the world.[12]
[edit] Activism and the third-wave agenda

[edit] Reproductive rights
Main article: Reproductive rights One of feminism's primary concerns is reproductive rights, such as access to contraception and abortion. According to Baumgardner and Richards, "It is not feminism's goal to control any woman's fertility, only to free each woman to control her own".[7] South Dakota's 2006 attempt to ban abortion in all cases, except when necessary to protect the mother's life,[13] and the US Supreme Court's recent vote to uphold the partial birth abortion ban are viewed by many feminists as restrictions on women's civil and reproductive rights.[14][15] Restrictions on the 1973 Supreme Court decision in Roe v. Wade, which legalized abortion in the United States, are becoming more common in states around the country; such restrictions include mandatory waiting periods,[16] parental-consent laws,[17] and spousalconsent laws.[18]
[edit] Reclaiming derogatory terms

Words such as spinster, bitch, whore, and cunt continue to be used in derogatory ways about women. Inga Muscio writes, "I posit that we're free to seize a word that was kidnapped and co-opted in a pain-filled, distant, past, with a ransom that cost our grandmothers' freedom, children, traditions, pride, and land." Third-wave feminists believe it is better to change the connotation of a sexist word than to censor it from speech. Part of taking back the word bitch was fueled by the 1992 single, "All Women Are Bitches" by the all woman band Fifth Column, and, later, by the 1999 book Bitch: In Praise of Difficult Women by Elizabeth Wurtzel. In the successful declaration of the word bitch, Wurtzel introduces her philosophy: "I intend to scream, shout, race the engine, call when I feel like it, throw tantrums in Bloomingdale's if I feel like it and confess intimate details about my life to complete strangers. I intend to do what I want to do and be whom I want to be and answer only to myself: that is, quite simply, the bitch philosophy."[19] Main article: SlutWalk
Recently, the utility of the reclamation strategy has been a hot topic among third-wave feminists with the advent of SlutWalks. The first SlutWalk took place in Toronto on April 3rd, 2011 in response to a Toronto police officer's statement that "women should avoid dressing like sluts in order not to be victimized."[20] Additional SlutWalks sprung up rapidly in cities all over the world, with marchers reclaiming the word "slut" to make the point that if victimized women are sluts, then all women must be, since anyone can be victimized regardless of what they are wearing.[21] [22] Third-wave feminist bloggers have both praised and criticized the Slutwalks, with the reclamation of the word "slut" being questioned for its possible exclusion of some cultural groups.[23] [24] [25] [26] [27]
[edit] Other areas of concern

Third-wave feminism's central issues are that of race, social class and sexuality. However, there are also concerns of workplace issues such as the glass ceiling, sexual harassment, unfair maternity leave policies,[28] motherhoodsupport for single mothers by means of welfare and child care and respect for working mothers and mothers who decide to leave their careers to raise their children full-time.
[edit] The riot grrrl movement

Main article: Riot grrrl
Kathleen Hanna was the lead singer of Bikini Kill: a riot grrrl band formed in 1990. Riot grrrl is an underground feminist punk movement that started in the 1990s and is often associated with third-wave feminism. It was grounded in the DIY philosophy of punk values, riot grrls took an anti-corporate stance of self-sufficiency and self-reliance.[29] Riot grrrl's emphasis on universal female identity and separatism often appears more closely allied with second-wave feminism than with the third wave.[30] Riot grrrl bands often address issues such as rape, domestic abuse, sexuality, and female empowerment. Some
bands associated with the movement are: Bikini Kill, Hole, Bratmobile, Excuse 17, Babes In Toyland, Jack Off Jill, Free Kitten, Heavens to Betsy, Huggy Bear, L7, Fifth Column and Team Dresch. In addition to a music scene, riot grrrl is also a subculture: zines, the DIY ethic, art, political action, and activism are part of the movement. Riot grrrls hold meetings, start chapters, and support and organize women in music.[31] The term Riot Grrrl uses a "growling" double or triple r, placing it in the word girl as an appropriation of the perceived derogatory use of the term.[29] The movement sprang out of Olympia, Washington and Washington, D.C. in the early 1990s. It sought to give women the power to control their voices and artistic expressions.[29] Its links to social and political issues are where the beginning rumblings of the third-wave feminism can be seen. The music and zine writings produced are strong examples of "cultural politics in action, with strong women giving voice to important social issues though an empowered, female oriented community, many people link the emergence of the third-wave feminism to this time".[29] The movement encouraged and made "adolescent girls' standpoints central", allowing them to express themselves fully.[32]
[edit] Criticism of the third wave

One issue raised by critics is the lack of a single cause for third-wave feminism. The first wave fought for and gained the right for women to vote. The second wave struggled to obtain the right for women to have access and equal opportunity to the workforce, as well as ending of legal sex discrimination.[29] The third wave of feminism, some argue, lacks a cohesive goal, and it is often seen as an extension of the second wave.[29] Also, third-wave feminism does not have a set definition that can distinguish itself from second-wave feminism. Some argue the third wave can be dubbed the "Second Wave, Part Two" when it comes to the politics of feminism, and "only young feminist culture as truly third wave".[7] Amy Richards defines the feminist culture for this generation as "third wave because it's an expression of having grown up with feminism".[29] Second-wave feminists grew up where the politics intertwined within the culture, such as "Kennedy, the Vietnam War, civil rights, and women's rights"; while the Third Wave sprang from a culture of "punk-rock, hip-hop, 'zines, products, consumerism and the Internet".[7] Tension continues between second-wave and third-wave feminists. In an essay entitled "Generations, Academic Feminists in dialogue" Diane Elam writes: This problem manifests itself when senior feminists insist that junior feminists be good daughters, defending the same kind of feminism their mothers advocated. Questions and criticisms are allowed, but only if they proceed from the approved brand of feminism. Daughters are not allowed to invent new ways of thinking and doing feminism for themselves; feminists politics should take the same shape that it has always assumed.[7] Rebecca Walker, in To Be Real, writes about her fear of rejection by her mother (author Alice Walker) and by her godmother (Gloria Steinem) for challenging their views: Young Women feminists find themselves watching their speech and tone in their works so as not to upset their elder feminist mothers. There is a definite gap among feminists who consider themselves to be second wave and those who would label themselves as third wave. Although, the age criteria for second wave feminists and third wave feminists is murky, younger feminists definitely have a hard time proving themselves worthy as feminist scholars and activists.[9]
[edit] Applied liberal equity discourse

Egalitarian feminist principles are applied to find ways to more closely identify and redress alleged gender imbalance in the field of technology. Liberal equity feminism addresses the role of women in computer technology to dispute how they are perceived and contrasted with males when viewed through the lens of traditional social constructs or "roles".
[edit] Women, technology and progress

According to Jane Abbis,[33] liberal equity discourse has long stated that the problem of the under-representation of women in computer-related technological careers results from gender differences in attitudes, in desires and in competencies in computers. However, the changing dynamics of computer interests have led to further debate[33] challenging previously held beliefs of essentialist differences and exploring ways of examining the issue, presenting a new dynamic to the problem of women's participation in technology and progress.
[edit] See also

