Is this 'deconstruction' or 'literary analysis'?

[fluffybunny]

Can someone who is at least an English teacher please explain if I have got this right before I teach the basics of what 'deconstruction' means

[Tsuga]

I'm interested to hear the English Lit perspective on this. The analytic philosopher's perspective is going to be that Derrida did not add anything to the discussion and even moved it back from where Wittgenstein and Russell and philosophers of language had brought it and that it doesn't even really make sense, because if you're not referring to anything outside of the work itself, why bother? The continental philosopher's position, I cannot describe but I know there is significant debate about deconstruction, though Derrida himself said it was not a method.

 

My understanding is that deconstruction is to basically treat the terms of a work as references to things only within that work and to only criticize them from outside that work. So you might consider that your criticism of Neighbors as a short story full of left-wing stereotypes, and revealing that internal contradiction between different messages Winton tries to send, which may or may not come out of the stereotypes, is deconstruction.

 

However, I personally (and this is from a philosophical, not English literary, viewpoint) think that deconstructionism is... how can I say it? Wrong. I think it's not useful but more importantly incorrect. So I would say it was simply literary analysis which is much broader.

 

On the other hand, I, too, had to take English comp and lit, and I did whatever they wanted and when they wanted me to decompose [this just got liked so I saw that autocorrect changed deconstruct to decompose, lol!] something I decomposed it just like they said. Derrida, fairy-la, blah blah blah the signs oppose one another can I please have an A now.

 

(Note: I have read Derrida. I have read Wittgenstein. I have never read Neighbors. So this is all theoretical to me.)

[Corraleno]

Here is a very basic explanation of (one aspect of) deconstructionist reading, from Peter Barry's Beginning Theory text:

 

The deconstruction of a text does not proceed by random doubt or arbitrary subversion, but by the careful teasing out of warring forces of signification within the text.

 

[T]he deconstructionist practices what has been called textual harassment or oppositional reading, reading with the aim of unmasking internal contradictions or inconsistencies in the text, aiming to show the disunity which underlies its apparent unity...

 

[The first stage of deconstructive reading] involves looking in the text for paradoxes and contradictions at what might be called the purely verbal level... Internal contradictions of this kind are indicative, for the deconstructionist, of language's endemic unreliability and slipperiness.

 

The 'textual' stage of the method moves beyond individual phrases and takes a more overall view... looking for shifts or breaks in continuity... shifts [that] reveal instabilities of attitude, and hence the lack of a fixed and unified position. 

 

The 'linguistic' stage, finally, involves looking for moments... when the inadequacy of language itself as a medium of communication is called into question. Such moments occur when, for example, there is implicit or explicit reference to the unreliability or untrustworthiness of language. It may involve for instance saying that something is unsayable; or saying that it is impossible to utter or describe something and then doing so; or saying that language inflates, or deflates, or misrepresents its object, and then continuing to use it anyway. 

 

The deconstructive reading aims to produce disunity, to show that what had looked like unity and coherence actually contains contradictions and conflicts which the text cannot stabilize and contain. We might characterize it as waking up the sleeping dogs of signification and setting them on each other.

 

While it is easy to see why this process might be called "reading against the grain," it is misleading to suggest that the text has an obvious 'grain' or overt meaning which the critic has merely to counteract... tructuralist and post-structuralist reading practices are much at odds with each other: identifying patterns and symmetries in the structuralist manner discovers a united text happy with itself, whereas 'reading the text against itself' produces a sense of disunity, of a text engaged in a civil war with itself.

 

And that doesn't even begin to get into concepts like aporia, différance, intertextuality, privileging of binaries, etc. 

If you really want to understand deconstruction, then I would pick up a good book on literary/cultural theory. If you don't really care, and your planned analysis of "Neighbors" involves pointing out stereotypes and looking for left-wing bias, then I would just do that and totally skip the idea of deconstruction. There's really no point in setting "cognitive pegs" if those pegs are at best caricatures and at worst totally inaccurate.

[fluffybunny]

thanks

[The Princess and the Jedi]

In traditional literary analysis, you would look at the author's text first to determine the author's meaning and the truth he or she is trying to convey about life. You could also bring in historical context, the author's other works, philosophical trends of the day, etc. to further determine the meaning of a text.

 

In deconstruction, one of the main tools for analysis is to look at what the author didn't say to determine meaning. A simple example is, the author didn't mention the existence of God within the text, therefore the author believes there is no God. Now you can discuss the concept that this author is discussing life without God as a moral center. You can also look at another text say the author didn't present the female antagonist in a favorable light. You can either take that idea to discuss that either the author is trying to reverse a stereotype of women as nurturing and compassionate or you can attack the author and say he is presenting all women as evil and callous.

