浅析“解构理论”对西方文学批评的影响

浅析“解构理论”对西方文学批评的影响［Abstract］French philosopher Derrida’s deconstruction theory frees us from the established modes of thinking and the restraints of old structures. He encourages us to deconstruct the long tradition of western metaphysics and challenge those seemingly unalterable cultural concepts. Deconstruction theory has great influence on western literary criticism because contemporary literary criticism focuses more on the metaphysical sides of the structure of knowledge than on the form or structure of literary work.［Key words］Derrida,deconstruction,literature criticism,philosophy,languageDerrida is the first name comes to the minds of the scholars who research into contemporary western literary criticism, as well as Chomsky is the always conversation title of the experts who specialize in linguistics. Derrida was a philosopher who was famous in contemporary western philosophy and literature for his “Deconstruction Theory”. Although quite a few world-famous professors have brought forward: “Derrida’s work is not clear and rigorous, has been accepted (the philosopher can become) standards, because his theory, either is false, or is negligible.” Derrida’s deconstruction theory has much greater influence on western literary than any other contemporary philosophers.“Deconstruction” is a breakthrough in the existing mode of thinking of the theory, its vitality from its devastating. I avoided using “revolutionary” to describe it, because the “revolutionary” should be destructive, it is constructive. A revolutionary theory should have “broken-oriented and legislature in which” the distinctive characteristics. The function of this theory is not only to destroy the old guidance system, but also to establish a new system of planning. Deconstruction is different; it has a lot of destructive energy, the building that it is not pertinent to the matter.“Deconstruction” resulting from political instability, ideologically active in the 1960s in France which influenced by Marxism, structuralism, existentialism, but its theoretical system was rooted in the soil Saussure among Linguistics. Saussure had an “unprecedented” view of linguistic characteristics. Before Saussure, People all agree, or have no criticism on language and concept were inseparable. A word is a symbol, a kind of signi fied symbol. “山” in Chinese, “hill” in English, and “山” in concept are accordant. The symbol of word= object (“hill” in concept). Saussure has put forward symbolic language does not mean the physical concept instead. He has mentioned that a word was a sign which had two parts: identifier and concept. He named the former was “signifier”, and the latter was “signified”. Between the two, there was not necessarily linked. In this way, writing logo and the concept were divided up. Therelationship between them has become too soft and full of variables. This position to observe changes in language and social complexity of the relationship between the openings of a new window; a change of perspective, the outside world is a different picture.How come languages express the changes of the whole world? The linguistics before Saussure thought language was mimetic; it had no structure and rules inside. Saussure has put forward that language has its own rule. And what he has been looking for was: “In the seeking for all the forces which have the eternal language universal role, to sort out a broad historical phenomenon of all the general rules.” He denied that the language has replicability. It has its own phonetics, grammar and syntax rules. He has a very classic explan ation: “In language there are only differences without positive terms.” In other words, language is a symbol system which describes the pure relationship of the concept. For example, “pit” means “坑”, “pit” and “坑” do not necessarily linked. But because “pit” is different from “wit”, “lit”, “hit” and so on. As regards what is one word refers to, it is arbitrary and contrived.Derrida made a name for himself by standing on the shoulders of Saussure. He borrowed some linguistic concepts and made them unilatera l. On this basis, he built his own “Deconstruction Theory”. The most distinctive characteristic this theory is to emphasize the volatility of“water fair” liquidity and variability language. Because of the separation of “signifier” and “signified”, languag e no longer regarded as an objective record of the truth carrier. People can use language arbitrarily. In Derrida’s words, language became a “game”.The first time Derrida proposed the “game” was at a seminar of United States Hopkins University in 1966. The disquisition The Structure, Symbol and Game in the Language of Literae Humaniores which he read, is the manifesto of “Deconstruction Theory”. Derrida critically Levy —Strauss start with the structure of anthropology, first articulated the nature of the language of view. As a structuralist, Levy — Strauss thought that cultural behaviors in a certain area have the common features, follow a formula to express different ideas. What most interested the structuralists was to study the basic structure model of language and culture. On the surface, there is a great difference between them; but fundamentally, they can be incorporated into a basic organizational structure. Levy — Strauss has done years of Indian culture on-site inspection; he has made comparative researches of South America indigenous culture, Oedipus myth, and the Grail legend and he found that the three cultures have the common characteristics of original culture of human beings. His structural anthropology was very influential at that time.It was admirable when thirty-six-year old Derrida dare to challengethe big pots, but Derrida’s final destination was to challenge the whole western philosophy system. The Structure, Symbol and Game in the Language of Literae Humaniores has won reputation for Derrida. When he came back France from Hopkins University, he had published three works in only one year 1967.Derrida was a Jew who was born in Algiers. He started loving philosophy and literature when he was very young. At the age of nineteen-year-old, he began to study in Paris Normal University. As a “foreigner” in his study of Western philosophy, at the same time, he always maintained a certain distance. This “detached” help enhance his critical acumen, and he could see the Western philosophy even more thoroughly than Westerners. His criticisms were not only harsh, but also deadly ones. He thought some of the modern structural theories, as well as the whole of Western philosophy has repeated a serious mistake time and time again: they tried to build another new system while denying for other theory systems; they use a new core to instead old one with no exception. Derrida called it the Logocentrism of western philosophy. Structuralism and other philosophical thinking are not intrinsically different, because they all tried to use their own theories as the