Bitch (magazine) Bust (magazine) Feminism in 1950s Britain First-wave feminism Girl power Jessica Valenti Judith Butler Naomi Wolf New Left New social movements Postmodern feminism Pro-life feminism Rebecca Walker Second-wave feminism Sex-positive feminism The left and feminism
1. ^ a b c Tong, Rosemarie (2009). Feminist Thought: A More Comprehensive Introduction (Third ed.). Boulder: Westview Press. pp. 284285, 289. ISBN 978-0-8133-4375-4. OCLC 156811918. 2. ^ Johnson, Merri Lisa, ed (2002). Jane Sexes It Up: True Confessions of Feminist Desire. New York: Four Walls Eight Windows. ISBN 9781568581804. OCLC 49515674. 3. ^ Freedman, Estelle B. (2002). No Turning Back: The History of Feminism and the Future of Women. London: Ballantine Books. OCLC 49193867.
[edit] References
4. ^ Henry, Astrid (2004). Not My Mother's Sister: Generational Conflict and Third-Wave Feminism. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. OCLC 53932637. 5. ^ a b c Gillis, Stacy; Howie, Gillian; Munford, Rebecca, eds (2007). Third Wave Feminism: A Critical Exploration (Expanded Second ed.). Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. ISBN 9780230521742. OCLC 77795615. 6. ^ Faludi, Susan (1991). Backlash: The Undeclared War Against Women. New York: Crown Publishing Group. ISBN 9780517576984. OCLC 23016353. 7. ^ a b c d e f Baumgardner, Jennifer; Richards, Amy (2000). Manifesta: Young Women, Feminism, and the Future. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux. ISBN 9780374526221. OCLC 43607358. 8. ^ a b Heywood, Leslie; Drake, Jennifer, eds (1997). Third Wave Agenda: Being Feminist, Doing Feminism. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. ISBN 978-0816630059. OCLC 36876149. 9. ^ a b c Walker, Rebecca (1995). To Be Real: Telling the Truth and Changing the Face of Feminism. New York: Anchor Books. ISBN 978-0385472623. OCLC 32274323. 10.^ Rebecca, Walker (January/February 1992). "Becoming the Third Wave". Ms. (New York: Liberty Media for Women): 3941. ISSN 0047-8318. OCLC 194419734. 11.^ Hayes Taylor, Kimberly (March 8, 1995). "Feminism reaches the next generation Walker underscores need for inclusion, change in 'third wave'". Star Tribune: p. 1B. 12.^ Tarrant, Shira (2006). When Sex Became Gender. New York: Routledge. p. 222. ISBN 9780415953474. OCLC 62281555. 13.^ Davey, Monica (7 March 2006). "South Dakota Bans Abortion, Setting Up a Battle". New York Times 155 (53511): pp. A1A14. 14.^ Ludlow, Jeannie (Spring 2008). "Sometimes, It's a Child and a Choice: Toward an Embodied Abortion Praxis". NWSA Journal 20 (1): 2650. OCLC 364432908. 15.^ Weitz, Tracy A.; Yanow, Susan (May 2008). "Implications of the Federal Abortion Ban for Women's Health in the United States". Reproductive Health Matters 16 (31): 99107. doi:10.1016/S0968-8080(08)31374-3. OCLC 282104847. PMID 18772090. 16.^ Indiana Code Title 16, art. XXXIV, ch. 2, 1.1 cl. 1: Voluntary and informed consent required; viewing of fetal ultrasound x (1993; amended 1997) 17.^ South Dakota Code Title 34, ch. 23A, 7 18.^ South Carolina Code Title 44, ch. 41, art. 1, 10 19.^ Wurtzel, Elizabeth (1998). Bitch: In Praise of Difficult Women. New York: Doubleday. ISBN 9780385484008. OCLC 38144418. 20.^ "SlutWalk Toronto". http://www.slutwalktoronto.com/about/why. 21.^ "Satellites List". Satellites List, SlutWalk Toronto. http://www.slutwalktoronto.com/satellite/satellites-list-dates. 22.^ "Slutwalks - Do you agree with the Toronto policeman?". World Have Your Say 60. BBC. http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p00ggb5t. 23.^ Murphy, Meghan. "We're sluts, not feminists. Wherein my relationship with Slutwalk gets rocky.". The F-Word. http://www.feminisms.org/2585/were-sluts-not-feministswherein-my-relationship-with-slutwalk-gets-rocky/. 24.^ Beyerstein, Lindsay. "Sluts Like Me". Big Think. http://bigthink.com/ideas/38362.
25.^ "Women: Should they have autonomy?". Women: Shakesville. http://shakespearessister.blogspot.com/2011/05/women-should-they-have-autonomy.html. 26.^ "Four Brief Critiques of SlutWalk's Whiteness, Privilege and Unexamined Power Dynamics". http://therotund.tumblr.com/post/5582939739/four-brief-critiques-of-slutwalkswhiteness-privilege. 27.^ Walia, Harsha. "Slutwalk - To March or Not to March". Racialicious. http://www.racialicious.com/2011/05/19/slutwalk--to-march-or-not-to-march/. 28.^ Munden, Frank (7 May 2003). "Female medical workers feel maternity leave unfair". The Kapi'o Newspress 36 (28). Archived from the original on 28 February 2009. http://replay.waybackmachine.org/20090228075410/http://kapio.kcc.hawaii.edu/archive/v3 6/36_28/nurse.html. Retrieved 14 April 2011. 29.^ a b c d e f g Rowe-Finkbeiner, Kristin (2004). The F-Word. Emeryville: Seal Press. ISBN 9781580051149. OCLC 55504351. 30.^ Rosenberg, Jessica; Garofalo, Gitana (1998). "Riot Grrrl: Revolutions from Within". Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society (University of Chicago Press) 23 (3: Feminisms and Youth Cultures): 809841. doi:10.1086/495289.. ISSN 0097-9740. OCLC 486795617. 31.^ Schilt, Kristen (2003). "A Little Too Ironic: The Appropriation and Packaging of Riot Grrrl Politics by Mainstream Female Musicians". Popular Music and Society (Routledge) 26 (1): 516. doi:10.1080/0300776032000076351. ISSN 0300-7766. OCLC 360399883. http://www.public.asu.edu/~kleong/staffpage/course/riottgrrl%20analysis.pdf. Retrieved 18 April 2011. 32.^ Code, Lorraine (2000). Encyclopedia of Feminist Theories. London: Routledge. ISBN 0415-30885-2. 33.^ a b Abbiss, Jane (March 2008). "Rethinking the 'problem' of gender and IT schooling: Discourses in literature". Gender and Education 20 (2): 153165. OCLC 280912953.
[edit] Further reading
Baumgardner, Jennifer; Richards, Amy (2005). Grassroots: A Field Guide for Feminist Activism. New York: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux. ISBN 9780374528652. OCLC 55109024. DeKoven, Marianne (October 2006). "Jouissance, Cyborgs, and Companion Species: Feminist Experiment". PMLA 121 (5): 16901696. doi:10.1632/pmla.2006.121.5.1690. ISSN 0030-8129. OCLC 104244114. Ensler, Eve (2001). The Vagina Monologues. New York: Villard. ISBN 9780375750526. OCLC 37492271. Findlen, Barbara, ed (1995). Listen Up! Voices From the Next Feminist Generation. Seattle: Seal Press. ISBN 9781878067616. OCLC 31607164. Gillis, Stacy; Howie, Gillian; Munford, Rebecca (2007). Third Wave Feminism: A Critical Exploration (Revised ed.). Palgrave. ISBN 1-4039-1821-X. Henry, Astrid (2004). Not My Mother's Sister: Generational Conflict and Third-Wave Feminism. Indiana University Press. ISBN 0-253-21713-X. Hernandez, Daisy; Reman, Bushra (2002). Colonize This! Young Women of Color and Today's Feminism. Seal Press. ISBN 1-58005-067-0.
Karaian, Lara (2001). Rundle, Lisa Bryn; Mitchell, Allyson. eds. Turbo Chicks: Talking Young Feminisms. Toronto: Sumach Press. ISBN 9781894549066. OCLC 46629305. Kinser, Amber (2004). "Negotiating Space for/through Third-Wave Feminism". NWSA Journal (University of Illinois Press) 16 (3): 124153. doi:10.2979/NWS.2004.16.3.124. http://muse.jhu.edu/login? uri=/journals/feminist_teacher/v018/18.1love.html. Miya-Jervis, Lisa; Zeisler, Andi, eds (2006). Bitchfest. New York: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux. ISBN 9780374113438. OCLC 62895790. Muscio, Inga (1998). Cunt: A Declaration of Independence. Seattle: Seal Press. ISBN 9781580050159. OCLC 9781580050159. Musse, Fowzia (2004). "SomaliaThe Untold Story: The War Through the Eyes of Somali Women". War Crimes Against Girls and Women (London: Pluto Press): 6976. ISBN 9780745322094. OCLC 53038753. Verhofstadt, Dirk (2006) (in Dutch). De derde feministische golf. Antwerp: Houtekiet. ISBN 9789052409153. OCLC 84677530. Walker, Rebecca (1995). To Be Real: Telling the Truth and Changing the Face of Feminism. Anchor Books. ISBN 9780385472616. OCLC 32274323. The Third Wave Foundation interview with Rebecca Walker in Satya Magazine Interview with Jennifer Baumgardner and Amy Richards [show]v d eFeminism Women Femininity C o n Movement Theory Effects on society Feminism in culture Film theory c e Economics Feminist sexology Women's rights Gender equality Equality p Matriarchy Pro-feminism Anti-feminism t s H Women's history Feminist history History of feminism Timeline of Social i women's rights (other than voting) s t o SuffragWomen's suffrage Timeline New Zealand United Kingdom United r eStates y
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Deconstruction
Jump to: navigation, search For the approach to post-modern architecture, see Deconstructivism; for other uses, see Deconstruction (disambiguation). Deconstruction is a term introduced by French philosopher Jacques Derrida in his 1967 book Of Grammatology. Although he carefully avoided defining the term directly, he sought to apply Martin Heidegger's concept of Destruktion or Abbau, to textual reading.[1] Heidegger's term referred to a process of exploring the categories and concepts that tradition has imposed on a word, and the history behind them.[2] Derrida opted for deconstruction over the literal translation destruction to suggest precision rather than violence.[1] In describing deconstruction, Derrida famously observed that "there is nothing outside the text." That is to say, all of the references used to interpret a text are themselves texts, even the "text" of reality as a reader knows it. There is no truly objective, non-textual reference from which interpretation can begin. Deconstruction, then, can be described as an effort to understand a text through its relationships to various contexts.[3]
Contents
[hide]