 

It is difficult for many people to draw the line between using deconstruction in literary analysis to add to the discussion of a text and using deconstructionism to disguise faulty logic or to promote a social agenda. It is important to help our students identify when it is being used and also to use deconstructive techniques wisely.

[Tsuga]

Based on what the English teachers are saying above, I feel my opinion of deconstruction as a philosophical position rather than method of literary analysis, is strengthened. If there is no champion for literary deconstruction beyond Derrida, who considered himself (okay, was) a philosopher of language and not a literary critic or English lit prof, then I would do deconstruction as part of a philosophy unit and not part of English lit.

 

Just trying to keep my discipline alive here, people. ;)

[Corraleno]

In traditional literary analysis, you would look at the author's text first to determine the author's meaning and the truth he or she is trying to convey about life. You could also bring in historical context, the author's other works, philosophical trends of the day, etc. to further determine the meaning of a text.

 

In deconstruction, one of the main tools for analysis is to look at what the author didn't say to determine meaning. A simple example is, the author didn't mention the existence of God within the text, therefore the author believes there is no God. Now you can discuss the concept that this author is discussing life without God as a moral center. You can also look at another text say the author didn't present the female antagonist in a favorable light. You can either take that idea to discuss that either the author is trying to reverse a stereotype of women as nurturing and compassionate or you can attack the author and say he is presenting all women as evil and callous.

 

It is difficult for many people to draw the line between using deconstruction in literary analysis to add to the discussion of a text and using deconstructionism to disguise faulty logic or to promote a social agenda. It is important to help our students identify when it is being used and also to use deconstructive techniques wisely.

 

No, the bolded is not an example of deconstruction.

 

One of THE most basic tenets of deconstruction is that the author's intent is both unknowable and irrelevant. A deconstructive analysis would not make such a sweeping, unjustified statement about the author's religious beliefs — beliefs which have no bearing on the analysis anyway. The idea that literary deconstruction aims to discover the author's intent or "attack the author" for the way certain characters are portrayed betrays a complete misunderstanding of the deconstructionist paradigm. See Roland Barthes' The Death of the Author.

 

Il n'ya pas de hors-texte is variously translated as "There is nothing outside the text," or (more accurately) "There is no outside-text." The focus in a deconstructionist reading is on the language and structure of the text, and it's relationship to other texts (intertexuality). Deconstruction aims to expose the linguistic and structural contradictions and conflicts that exist beneath the surface of the text and show how these destabilize it's apparent unity and coherence.

[Corraleno]

addit: I note that you have now completely changed your above post after most likely having second thoughts. Please think before posting anything nasty in the future. 

 

I don't think that my post was "nasty," and I stand by the sentiments expressed in it. I think that attempting to cover such deep and complex topics as post-modernism, existentialism, and deconstruction with an autistic 15 year old, when you seem to know very little about these topics yourself (and don't seem to be doing any real research beyond asking people here to give you a quick Cliff Notes summary you can pass on to him), is a rather pointless exercise. Covering these topics in a way that is not only incredibly superficial but often wrong does your son no favors. But since you've stated upfront in other threads that your agenda in this project is to show your son that these 20th century "worldviews" are destructive and dangerous and will "swallow your mind" if you're not careful, I gather that depth and accuracy are not high priorities here.

 

How would people react to requests like this:

 

"I really want my daughter to learn about Buddhism. I saw some Tibetan paintings of flying spirits, so I'm going to teach my daughter that Buddism is all about ghosts. We only have a day to spend on this, so I can't get into too much depth. Mostly I just want to show her how ridiculous and wrong Buddhism is. Can anyone recommend a short article or page of some religious text that talks about ghosts?"

 

"I want to cover American history in 8 weeks, but I really know nothing about it. Can someone give me a quick summary of the Revolutionary and Civil Wars? I'd like the info on the Civil War to be from the southern perspective, so we can analyze the northern perspective in a way that shows how wrong it was. Thanks so much!"

 

If those sound absurd to you, then you know how your requests about 20th century philosophy might sound to others. When you ask for a really short story — preferably funny! – that shows "extreme" existentialism, so that you can prove to your son that existentialism is a destructive philosophy that inevitably leads to despair, that is indoctrination, not education.

 

If you teach your son that pointing out the most superficial and obvious aspect of a 3-page story counts as "deconstructive analysis" (each of the clearly stereotypical unnamed characters = a stereotype!), then you have done him a huge disservice. Not only is that the polar opposite of deconstruction, but it hardly even counts as "literary analysis." It's like saying "Many of the characters in To Kill A Mockingbird are racist."  How is that even "analysis"? 