1 Schematic descriptions 2 Influences 3 Theory
4 Related works by Derrida

4.1 Antecedent example: the Phenomenology vs Structuralism debate 4.2 Diffrance 4.3 Of Grammatology 4.4 Speech and Phenomena 4.5 Writing and Difference 4.6 Derrida's later work 5.1 Not a method 5.2 Not a critique 5.3 Not an analysis 5.4 Not poststructuralist
5 The difficulty of definition and Derrida's "negative" descriptions

6 Definitions by other authors 7 Developments after Derrida

7.1 The Yale School 7.2 The Inoperative Community 7.3 The Ethics of Deconstruction 7.4 Derrida and the Political 8.1 Michel Foucault 8.2 John Searle 8.3 Jrgen Habermas 8.4 Criticisms in popular media
8 Criticism

9 Notes 10 References (Works cited) 11 Further reading 12 External links
[edit] Schematic descriptions

The first book in which Derrida talks about deconstruction is Of Grammatology (1967). The first passage ever mentioning it says another word for it is "de-sedimentation," particularly in an historical sense. It reads:[4] The "rationality" [...] which governs a writing thus enlarged and radicalized, [defining writing as all that gives rise to an inscription in general, including pictorial, musical, sculptural "writing"] no longer issues from a logos. Further, it inaugurates the destruction,
not the demolition but the de-sedimentation, the de-construction, of all the significations that have their source in that of the logos. Particularly the signification of truth. All the metaphysical determinations of truth, and even the one beyond metaphysical onto-theology that Heidegger reminds us of, are more or less immediately inseparable from the instance of the logos, or of a reason thought within the lineage of the logos, in whatever sense it is understood: in the pre-Socratic or the philosophical sense, in the sense of God's infinite understanding or in the anthropological sense, in the pre-Hegelian or the post-Hegelian sense. In 1972 he remarked the historical aspect of deconstruction:[5] To "deconstruct" philosophy [...] would be to think in the most faithful, interior way the structured genealogy of philosophy's concepts, but at the same time to determine from a certain exterior [...] what this history has been able to dissimulate or forbid [...] By means of this simultaneously faithful and violent circulation between the inside and the outside of philosophy [...a] putting into question the meaning of Being as presence. In 1980 Derrida spoke of deconstruction as an "ensemble of rules for reading, interpretation and writing:"[6] From about 1963 to 1968, I tried to work out - in particular in the three works published in 1967 - what was in no way meant to be a system but rather a sort of strategic device, opening its own abyss, an unclosed, unenclosable, not wholly formalizable ensemble of rules for reading, interpretation and writing. In the application of this ensemble of rules and historical perspective, one observation about the "devaluation of writing," proved crucial for all of Derrida works: the devaluation of writing is an ancestral bias that was born with Western civilization itself, and remains crucial in modern culture, including science.[6] In fact, the unmasking of the "devaluation of writing" (and the way in which it has "sedimented" in our culture in the course of history), was a key topic in Derrida's work, that proved fruitful not only in the deconstruction of classics of philosophy and the "socio-historical totality" of our civilization, but also for the deconstruction of texts of the most modern social sciences (linguistics, anthropology, psychoanalysis), and even contemporary texts alleged to be scientific.[6] Everywhere in these texts, the devaluation of writing showed to be "insistent, repetitive, even obscurely compulsive," and "the sign of a whole set of long-standing constraints. These constraints were practised at the price of contradictions, of denials, of dogmatic decrees."[6] In 1988, while discussing the reception his famous assertion that "There is nothing outside the text," Derrida gave the following description of deconstruction:[7] One of the definitions of what is called deconstruction would be the effort to take this limitless context into account, to pay the sharpest and broadest attention possible to context, and thus to an incessant movement of recontextualization.
[edit] Influences
This section needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding reliable references. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. (March 2011) Deconstruction emerged from the influence of several thinkers upon Derrida, including:
Edmund Husserl. The greatest focus of Derrida's early work was on Husserl, from his dissertation (eventually published as The Problem of Genesis in Husserl's Philosophy), to his "Introduction" to Husserl's "Essay on the Origin of Geometry," to his first published paper, "'Genesis and Structure' and Phenomenology" (in Writing and Difference), and lastly to his important early work, Speech and Phenomena. Martin Heidegger. Heidegger's thought was a crucial influence on Derrida, and he conducted numerous readings of Heidegger, including the important early essay, "Ousia and Gramme: Note on a Note from Being and Time" (in Margins of Philosophy), to his study of Heidegger and Nazism entitled Of Spirit, to a series of papers entitled "Geschlecht." Heidegger was keen to meet Derrida but the meeting between the two was not materialised.[8] Martin Heidegger's philosophy developed in relation to Edmund Husserl's, and Derrida's use of the term deconstruction is closely linked to his own (Derrida's) appropriation of the latter's understanding of the problems of structural description.[citation needed] Sigmund Freud. Derrida has written extensively on Freud, beginning with the paper, "Freud and the Scene of Writing" (in Writing and Difference), and a long reading of Freud's Beyond the Pleasure Principle in his book, The Post Card. In Archive Fever, Derrida offers a critical analysis of Freud's Delusion and Dream in Wilhelm Jensen's Gradiva. Jacques Lacan has also been read by Derrida, although the two writers to some extent avoided commenting on each others' work. Friedrich Nietzsche. Nietzsche's singular philosophical approach was an important forerunner of deconstruction, and Derrida devoted attention to his texts in Spurs: Nietzsches Styles and The Ear of the Other. Andr Leroi-Gourhan. Of Grammatology makes clear the importance of LeroiGourhan for the formulation of deconstruction and especially of the concept of diffrance, relating this to the history of the evolution of systems for coding difference, from DNA to electronic data storage. Ferdinand de Saussure. Derrida's deconstruction in Of Grammatology of Saussure's structural linguistics was critical to his formulation of deconstruction, and his insertion of linguistic concerns into the heart of philosophy. Ferdinand de Saussure. Saussure's concept of linguistics also is an important aspect in the entire theory of deconstruction. His theories, and its crucial contradiction, like of sign, signifier, and signified, paved way to the new interpretation of semiotics in the intellectual framework of Jacques Derrida. Claude Levi Strauss. In his "Structure Sign and Play..." Derrida critically analyzed Claude Levi Strauss and introduced deconstruction as a pathbreaking concept of the century. This is cardinal as from the broken base of Strauss' theory the concept of deconstruction entered not only the world of philosophy but also the world of anthropology and many other sciences as well.
[edit] Theory
This section needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding reliable references. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. (March 2011)
According to Rodolphe Gasch, Derrida's method consisted in demonstrating all the forms and varieties of this originary complexity, and their multiple consequences in many fields. His way of achieving this was by conducting thorough, careful, sensitive, and yet transformational readings of philosophical and literary texts, with an ear to what in those texts runs counter to their apparent systematicity (structural unity) or intended sense (authorial genesis). By demonstrating the aporias and ellipses of thought, Derrida hoped to show the infinitely subtle ways that this originary complexity, which by definition cannot ever be completely known, works its structuring and destructuring effects.[9] Deconstruction denotes the pursuing the meaning of a text to the point of exposing the supposed contradictions and internal oppositions upon which it is foundedsupposedly showing that those foundations are irreducibly complex, unstable, or impossible.[citation needed] It is an approach that may be deployed in philosophy, literary analysis, or other fields.[citation needed] Deconstruction generally tries to demonstrate that any text is not a discrete whole but contains several irreconcilable and contradictory meanings; that any text therefore has more than one interpretation; that the text itself links these interpretations inextricably; that the incompatibility of these interpretations is irreducible; and thus that an interpretative reading cannot go beyond a certain point.[citation needed] Derrida refers to this point as an aporia in the text, and terms deconstructive reading "aporetic." Derrida initially resisted granting to his approach the overarching name "deconstruction," on the grounds that it was a precise technical term that could not be used to characterise his work generally. Nevertheless, he eventually accepted that the term had come into common use to refer to his textual approach, and Derrida himself increasingly began to use the term in this more general way.
[edit] Related works by Derrida