[fluffybunny]

Interesting that this is about deconstruction and the thread is deconstructing itself ?

[Corraleno]

Correlano, please do not reply to any more of my threads from now on and stop stalking me: haven't you got anything better to to? The inappropriate remark that my son 'has autism', when autism was not the title of this thread, was the last straw. Do you realise how we parents suffer already? Your heart is obviously not in the right place. If I could find a way to block you I would. 

 

To the other people who replied: thank you.  :) I am still a little confused, but I will ask at our local universities instead of here from now on. 

 

I was absolutely NOT trying to be disrespectful — I have multiple nieces and nephews on the spectrum, ranging from completely nonverbal to Aspie, and I have a kid with significant LDs and other issues. You have mentioned in multiple threads on these topics that your son has HFA and is extremely sensitive, struggles with reading comprehension, you need to be very careful about the materials you use with him, etc. That is relevant to the question of why you would be trying to teach a 15 year old high school student with HFA about a topic like deconstruction, when many grad students struggle to wrap their heads around it? Another poster made that exact point in one of your previous threads, which you ignored while continuing to ask for people to give you a quick "step-by-step" guide to deconstruction that you can cover in "one lesson." There is no way you are going to do this topic justice, or that you will be able to produce anything but a total parody of a deconstructive analysis if you don't know what you're doing. 

 

If someone posted that her son had severe dyscalculia, but she wanted to make sure he was exposed to linear algebra and discrete mathematics at the age of 15, and asked if someone could please summarize those subjects in a few paragraphs and suggest some problems for her son to solve (based on no more info than the few paragraphs provided), people would be wondering why in the world someone would do that???

 

That is the question here — why does a 15 year old who struggles with reading comprehension need to tackle an extremely complex and notoriously difficult branch of literary and critical theory???

 

[jeninok]

This learning guide by Schmoop breaks down Deconstruction in an accessible way.

 

http://www.shmoop.com/deconstruction/

 

I would say that while a passing familiarity with the concept may be useful for a high schooler, it is generally not something that is actually used before upper college courses and graduate studies for lit and/or philosophy majors.

[fluffybunny]

why does a 15 year old who struggles with basic reading comprehension 

 

 

It's wasn't part of the question. 

 

 

 

 

[Corraleno]

Third - and this is mainly so that other posters will not be put off by your comments - ds is well above average in everything in the latest SAT, and just 1% below the average line for his age in comprehension on the test: nothing to worry about. So, no he does not 'struggle' at all

 

I assumed there were issues with comprehension because you've specifically stated in other threads that he was below average in comprehension and you were looking for curriculum to fix that issue. You also asked how to explain to him that his skills in rote memorization do not equal intelligence.

...But he is below average in comprehension, according to the tests. (he has mild HFA if that has anything to do with it)

What would you do to help his comprehension levels?

 

 I have the program here, but I'm weighing up whether to use it. Is it worth doing just 8 weeks of it? And does it improve a teen's comprehension ability? Mine tests slightly below average for comprehension (but above for everything else). 

 

My 15 year old ds has HFA and can memorise enormous amounts of material, ie entire audiobooks....<snip> ... I know this is not intelligence as such, but rote memory. It's a hindrance as he doesn't think he needs to learn anything else: he knows everything!

 

... how can I explain to him that rote is not true intelligence. I need to know how to explain it, but can't find any useful vocabulary that he will understand with his limited experience in life.

 

This is the context for my question as to the point of trying to teach this student — in "one lesson" no less — about a complex and difficult branch of philosophy that he is unlikely to encounter again for many years, if ever.

 

Edited November 4, 2015 by Susan Wise Bauer
That was unnecessary.

[fluffybunny]

Bizarre!

[The Princess and the Jedi]

Here's another useful source with examples:

 

http://study.com/academy/lesson/deconstructionism-in-literature-definition-examples-quiz.html

[Pen]

Can someone who is at least an English teacher please explain if I have got this right before I teach the basics of what 'deconstruction' means to my ds.

 

If I take a short story, say Neighbors by Tim Winton, and I show that all the characters in the story are stereotypes, and argue that he is coming from a left wing position, am I doing deconstruction .... or literary analysis? I'm fairly sure it's deconstruction to do this, but I want to check with someone very knowledgeable. Lori perhaps? Anyone else?

 

Thank you! 

 

 

I was an English major if that counts for anything. I think you are not doing deconstruction in your example. To get a better idea of deconstruction why not get an example by someone, say Derrida or Harold Bloom, and read that with your son.  Some deconstruction passages are interesting reading in and of themselves.  It has been way too long for me to recall any titles I think a 15 year old might conceivably be able to approach and enjoy. Personally though, I would tend to leave it for college unless the child were very interested in this sort of thing. It isn't even necessary to cover in college for that matter.  Or maybe (I've not checked) there is a decent explanation of deconstruction on wikipedia that he can read, to just get a bit of the basic idea.

 

As to  what you what you are doing it sounds like it is just discussing what you know or guess about the short story and its author. That would be less than what a college level literary analysis, IMO,  would consist of, but might work fine with a 15 year old. When you say the characters are stereotypes, what do you mean by that? Normally that is a disparaging term, but didn't Winton choose to write about "types" rather than individuals insofar as he called characters things like "the young man" rather than naming them as individuals?  What do the characters seek and what do they find? How does this compare to other writings by the same author? What changes from the beginning to the end of the story? What story elements do you find? These are the sorts of things I might be asking for my 13.5 year old.

 

Have you read the book with a title something like How to Read a Book Like a Professor? That might be a fun way for you and your son to get into literary analysis.

[fluffybunny]

Thanks Pen. I'm the same as you: an English major but have forgotten most of it. :laugh: I remember reading a long 40 page essay by Derrida where he argues there is no centre. That's about it.

[Susan Wise Bauer]

Wow. You guys are bickering about literary theory?? I mean, transgender bathrooms I could understand, but...

 

Corraleno and fluffybunny, please cease to interact on this thread. Thank you.

 

 

[HodgesSchool]

Your approach to this story does not sound like what academic literary scholars would call a deconstructionist reading.  The differ/defer connection (embodied in differance) is at the core of Decontructionist thought, showing how power relationships are embedded in and replicated by our everyday language and rhetoric.

 

I would agree with the above posters who suggest deconstructionism is an extremely complex topic--one not generally appropriate for even upper-level college students until they have learned a great deal of advanced literary analysis.  What one winds up with at the end is not a persuasive argument (such as "I show that all the characters in the story are stereotypes, and argue that he is coming from a left wing position")  but instead the DECONSTRUCTION of a text's apparent meanings.  What is "decentered" or undone is the entire idea of meaning.  Instead, we're left with a shifting ground of ambiguity.

 

In addition to its complexity (and perhaps its lack of usefulness, as one of the above comments argues), deconstruction is also kind of behind the times.  It was definitely cutting edge 30 years ago, but not anymore.

 

Is it possible that Australian educators are referring to something else?  Do they possibly just mean looking beyond the obvious words on the page? 

 

It seems to me that a broader term like "literary analysis" might be much more appropriate for what you are doing/teaching.  The term "literary analysis" includes deconstruction as well as New Criticism, New Historicism, reader response theory, structuralism, etc. etc.  It can also be used in a broad way to mean the identification of formal elements in a text.

 

I'll add my strong recommendation to teach "close reading" as the main element of literary training.  Teach it deeply and intensely.  It is by far the most important tool in a literary scholar's bag of tricks, but it is also extremely useful to students and professionals in almost every discipline and career.

[JoJosMom]

Correlano, please do not reply to any more of my threads from now on and stop stalking me: haven't you got anything better to to? The inappropriate remark that my son 'has autism', when autism was not the title of this thread, was the last straw. Do you realise how we parents suffer already? Your heart is obviously not in the right place. If I could find a way to block you I would. 

 

To the other people who replied: thank you.  :) I am still a little confused, but I will ask at our local universities instead of here from now on. 

 

fluffybunny:  At the top of the page, there is a down arrow next to your username.  Click that and then select "My Settings."  On the left side of the screen, select " 'Ignore' Preferences." Copy and paste the user name of the person you want to block into the box (copy and paste will prevent typos.)  Press "Save Changes."  HTH.

[fluffybunny]

Thank you so much JoJosMom: done! 

 

 

[fluffybunny]

Is it possible that Australian educators are referring to something else?  Do they possibly just mean looking beyond the obvious words on the page?