[edit] Antecedent example: the Phenomenology vs Structuralism debate
Before coining the term Deconstruction, Derrida began speaking and writing publicly at a time when the French intellectual scene was experiencing an increasing rift between what could broadly be called "phenomenological" and "structural" approaches to understanding individual and collective life. For those with a more phenomenological bent the goal was to understand experience by comprehending and describing its genesis, the process of its emergence from an origin or event. For the structuralists, this was a problematic and misleading avenue of interrogation, and the "depth" and originality of experience could in fact only be an effect of structures which are not themselves experiential. It is in this context that in 1959 Derrida asks the question: Must not structure have a genesis, and must not the origin, the point of genesis, be already structured in order to be the genesis of something?[10] In other words, every structural or "synchronic" phenomenon has a history, and the structure cannot be understood without understanding its genesis.[11] At the same time, in order that there be movement, or potential, the origin cannot be some pure unity or simplicity, but must already be articulatedcomplexsuch that from it a "diachronic" process can emerge. This originary complexity must not be understood as an original positing, but more like a default of origin, which Derrida refers to as iterability, inscription, or textuality.[12] It is this thought of originary complexity, rather than original purity, which destabilises the thought of both genesis and structure, that sets Derrida's work in motion, and from which derive all of its terms, including deconstruction.[13]
[edit] Diffrance
Main article: Diffrance Crucial to Derrida's work is the concept of diffrance, a complex term which refers to the process of the production of difference and deferral. According to Derrida, all difference and all presence arise from the operation of diffrance.[5] To deconstruct philosophy is therefore to think carefully within philosophy about philosophical concepts in terms of their structure and genesis. Deconstruction questions the appeal to presence by arguing that there is always an irreducible aspect of non-presence in operation. Derrida terms this aspect of non-presence diffrance. Diffrance is therefore the key theoretical basis of deconstruction. Deconstruction questions the basic operation of all philosophy through the appeal to presence and diffrance. Derrida argues that diffrance pervades all philosophy because "What defers presence [...] is the very basis on which presence is announced or desired in what represents it, its sign, its trace".[14] Diffrance therefore pervades all philosophy because all philosophy is constructed as a system through language. Diffrance is essential to language because it produces "what metaphysics calls the sign (signified/signifier)".[15] In one sense, a sign must point to something beyond itself that is its meaning so the sign is never fully present in itself but a deferral to something else, to something different. In another sense the structural relationship between the signified and signifier, as two related but separate aspects of the sign, is produced through differentiation. Derrida states that diffrance "is the economical concept", meaning that it is the concept of all systems and structures, because "there is no economy without diffrance [...] the movement of diffrance, as that which produces different things, that which differentiates, is the common root of all the oppositional concepts that mark our language [...] diffrance is also the production [...] of these differences."[14] Diffrance is therefore the condition of possibility for all complex systems and hence all philosophy. Operating through diffrance, deconstruction is the description of how non-presence problematises the operation of the appeal to presence within a particular philosophical system. Diffrance is an a-priori condition of possibility that is always already in effect but a deconstruction must be a careful description of how this diffrance is actually in effect in a given text. Deconstruction therefore describes problems in the text rather than creating them (which would be trivial). Derrida considers the illustration of aporia in this way to be productive because it shows the failure of earlier philosophical systems and the necessity of continuing to philosophise through them with deconstruction.
[edit] Of Grammatology
Main article: Of Grammatology Derrida first employs the term deconstruction in Of Grammatology in 1967 when discussing the implications of understanding language as writing rather than speech.[Need quotation to verify] Here Derrida introduces deconstruction to describe the manner that understanding language as writing (in general) renders infeasible a straightforward semantic theory.[citation needed] Derrida states that: [w]riting thus enlarged and radicalized, no longer issues from a logos. Further, it inaugurates the destruction, not the demolition but the de-sedimentation, the deconstruction, of all the significations that have their source in that of the logos.[4]
In this quotation Derrida states that deconstruction is what happens to meaning when language is understood as writing.[Need quotation to verify] For Derrida, when language is understood as writing it is realised that meaning does not originate in the logos or thought of the language user. Instead individual language users are understood to be using an external system of signs, a system that exists separately to them because these signs are written down. The meaning of language does not originate in the thoughts of the individual language user because those thoughts are already taking place in a language that does not originate with them. Individual language users operate within a system of meaning that is given to them from outside. Meaning is therefore not fully under the control of the individual language user. The meaning of a text is not neatly determined by authorial intention and cannot be recreated without problem by a reader. Meaning necessarily involves some degree of interpretation, negotiation, or translation. This necessity for the active interpretation of meaning by readers when language is understood as writing is why deconstruction takes place.[citation needed] To understand this more fully, consider the difference for Derrida between understanding language as speech and as writing. Derrida argues that people have historically understood speech as the primary mode of language[16] and understood writing as an inferior derivative of speech.[17] Derrida argues that speech is historically equated with logos,[18] meaning thought, and associated with the presence of the speaker to the listener.[19] It is as if the speaker thinks out loud and the listener hears what the speaker is thinking and if there is any confusion then the speaker's presence allows them to qualify the meaning of a previous statement. Derrida argues that by understanding speech as thought language "effaces itself."[20] Language itself is forgotten. The signified meaning of speech is so immediately understood that it is easy to forget that there are linguistic signifiers involved - but these signifiers are the spoken sounds (phonemes) and written marks (graphemes) that actually comprise language. Derrida therefore associates speech with a very straightforward and unproblematic theory of meaning and with the forgetting of the signifier and hence language itself. Derrida contrasts the understanding of language as speech with an understanding of language as writing. Unlike a speaker a writer is usually absent (even dead) and the reader cannot rely on the writer to clarify any problems that there might be with the meaning of the text. The consideration of language as writing leads inescapably to the insight that language is a system of signs. As a system of signs the signifiers are present but the signification can only be inferred. There is effectively an act of translation involved in extracting a significaton from the signifiers of language. This act of translation is so habitual to language users that they must step back from their experience of using language in order to fully realise its operation. The significance of understanding language as writing rather than speech is that signifiers are present in language but significations are absent. To decide what words mean is therefore an act of interpretation. The insight that language is a system of signs, most obvious in the consideration of language as writing, leads Derrida to state that "everything [...] gathered under the name of language is beginning to let itself be transferred to [...] the name of writing."[21] This means that there is no room for the naive theory of meaning and forgetting of the signifier that previously existed when language was understood as speech. Later in his career, in 1980, Derrida retrospectively confirmed the importance of his observation on the devaluation of writing,[6] (some have called it Derrida's distinction between speech and writing)[citation needed] which proved valid not only for classics of
philosophy and the "socio-historical totality" of our civilization, but also for the deconstruction of a variety of modern scientific texts in linguistics, in anthropology, in psychoanalysis.[6] Everywhere in these texts, such detection devaluation of writing showed to be "insistent, repetitive, even obscurely compulsive," and " the sign of a whole set of long-standing constraints. These constraints were practised at the price of contradictions, of denials, of dogmatic decrees."[6] Here Derrida states that deconstruction exposes historical constraints within the whole history of philosophy that have been practised at the price of contradictions, denials, and dogmatic decrees. The unmasking of how contradictions, denials, and dogmatic decrees are at work in a given text is closely associated with deconstruction. The careful illustration of how such problems are inescapable in a given text can lead someone to describe that text as deconstructed.
[edit] Speech and Phenomena

Main article: Speech and Phenomena Derrida's first book length deconstruction is his critical engagement with Husserl's phenomenology in Speech and Phenomena published in 1967. Derrida states that Speech and Phenomena is the "essay I value the most"[22] and it is therefore a very important example of deconstruction. Husserl's philosophy is grounded in conscious experience as the ultimate origin of validity for all philosophy and science. Derrida's deconstruction operates by illustrating how the originary status of consciousness is compromised by the operation of structures within conscious experience that prevent it from being "the original self-giving evidence, the present or presence of sense to a full and primordial intuition."[23] Derrida argues that Husserl's "phenomenology seems to us tormented, if not contested from within, by its own descriptions of the movement of temporalization and language."[24] Derrida argues that the involvement of language and temporalisation within the "living present"[24] of conscious experience means that instead of consciousness being the pure unitary origin of validity that Husserl wishes it be, it is compromised by the operation of diffrance in the structures of language and temporalisation. Derrida argues that language is a structured system of signs and that the meanings of individual signs are produced by the diffrance between that sign and other signs. This means that words are not self sufficiently meaningful but only meaningful as part of a larger structure that makes meaning possible. Derrida therefore argues that the meaning of language is dependent on the larger structures of language and cannot originate in the unity of conscious experience. Derrida therefore argues that linguistic meaning does not originate in the intentional meaning of the speaking subject. This conclusion is very important for deconstruction and explains the importance of Speech and Phenomena for Derrida. Informed by this conclusion the deconstruction of a text will typically demonstrate the inability of the author to achieve their stated intentions within a text by demonstrating how the meaning of the language they use is, at least partially, beyond the ability of their intentions to control. Similarly, Derrida argues that Husserl's description of temporal of consciousness - where he describes the retension of past conscious experience and protension of future conscious experience - introduces the structural diffrance of temporal deferral, temporal non-presence, into consciousness. This means that the past and future are not in the living present of conscious experience but they taint the presence of the living present with their conscious absence through retension and protension. Husserl's
description of temporal consciousness therefore compromises the total self presence of conscious experience required by Husserl's philosophy once again.
[edit] Writing and Difference

Main article: Writing and Difference Writing and Difference is a collection of essays published by Derrida in 1967. Each essay is a critical negotiation by Derrida of texts by philosophical or literary writers. These essays have come to be termed deconstructions even though some of them were written before Derrida's first use of the term in Of Grammatology. For example, the chapter "Cogito and the History of Madness," dating from 1963, has been referred to as a deconstruction of the work of Michel Foucault, yet the term "deconstruction" does not actually appear in the chapter.[25]
[edit] Derrida's later work

While Derrida's deconstructions in the 1960s and 1970s were frequently concerned with the major philosophical systems, in his later work he is often concerned to demonstrate the aporias of specific terms and concepts, including forgiveness, hospitality, friendship, the gift, responsibility and cosmopolitanism.
[edit] The difficulty of definition and Derrida's "negative" descriptions

When asked "What is deconstruction?" Derrida replied, "I have no simple and formalisable response to this question. All my essays are attempts to have it out with this formidable question".[26] Derrida believes that deconstruction is necessarily complicated and difficult to explain since it actively criticises the very language needed to explain it. Derrida's defenders[citation needed] argue that in giving this reply, Derrida was simply being consistent: the word "deconstruction" is as slippery as any other word in the dictionary. Others criticize Derrida for being unable to define the discipline that he himself created, and for being evasive about it. According to some,[who?] Derrida has been more forthcoming with negative than positive descriptions of deconstruction.[citation needed] When asked by Toshihiko Izutsu some preliminary considerations on how to translate "deconstruction" in Japanese, in order to at least prevent going contrary to its actual meaning, Derrida therefore began his response by saying that such question amounts to "what deconstruction is not, or rather ought not to be."[1] Derrida states that deconstruction is not an analysis, a critique, or a method[27] in the traditional sense that philosophy understands these terms. In these negative descriptions of deconstruction Derrida is seeking to "multiply the cautionary indicators and put aside all the traditional philosophical concepts."[27] This does not mean that deconstruction has absolutely nothing in common with an analysis, a critique, or a method because while Derrida distances deconstruction from these terms, he reaffirms "the necessity of returning to them, at least under erasure."[27] Derrida's necessity of returning to a term under erasure means that even though these terms are problematic we must use them until they can be effectively reformulated or replaced. Derrida's thought developed in relation to Husserl's and this return to something under erasure has a similarity to Husserl's phenomenological reduction or epoch. Derrida acknowledges that his preference for negative description has
been called...a type of negative theology.[27] The relevance of the tradition of negative theology to Derrida's preference for negative descriptions of deconstruction is the notion that a positive description of deconstruction would over-determine the idea of deconstruction and that this would be a mistake because it would close off the openness that Derrida wishes to preserve for deconstruction. This means that if Derrida were to positively define deconstruction as, for example, a critique then this would put the concept of critique for ever outside the possibility of deconstruction. Some new philosophy beyond deconstruction would then be required in order to surpass the notion of critique. By refusing to define deconstruction positively Derrida preserves the infinite possibility of deconstruction, the possibility for the deconstruction of everything.[original research?]
[edit] Not a method

Derrida states that Deconstruction is not a method and cannot be transformed into one.[27] This is because deconstruction is not a mechanical operation. Derrida warns against considering deconstruction as a mechanical operation when he states that It is true that in certain circles (university or cultural, especially in the United States) the technical and methodological metaphor that seems necessarily attached to the very word deconstruction has been able to seduce or lead astray.[27] Commentator Richard Beardsworth explains that Derrida is careful to avoid this term [method] because it carries connotations of a procedural form of judgement. A thinker with a method has already decided how to proceed, is unable to give him or herself up to the matter of thought in hand, is a functionary of the criteria which structure his or her conceptual gestures. For Derrida [...] this is irresponsibility itself. Thus, to talk of a method in relation to deconstruction, especially regarding its ethico-political implications, would appear to go directly against the current of Derrida's philosophical adventure.[28] Beardsworth here explains that it would be irresponsible to undertake a deconstruction with a complete set of rules that need only be applied as a method to the object of deconstruction because this understanding would reduce deconstruction to a thesis of the reader that the text is then made to fit. This would be an irresponsible act of reading because it ignores the empirical facticity of the text itself - that is it becomes a prejudicial procedure that only finds what it sets out to find. To be responsible a deconstruction must carefully negotiate the empirical facticity of the text and hence respond to it. Deconstruction is not a method and this means that it is not a neat set of rules that can be applied to any text in the same way. Deconstruction is therefore not neatly transcendental because it cannot be considered separate from the contingent empirical facticity of the particular texts that any deconstruction must carefully negotiate. Each deconstruction is necessarily different (otherwise it achieves no work) and this is why Derrida states that Deconstruction takes place, it is an event.[29] On the other hand, deconstruction cannot be completely untranscendental because this would make it meaningless to, for example, speak of two different examples of deconstruction as both being examples of deconstruction. It is for this reason that Richard Rorty asks if Derrida should be considered a quasi-transcendental philosopher that operates in the tension between the demands of the empirical and the transcendental. Each example of deconstruction must be different, but it must also share something with other examples of deconstruction. Deconstruction is therefore not a method in the traditional sense but is what Derrida terms "an unclosed, unenclosable, not wholly formalizable ensemble of rules for reading, interpretation and writing."[6]
[edit] Not a critique

Derrida states that deconstruction is not a critique in the Kantian sense.[27] This is because Kant defines the term critique as the opposite of dogmatism. For Derrida it is not possible to escape the dogmatic baggage of the language we use in order to perform a pure critique in the Kantian sense. For Derrida language is dogmatic because it is inescapably metaphysical. Derrida argues that language is inescapably metaphysical because it is made up of signifiers that only refer to that which transcends them - the signified. This transcending of the empirical facticity of the signifier by an ideally conceived signified is metaphysical. It is metaphysical in the sense that it mimics the understanding in Aristotle's metaphysics of an ideally conceived being as that which transcends the existence of every individually existing thing. In a less formal version of the argument it might be noted that it is impossible to use language without asserting being, and hence metaphysics, constantly through the use of the various modifications of the verb "to be". In addition Derrida asks rhetorically "Is not the idea of knowledge and of the acquisition of knowledge in itself metaphysical?"[30] By this Derrida means that all claims to know something necessarily involve an assertion of the metaphysical type that something is the case somewhere. For Derrida the concept of neutrality is suspect and dogmatism is therefore involved in everything to a certain degree. Deconstruction can challenge a particular dogmatism and hence desediment dogmatism in general, but it cannot escape all dogmatism all at once.
[edit] Not an analysis

Derrida states that deconstruction is not an analysis in the traditional sense.[27] This is because the possibility of analysis is predicated on the possibility of breaking up the text being analysed into elemental component parts. Derrida argues that there are no selfsufficient units of meaning in a text. This is because individual words or sentences in a text can only be properly understood in terms of how they fit into the larger structure of the text and language itself. For more on Derrida's theory of meaning see the page on diffrance.
[edit] Not poststructuralist

Derrida states that his use of the word deconstruction first took place in a context in which "structuralism was dominant"[31] and its use is related to this context. Derrida states that deconstruction is an "antistructuralist gesture"[31] because "Structures were to be undone, decomposed, desedimented."[31] At the same time for Derrida deconstruction is also a "structuralist gesture"[31] because it is concerned with the structure of texts. So for Derrida deconstruction involves a certain attention to structures"[31] and tries to understand how an 'ensemble' was constituted."[27] As both a structuralist and an antistructuralist gesture deconstruction is tied up with what Derrida calls the "structural problematic."[31] The structural problematic for Derrida is the tension between genesis, that which is "in the essential mode of creation or movement,"[32] and structure, "systems, or complexes, or static configurations."[33] An example of genesis would be the sensory ideas from which knowledge is then derived in the empirical epistemology. An example of structure would be a binary opposition such as good and evil where the meaning of each element is established, at least partly, through its relationship to the other element. For Derrida, Genesis and Structure are both inescapable modes of description, there are some things that "must be described in terms of structure, and others which must be described in terms of genesis,"[33] but these two modes of description are difficult to reconcile and this is the tension of the structural problematic. In Derrida's own words the structural problematic is that "beneath the serene use of these concepts [genesis and structure] is to be found a
debate that...makes new reductions and explications indefinitely necessary."[34] The structural problematic is therefore what propels philosophy and hence deconstruction forward. Another significance of the structural problematic for Derrida is that while a critique of structuralism is a recurring theme of his philosophy this does not mean that philosophy can claim to be able to discard all structural aspects. It is for this reason that Derrida distances his use of the term deconstruction from poststructuralism, a term that would suggest philosophy could simply go beyond structuralism. Derrida states that the motif of deconstruction has been associated with "poststructuralism"" but that this term was "a word unknown in France until its return from the United States."[27] As mentioned above in section on Derrida's deconstruction of Husserl Derrida actually argues for the contamination of pure origins by the structures of language and temporality and Manfred Frank has even referred to Derrida's work as "Neostructuralism"[35] and this seems to capture Derrida's novel concern for how texts are structured.
[edit] Definitions by other authors