 

 

I'm starting to wonder the same thing. I've been looking through the ANC and viewing how the school puts it into action, and it's a little vague, eg (this is high school English):  

 

Literacy

• deconstruct a range of generic structures and text forms, ensuring that students are able to reproduce these (from the perspective of being able to manipulate language for a range of purposes AS WELL as to provide students with the skills to deconstruct these so that they increase their critical literacy skills

Language

• includes the specific teaching of grammar, punctuation and spelling (as they are relevant to the deconstructing of text types and genres)

 

 

[Pen]

 

 

 

 

• deconstruct a range of generic structures and text forms, ensuring that students are able to reproduce these (from the perspective of being able to manipulate language for a range of purposes AS WELL as to provide students with the skills to deconstruct these so that they increase their critical literacy skills

Language

• includes the specific teaching of grammar, punctuation and spelling (as they are relevant to the deconstructing of text types and genres)

 

 

 

Who wrote that?  It sounds like utter gobbledygook educatorese.  The author seems to have learned to manipulate language to achieve a maximal amount of obfuscatory opacity.

 

I suggest you speak to a public school teacher there and find out what they are actually teaching, or start a thread seeking input from fellow Aussies on what is needed for literature in Aus. high school level. 

[fluffybunny]

Who wrote that?

 

It's from a high school in Canberra. But 'deconstruction' can be found on most high schools' descriptions. 

 

I even found one for 10th grade for the Health Curriculum: "The skills that are developed in English help students critically analyse a range of health and physical activity texts to assess them for accuracy and reliability, as well as for deconstructing the subtleties of health messaging."  

 

More here: 

"deconstructing and sequencing teaching to focus on the steps that lead to new knowledge, deeper understandings and/or more sophisticated skill"

 

So it seems that the word "deconstruction" can mean anything. Deconstruction has been deconstructed!

[JoJosMom]

  The author seems to have learned to manipulate language to achieve a maximal amount of obfuscatory opacity.

 

 

:lol:

[Deee]

As someone else who has waded through the English section of the Australian National Curriculum, I can confirm that obfuscation seems to be the primary goal. Very high gobblygook index. My cousin is a high school English teacher. She can't understand it either, which makes me feel better.

My understanding of "deconstruction" in the syllabus is more akin to close reading - why that word instead of another, what else could that word mean, is it an allusion, is it culturally loaded, is its use intentional, etc. Easiest to teach using poetry. Its too much in a longer text, and I remain convinced that much of it is supposition. I wouldn't teach it as one lesson, but rather as a gradual process of increasing the close examination of a text. Pick one pivotal word and discuss it. Of course, not all authors require that sort of close examination and you have to be really careful not to infer something that isn't there. Your own biases, if you like (I'm a scientist - I have a strong aversion to bias). Some kids really struggle with this. Its not so much a comprehension or maturity thing as the result of cultural exposure - the more you know, the more you can see. It is harder for black and white thinkers and those who don't obfuscate well themselves (in part I think because they can't see any value in being so bloody obtuse)
D

[Tsuga]

fluffybunny: At the top of the page, there is a down arrow next to your username. Click that and then select "My Settings." On the left side of the screen, select " 'Ignore' Preferences." Copy and paste the user name of the person you want to block into the box (copy and paste will prevent typos.) Press "Save Changes." HTH.

Yep. Not that I personally feel the need to ignore anyone on this thread but I was going to suggest that. You saved me time!

[Tsuga]

And I really don't think obfuscation is the goal. Derrida was doing PhD + level philosophy.

 

I don't agree with his theory on thought and meaning, but I think calling it gobbledygook is like calling quantum physics gobbledygook.

 

It's actually really hard to do advanced philosophy.

 

The fact that Australia has this as a high school level goal speaks to the bias of their curricular developers or very high expectations of students.

[Tsuga]

 

It's from a high school in Canberra. But 'deconstruction' can be found on most high schools' descriptions.

 

I even found one for 10th grade for the Health Curriculum: "The skills that are developed in English help students critically analyse a range of health and physical activity texts to assess them for accuracy and reliability, as well as for deconstructing the subtleties of health messaging."

 

More here:

"deconstructing and sequencing teaching to focus on the steps that lead to new knowledge, deeper understandings and/or more sophisticated skill"

 

So it seems that the word "deconstruction" can mean anything. Deconstruction has been deconstructed!

Maybe they are talking about analysis and not deconstructing in the deconstructionist sense.

[fluffybunny]

I got in contact with someone at the top of the ANC and asked about all this and they were very helpful. The conclusion is that, although teachers and highschool syllabi commonly use the expression; "deconstruct this text," they don't actually mean deconstruct in the way that Derrida meant it. The word has broadened out to mean "look for implicit/hidden values."

 

So, my hunch was right: ds needs to know the meaning of this word, plus how it is now used broadly, before moving on to senior high. 

 

 

It tends to undercut love of literature, and the more necessary ability to analyze a text. 

 

 

Absolutely.