The popularity of the term deconstruction combined with the technical difficulty of Derrida's primary material on deconstruction and his reluctance to elaborate his understanding of the term has meant that many secondary sources have attempted to give a more straightforward explanation than Derrida himself ever attempted. Secondary definitions are therefore an interpretation of deconstruction by the person offering them rather than a direct summary of Derrida's actual position.
Paul de Man was a member of the Yale School and a prominent practitioner of deconstruction as he understood it. His definition of deconstruction is that,"It's possible, within text, to frame a question or undo assertions made in the text, by means of elements which are in the text, which frequently would be precisely structures that play off the rhetorical against grammatical elements."[36] Richard Rorty was a prominent interpreter of Derrida's philosophy. His definition of deconstruction is that, "the term 'deconstruction' refers in the first instance to the way in which the 'accidental' features of a text can be seen as betraying, subverting, its purportedly 'essential' message."[37] (The word accidental is used here in the sense of incidental.) John D. Caputo attempts to explain deconstruction in a nutshell by stating that: "Whenever deconstruction finds a nutshella secure axiom or a pithy maximthe very idea is to crack it open and disturb this tranquility. Indeed, that is a good rule of thumb in deconstruction. That is what deconstruction is all about, its very meaning and mission, if it has any. One might even say that cracking nutshells is what deconstruction is. In a nutshell. ...Have we not run up against a paradox and an aporia [something contradictory]...the paralysis and impossibility of an aporia is just what impels deconstruction, what rouses it out of bed in the morning..." (Caputo 1997, p.32)
Niall Lucy points to the impossibility of defining the term at all, noting that: "While in a sense it is impossibly difficult to define, the impossibility has less to do with the adoption of a position or the assertion of a choice on deconstructions part than with the impossibility of every is as such. Deconstruction begins, as it were, from a refusal of the authority or determining power of every is, or simply from a refusal of authority in general. While such refusal may indeed count as a position, it is not the case that deconstruction holds this as a sort of preference".[38]
David B. Allison is an early translator of Derrida and states in the introduction to his translation of Speech and Phenomena that: [Deconstruction] signifies a project of critical thought whose task is to locate and 'take apart' those concepts which serve as the axioms or rules for a period of thought, those concepts which command the unfolding of an entire epoch of metaphysics. 'Deconstruction' is somewhat less negative than the Heideggerian or Nietzschean terms 'destruction' or 'reversal'; it suggests that certain foundational concepts of metaphysics will never be entirely eliminated...There is no simple 'overcoming' of metaphysics or the language of metaphysics.[39]
Paul Ricoeur was another prominent supporter and interpreter of Derrida's philosophy. He defines deconstruction as a way of uncovering the questions behind the answers of a text or tradition.[40]
Richard Ellmann defines 'deconstruction' as the systematic undoing of understanding.
A survey of the secondary literature reveals a wide range of heterogeneous arguments. Particularly problematic are the attempts to give neat introductions to deconstruction by people trained in literary criticism who sometimes have little or no expertise in the relevant areas of philosophy that Derrida is working in relation to. These secondary works (e.g. Deconstruction for Beginners[41] and Deconstructions: A User's Guide[42]) have attempted to explain deconstruction while being academically criticized as too far removed from the original texts and Derrida's actual position.[citation needed] In an effort to clarify the rather muddled reception of the term deconstruction Derrida specifies what deconstruction is not through a number of negative definitions.
[edit] Developments after Derrida

Authors other than Derrida have sometimes also used the term "deconstructionism."[43])
[edit] The Yale School

Between the late 1960s and the early 1980s many thinkers were influenced by deconstruction, including Paul de Man, Geoffrey Hartman, and J. Hillis Miller. This group came to be known as the Yale school and was especially influential in literary criticism. Several of these theorists were subsequently affiliated with the University of California Irvine.[citation needed] Miller has described deconstruction this way: Deconstruction is not a dismantling of the structure of a text, but a demonstration that it has already dismantled itself. Its apparently solid ground is no rock, but thin air."[44]
[edit] The Inoperative Community

Jean-Luc Nancy argues in his 1982 book The Inoperative Community for an understanding of community and society that is undeconstructable because it is prior to conceptualisation. Nancy's work is an important development of deconstruction because it takes the challenge of deconstruction seriously and attempts to develop an understanding of political terms that is undeconstructable and therefore suitable for a philosophy after Derrida.
[edit] The Ethics of Deconstruction

Simon Critchley argues in his 1992 book The Ethics of Deconstruction that Derrida's deconstruction is an intrinsically ethical practice. Critchley argues that deconstruction
involves an openness to the other that makes it ethical in the Levinasian understanding of the term.
[edit] Derrida and the Political

Richard Beardsworth, developing on Critchley's Ethics of Deconstruction, argues in his 1996 Derrida and the Political that deconstruction is an intrinsically political practice. He further argues that the future of deconstruction faces a choice (perhaps an undecidable choice) between a theological approach and a technological approach represented first of all by the work of Bernard Stiegler.
[edit] Criticism
A concern has been raised that this article's Criticism section may be compromising the article's neutral point of view of the subject. Possible resolutions may be to integrate the material in the section into the article as a whole, or to rewrite the contents of the section. Please see the discussion on the talk page. (November 2009) Derrida has been involved in a number of high profile disagreements with prominent philosophers including Michel Foucault, John Searle, Willard Van Orman Quine, Peter Kreeft, and Jrgen Habermas. Most of the criticism of deconstruction were first articulated by these philosophers and repeated elsewhere.
[edit] Michel Foucault

Michel Foucault was the subject of Derrida's early paper "Cogito and the History of Madness" in which Derrida makes the controversial claim that: In this 673-page book, Michel Foucault devotes three pages- and, moreover, in a kind of prologue to his second chapter- to a certain passage from the first of Descartes's Meditations. [... in] alleging- correctly or incorrectly, as will be determined- that the sense of Foucault's entire project can be pinpointed in these few allusive and somewhat enigmatic pages, and that the reading of Descartes and the Cartesian Cogito proposed to us engages in its problematic the totality of this History of Madness...[45] The audacity of Derrida's claim to problematise the whole of the History of Madness by working with such a small section of the text outraged Foucault. Foucault responds in the new preface to the 1972 edition of the History of Madness by complaining that after the initial publication of the text "fragments of it pass into circulation and are passed off as the real thing."[46] This comment may form the basis of the allegation that deconstruction does not adhere to conventional academic standards by failing to deal substantially with the texts it appears to criticise (see how deconstruction uses empirical evidence to demonstrate the limits of the transcendental meaning of a text in the theory section). Foucault also states in the appendix to the 1972 edition titled "My Body, This Paper, This Fire" that Derrida's deconstruction is a: [H]istorically well-determined little pedagogy, which manifests itself here in a very visible manner. A pedagogy which teaches the student that there is nothing outside the text, but that in it, in its interstices, in its blanks and silences, the reserve of the origin reigns; that it is never necessary to look beyond it, but that here, not in the words of course, but in words as crossings-outs [sic], in their lattice, what is said is "the meaning of being". A pedagogy
that inversely gives to the voice of the masters that unlimited sovereignty that allows it indefinitely to re-say the text.[47] This stinging rebuke by Foucault caused a rift between the two thinkers and they did not speak to each other for ten years. Foucault refers in this passage to certain claims that Derrida makes in Of Grammatology, though without quotation or citation to indicate that he is doing so. Foucault's mention of "crossings-outs" refers to the return to problematic terms under erasure (see the section on Derrida's negative descriptions of deconstruction). Foucault also alludes critically to the problematisation of presence in deconstruction as a reading of what isn't there in the text. This aspect of Foucault's argument may have encouraged Derrida to strongly emphasise the importance of fidelity to the text being deconstructed. Foucault's reference to Derrida's assertion that "there is nothing outside the text" is undoubtedly the basis of much criticism of deconstruction as being nihilistic, relativistic, a-political, or confined to the ivory tower of academia. In fact, this infamous quote is subtly but essentially mistranslated (as Foucault well knew, and thus this acknowledgement does not necessarily confute his argument), and literally reads "there is no outside-text (il n'y a pas hors-texte)," or, as Derrida himself paraphrased it in Limited Inc., "there is nothing outside context." Thus, Derrida does not argue that only what is written in the text is relevant to it, but rather that no text can or should be interpreted without considering the various "external" factors (historical, biographical, material, ideological, etc.) that contributed to its production. At the same time, according to Derrida, these allegedly "external" phenomena (e.g. "humanism," "the age of enlightenment," "logic," and, perhaps most importantly, "human nature") need to be considered as historically contingent (i.e. as subject to contextualization and thus critical reading) rather than as immutable and inevitable facts of life.
[edit] John Searle

Derrida wrote "Signature Event Context", a paper in which he critically engages with Austin's analytic philosophy of language. John Searle is a prominent supporter of Austin's philosophy and objected to "the low level of philosophical argumentation, the deliberate obscurantism of the prose, the wildly exaggerated claims, and the constant striving to give the appearance of profundity by making claims that seem paradoxical, but under analysis often turn out to be silly or trivial."[48] Searle also reported that Michel Foucault criticized Derrida's writings as "terroristic obscurantism": Michel Foucault once characterized Derrida's prose style to me as "obscurantisme terroriste." The text is written so obscurely that you can't figure out exactly what the thesis is (hence "obscurantisme") and then when one criticizes it, the author says, "Vous m'avez mal compris; vous tes idiot" (you have misunderstood me; you are a fool) (hence "terroriste").[49]
[edit] Jrgen Habermas

Jrgen Habermas criticized what he considered Derrida's opposition to rational discourse. Further, in an essay on religion and religious language, Habermas criticized Derrida's insistence on etymology and philology.
[edit] Criticisms in popular media

Popular criticism of deconstruction also intensified following the Sokal affair, which many people took as an indicator of the quality of deconstruction as a whole, despite the absence of Derrida from Sokal's follow-up book Impostures intellectuelles.[50]
Deconstruction has been directly parodied in a large number of literary texts. Writer Percival Everett goes further in satire, actually incorporating fictional conversations between a number of leading deconstructionists within his works. The campus novels of David Lodge, such as his novel Nice Work, contains a number of figures whose belief in the deconstructionist project is undermined by contact with non-academic figures.
[edit] Notes
1. ^ a b c Derrida [1983] p.1 2. ^ Martin Heidegger (1927) Being and Time, Introduction, part II.5, 21-23 3. ^ Derrida [1988] 4. ^ a b Derrida [1967] Of Grammatology pp.10-11 5. ^ a b Derrida, J., 2002. Positions. Translated by A. Bass. 2nd ed. introduction by C. Norris. London &
New York: Continuum. pp. 56.
6. ^ a b c d e f g h Derrida [1980], p.40. 7. ^ Derrida (1988) Afterword, p.136 8. ^ "Heidegger Life and Philosophy," BBC 9. ^ Cf., Rodolphe Gasch, "Infrastructures and Systematicity," in John Sallis (ed.), Deconstruction
and Philosophy (Chicago & London: University of Chicago Press, 1987), pp. 34: One of the more persistent misunderstandings that has thus far forestalled a productive debate with Derrida's philosophical thought is the assumption, shared by many philosophers as well as literary critics, that within that thought just anything is possible. Derrida's philosophy is more often than not construed as a license for arbitrary free play in flagrant disregard of all established rules of argumentation, traditional requirements of thought, and ethical standards binding upon the interpretative community. Undoubtedly, some of the works of Derrida may not have been entirely innocent in this respect, and may have contributed, however obliquely, to fostering to some extent that very misconception. But deconstruction which for many has come to designate the content and style of Derrida's thinking, reveals to even a superficial examination, a well-ordered procedure, a step-by-step type of argumentation based on an acute awareness of level-distinctions, a marked thoroughness and regularity. [...] Deconstruction must be understood, we contend, as the attempt to "account," in a certain manner, for a heterogeneous variety or manifold of nonlogical contradictions and discursive equalities of all sorts that continues to haunt and fissure even the successful development of philosophical arguments and their systematic exposition.
10. ^ Jacques Derrida, "'Genesis' and 'Structure' and Phenomenology," in Writing and Difference
(London: Routledge, 1978), paper originally delivered in 1959 at Cerisy-la-Salle, and originally published in Gandillac, Goldmann & Piaget (eds.), Gense et structure (The Hague: Morton, 1964), p. 167: All these formulations have been possible thanks to the initial distinction between different irreducible types of genesis and structure: worldly genesis and transcendental genesis, empirical structure, eidetic structure, and transcendental structure. To ask oneself the following historicosemantic question: "What does the notion of genesis in general, on whose basis the Husserlian diffraction could come forth and be understood, mean, and what has it always meant? What does the notion of structure in general, on whose basis Husserl operates and operates distinctions between empirical, eidetic, and transcendental dimensions mean, and what has it always meant throughout its displacements? And what is the historico-semantic relationship between genesis and structure in general?" is not only simply to ask a prior linguistic question. It is to ask the question about the unity of the historical ground on whose basis a transcendental reduction is possible and is motivated by itself. It is to ask the question about the unity of the world from which transcendental freedom releases itself, in order to make the origin of this unity appear.
11. ^ If in 1959 Derrida was addressing this question of genesis and structure to Husserl, that is, to
phenomenology, then in "Structure, Sign, and Play in the Discourse of the Human Sciences" (also in Writing and Difference, and see below), he addresses these same questions to Lvi-Strauss and the structuralists. This is clear from the very first line of the paper (p. 278): Perhaps something has occurred in the history of the concept of structure that could be called an "event," if this loaded word did not entail a meaning which it is precisely the function of structural or structuralistthought to reduce or to suspect. Between the two papers is staked Derrida's philosophical ground, if not indeed his step beyond or outside philosophy.
12. ^ Cf., Derrida, Positions (Chicago & London: University of Chicago Press, 1981), pp. 956:
If the alterity of the other is posed, that is, only posed, does it not amount to the same, for example in the form of the "constituted object" or of the "informed product" invested with meaning, etc.? From this point of view, I would even say that the alterity of the other inscribes in this relationship that which in no case can be "posed." Inscription, as I would define it in this respect, is not a simple position: it is rather that by means of which every position is of itself confounded (diffrance): inscription, mark, text and not only thesis or theme-inscription of the thesis. On the phrase "default of origin" as applied to Derrida's work, cf., Bernard Stiegler, "Derrida and Technology: Fidelity at the Limits of Deconstruction and the Prosthesis of Faith," in Tom Cohen (ed.) Jacques Derrida and the Humanities (Cambridge & New York: Cambridge University Press, 2001). Stiegler understands Derrida's thinking of textuality and inscription in terms of a thinking of originary technicity, and in this context speaks of "the originary default of origin that arche-writing constitutes" (p. 239). See also Stiegler, Technics and Time, 1: The Fault of Epimetheus (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1998).
13. ^ On this destabilisation of both "genesis" and "structure," cf., Rodolphe Gasch, The Tain of the
Mirror (Cambridge, Massachusetts, & London: Harvard University Press, 1986), p. 146: It is an opening that is structural, or the structurality of an opening. Yet each of these concepts excludes the other. It is thus as little a structure as it is an opening; it is as little static as it is genetic, as little structural as it is historical. It can be understood neither from a genetic nor from a structuralist and taxonomic point of view, nor from a combination of both points of view. And note that this complexity of the origin is thus not only spatial but temporal, which is why diffrance is a matter not only of difference but of delay or deferral. One way in which this question is raised in relation to Husserl is thus the question of the possibility of a phenomenology of history, which Derrida raises in Edmund Husserl's Origin of Geometry: An Introduction (1962).
14. ^ a b Derrida, J., 2002. Positions. Translated by A. Bass. 2nd ed. introduction by C. Norris. London &
New York: Continuum. p. 7.
15. ^ Derrida, J., 2002. Positions. Translated by A. Bass. 2nd ed. introduction by C. Norris. London &
New York: Continuum. p. 6.
16. ^ Derrida [1967] Of Grammatology pp.711, quote: On the historical understanding of language as
speech Derrida writes that "These disguises are not historical contingencies that one might admire or regret. Their movement was absolutely necessary" and that "Within this logos [i.e. the western tradition of philosophical thought], the original and essential link to the phon has never been broken. It would be easy to demonstrate this and I shall attempt such a demonstration later."
17. ^ Derrida [1967] Of Grammatology, at p.7 Derrida argues that writing has been considered "a
particular, derivative, auxiliary form of language in general"
18. ^ Derrida [1967] Of Grammatology, at p.7 Derrida considers the understanding of language as
speech "The system of 'hearing (understanding)-oneself-speak' through the phonic substance"
19. ^ Derrida [1967] Of Grammatology, quote: "the co-presence of the other and of the self" p.12. 20. ^ Derrida [1967] Of Grammatology, p.11 21. ^ Derrida [1967] Of Grammatology, p.6
22. ^ Derrida, J., 1981. Positions. Trans. A. Bass. Chicago: Chicago UP, p. 13. 23. ^ Derrida, J. 1973. Speech and Phenomena. Trans. D.B. Allison. Evanston: Northwestern UP. p. 5. 24. ^ a b Derrida, J. 1973. Speech and Phenomena. Trans. D.B. Allison. Evanston: Northwestern UP. p.
6.
25. ^ Gayatri Spivak in her introduction to her translation of Derrida's Of Grammatology refers to
"Cogito and the History of Madness" as a deconstruction.
26. ^ Derrida, 1985, p. 4 27. ^ a b c d e f g h i j Derrida [1983] p.3 28. ^ Beardsworth, R. 1996. Derrida and the Political. London and New York: Routledge. p.4. 29. ^ Derrida [1983] p.4 30. ^ Derrida, J., 1973. Speech and Phenomena. Trans. D.B. Allison. Evanston: Northwestern UP. p. 5. 31. ^ a b c d e f Derrida [1983] p. 2. 32. ^ Derrida, J., 1978. "'Genesis and Structure' and Phenomenology" from Writing and Difference trans.
Alan Bass. London & New York: Routledge. p. 194
33. ^ a b Derrida, J., 1978. "'Genesis and Structure' and Phenomenology" from Writing and Difference
trans. Alan Bass. London & New York: Routledge. p. 194.
34. ^ Derrida, J., 1978. "'Genesis and Structure' and Phenomenology" from Writing and Difference trans.
Alan Bass. London & New York: Routledge. p. 196.
35. ^ Frank, M., 1989. What is Neostructuralism? Trans. S. Wilke & R. Gray. Minneapolis: University
of Minnesota Press.
36. ^ de Man, in Moynihan 1986, at 156 37. ^ Rorty 1995 38. ^ Niall Lucy, A Derrida Dictionary (Oxford: Blackwell, 2004). 39. ^ Introduction by Allison, in Derrida, 1973, p. xxxii, n. 1. 40. ^ Klein 1995 41. ^ Powell, James and Lee, Joe, Deconstruction for Beginners (Writers & Readers Publishing, 2005) 42. ^ Royle, Nicholas, Deconstructions: A User's Guide (Palgrave Macmillan, 2000) 43. ^ "Glossary Definition: Deconstructionism." PBS: Public Broadcasting Service. Web. 05 Dec. 2010.
<http://www.pbs.org/faithandreason/gengloss/decon-body.html>.
44. ^ J. Hillis Miller, "Stevens Rock and Criticism as Cure," Georgia Review 30 (1976), p. 34. 45. ^ Derrida, J., 1978. Cogito and the History of Madness. In Writing and Difference. Translated by A.
Bass. London and New York: Routledge. p. 37.
46. ^ Foucault, M., 2006. History of Madness. Trans. J. Murphy and J. Khalfa, edited by J. Khalfa.
London and New York: Routledge. p. xxxvii.
47. ^ Foucault, M., 2006. History of Madness. Trans. J. Murphy and J. Khalfa, edited by J. Khalfa.
London and New York: Routledge. p. 573.
48. ^ "An Exchange on Deconstructionism", The New York Review of Books, Vol. 1 #34, February 2,
1984.
49. ^ The Word Turned Upside Down, John Searle
50. ^ Sokal, Alan (May 1996). "A Physicist Experiments With Cultural Studies". Lingua Franca.
http://www.physics.nyu.edu/faculty/sokal/lingua_franca_v4/lingua_franca_v4.html. Retrieved April 3, 2007.
[edit] References (Works cited)

Derrida, J. [1967] (1978) Of Grammatology, trans. by Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak. Baltimore and London: Johns Hopkins University Press. ISBN 978-0-8018-5830-7 Derrida, Jacques. Speech and Phenomena and Other Essays on Husserl's Theory of Signs. Trans. David B. Allison. Evanston: Northwestern UP, 1973. ISBN 978-0-81010590-4. Derrida, Jacques, Positions. Trans. Alan Bass. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1981. ISBN 978-0-226-14331-6 Derrida [1980] The time of a thesis: punctuations, first published in: Montefiore, Alan (ed., 1983) Philosophy in France Today Cambridge: Cambridge UP, pp. 3450 Derrida [1988] Limited Inc Derrida [1990] Eyes of the University: Right to Philosophy 2, pp. 113128 Derrida, Jacques [1983] Letter to A Japanese Friend, in Wood, David and Bernasconi, Robert (eds., 1988) Derrida and Diffrance, Warwick: Parousia, 1985 Klein, Anne Carolyn (1995) Meeting the Great Bliss Queen: Buddhists, Feminists, and the Art of the Self. Boston: Beacon, 1995. ISBN 978-0-8070-7306-3. Moynihan, Robert (1986) Recent Imagining: Interviews with Harold Bloom, Geoffrey Hartman, Paul DeMan, J. Hillis Miller. Shoe String, 1986. ISBN 978-0-208-02120-5. Rorty, Richard, "From Formalism to Poststructuralism". The Cambridge History of Literary Criticism, vol. 8. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1995.
[edit] Further reading

Breckman, Warren, Times of Theory: On Writing the History of French Theory, Journal of the History of Ideas, vol. 71, no. 3 (July 2010), 339-361.[1] Culler, Jonathan. On Deconstruction: Theory and Criticism after Structuralism. ISBN 978-08014-1322-3. Eagleton, Terry. Literary Theory: An Introduction. ISBN 978-0-8166-1251-2 Ellis, John M. Against Deconstruction Princeton: Princeton UP, 1989. ISBN 978-0-691-067544. Johnson, Barbara. The Critical Difference. 1981. McGinley, John W, " 'The Written' as the Vocation of Conceiving Jewishly". ISBN 978-0-59540488-9. Reynolds, Simon, Rip It Up and Start Again. New York: Penguin, 2006, p316. ISBN 978-0143-03672-2. (Source for the information about Green Gartside, Scritti Politti, and deconstructionism.)
[edit] External links
Look up deconstruction in Wiktionary, the free dictionary.

"Deconstruction: Some Assumptions" by John Lye A Bibliography of Literary Theory, Criticism, and Philology by Jos ngel Garca Landa (Deconstruction found under: Authors&Schools - Critics&Schools Poststructuralism - On Deconstruction) Ten ways of thinking about deconstruction by Willy Maley Archive of the international conference "Deconstructing Mimesis - Philippe LacoueLabarthe" about the work of Lacoue-Labarthe and his mimetic version of deconstruction, held at the Sorbonne in January 2006 How To Deconstruct Almost Anything - My Postmodern Adventure by Chip Morningstar; a cynical introduction to 'deconstruction' from the perspective of a software engineer. Jacques Derrida : The Perchance of a Coming of the Otherwoman. The Deconstruction of Phallogocentrism from Duel to Duo by Carole Dely, English translation by Wilson Baldridge, at Sens Public Ellen Lupton on deconstruction in Graphic Design Deconstruction of fashion; La moda en la posmodernidad by Adolfo Vasquez Rocca PhD [2] An alternative look at deconstruction, from a perspective of its use in popular culture [show] Links to related articles [show]v d eLiterary criticism L i t e r a Archetypal criticism Chicago school Darwinian criticism Ecocriticism r Formalism Literary particularism New Criticism Psychoanalytic criticism y Reader-response criticism Russian formalism Semiotic criticism Source criticism t h e o r y MCultural materialism Deconstruction Feminist criticism Marxist criticism
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Binary Opposition

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Binary opposition

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

[edit] Theory of binaries in Western thought

[edit] Deconstruction of Western binaries

[edit] See also

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(Redirected from Third wave feminism) Jump to: navigation, search

1 Overview 2 History 3 Activism and the third-wave agenda

4 The riot grrrl movement 5 Criticism of the third wave

6 Applied liberal equity discourse

6.1 Women, technology and progress

7 See also 8 References 9 Further reading 10 External links

[edit] Activism and the third-wave agenda

[edit] Reclaiming derogatory terms

[edit] Other areas of concern

[edit] The riot grrrl movement

[edit] Criticism of the third wave

[edit] Applied liberal equity discourse

[edit] Women, technology and progress

[edit] See also

[edit] Further reading

[edit] External links

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1 Schematic descriptions 2 Influences 3 Theory

4 Related works by Derrida

5 The difficulty of definition and Derrida's "negative" descriptions

6 Definitions by other authors 7 Developments after Derrida

9 Notes 10 References (Works cited) 11 Further reading 12 External links

[edit] Schematic descriptions

[edit] Related works by Derrida

[edit] Speech and Phenomena

[edit] Writing and Difference

[edit] Derrida's later work

[edit] The difficulty of definition and Derrida's "negative" descriptions

[edit] Not a method

[edit] Not a critique

[edit] Not an analysis

[edit] Not poststructuralist

[edit] Definitions by other authors

Richard Ellmann defines 'deconstruction' as the systematic undoing of understanding.

[edit] Developments after Derrida

[edit] The Yale School

[edit] The Inoperative Community

[edit] The Ethics of Deconstruction

[edit] Derrida and the Political

[edit] Michel Foucault

[edit] John Searle

[edit] Jrgen Habermas

[edit] Criticisms in popular media