cores. From this point, they could explain the existence of the entire phenomenon this world or the universe, and these characteristics which fascinated by the core has been throughout western tradition —metaphysics.He described Logos chauvinist in this way: “In the Logos chauvinist view, the science and philosophy of the purpose is to understand the existence of objective truth in the world. Logos chauvinist expresses a request to return to the truth, without any distortion of the truth to directly face the desire. Whether this truth really to access or not, this truth has always been pursued by Logos doctrine.” Derrida thought the pursuit of the ultimate truth that the attempt is absurd, no theory can be expressed not only language but are not bound by it. Since truth is explained in the text, then it can only exist in the text. “There is nothing outside of the text.” The instability of language is bound to cause the variety and complexity of the text explaining.The eager of westerners’quest for the ultimate truth is confirmed in the thinking of religion in the west. In Christian doctrine, God is the conqueror of ultimate truth, the center of everything, which transcends time and space and to go bey ond all the “signified”, so it is the origin of meaning and thinking. Although Nietzsche declared, “God is dead”, but it is owned by God for the strength of worship is emerging in many forms.This desire had existed at the moment of western philosophy was born. Plato despised poets in Chapter 10 of his Utopia, he thought that they should be expelled from his ideal kingdom. At that time, poets didn’t create poems themselves, they repeated or record the folk oral culture instead, especially the epics. In this way, their creations were imitations. In Plato’s view: “It was an imitation of an imitation; it is two removes from truth.” Plato’s view that only face-to-face expression was reliable, retailing was not credible because it “absence”; Derrida deemed that w estern philosophy has always advocates “presence”, and considered it as the center.Oral language is direct dialogue with the people; their voices can be identified by the presence of words, the real “source”, and sound like “presence”. Writing was indire ct, their real views were hidden, cannot to rely on, the written form of language as “not present”. So the place of oral language is higher than writing, Derrida called it “phonocentrism”. Oral language is the “I” of the issue; “phonocentrism” is essentially “but I chauvinist”, which has been greatly inflated from the “Renaissance”.As there is center, there is also extension and non-center. Everything in the world is full of binary oppositions. For example, bright/dark, man/woman, white people/black people, emperor/subject, noble/snobbish, and so on. Derrida considered that western philosophy that the dualistic theory that the establishment of a rating system, the first yuan-dominated in binary oppositions, is the center, while the second is at secondary, passive and subordinate position. This dualism has already caused theestablished social structure stable, however, the rulers have always elegant, always the truth; mainstream culture is the only value culture, because it is promoted by the powers that be commended.“Deconstruction” trying to break with western philosophy by constructing cultural traditions, negated the existence of “a transcendental signified”. Derrida denied anything that was center and invariable; the meaning of “presence” cannot creat e by itself, or enduring. He has always made sense in the middle of fissile uninterrupted, in the moment has changed, so have the significance will be indefinitely “deferred”. Fixed meaning was removed, leaving only the “difference”. Derrida has created a French word —Differance —to desribe this elusive conception. In French, the Defferer has the meaning of “deferred”, “postpone” or “different”, “divide”. This word Difference has give a fascinating, but also very vivid generalization of “Deconstruction Theory” which created by Derrida. The meaning which refers to literal symbol is always unstable.What Derrida’s most interested in was not literature criticism but western philosophy. His deconstruction theory frees us from the established modes of thinking and the restraints of old structures. He encourages us to deconstruct the long tradition of western metaphysics and challenge those seemingly unalterable cultural concepts.Deconstruction theory has great influence on western literary criticism because contemporary literary criticism focuses more on the metaphysical sides of the structure of knowledge than on the form or structure of literary work. Leonard Jackson has said that modern literary theory focuses more on the metaphysical side of the structure of knowledge than on the form or structure of literary work. Literary criticism has become “a domain of conscious paradox which eschews reductive and mechanical explanations” of literature and becomes an alternative to metaphysics, an oppositional ideology. We can easily find that “Critical” is weakening, “philosophy” is strengthening in contemporary literary criticism. The criticized horizon is much broader than in the past, involving almost every fields of literae humaniores.“Deconstruction” refuses to re cognize the structure relationship that one side is superior to the other in the binary oppositions; there is only difference between them, and this difference happening all the time. The deconstruction critics, such as Paul de Man, J. Hillis Miller, and Geoffrey Harman, all attempted to express the uncertainty in deconstruction methods. They set out the dualistic relationships in literature works, and then give a careful observation after reversed them, and to find out what fundamental changes will be happen, to prove the meaning of the “deferred” forever by digging through which potential conflicts. The problem of this criticism method was it only focuses on the explanationof the weak point and self-contradiction. It has caused the literary criticism becomes a literary game which in the self-denial process. So many critics and scholars repulsed this criticism method which cannot be found the right answer. But this is just the essence but the limit of deconstruction. The best way to get out of the limitations is to combine “Deconstruction Theory” and other works of literature theory together, and made the “Deconstruction Theory” play the role of pioneer in literary criticism.The original meaning of “Deconstruction” is “explode the structure” which means opening the trails, cleaning the site, after that the work will be completed by others. We will be able to combine “Deconstruction” and the “New Historicism”, “Feminist Criticism”, “Reader Criticism”, “Marxist Criticism” together, and to integrate some const ructive and perspective literary criticism (Actually, Deconstruction has influenced on these criticism theories in the process of their creating). It is undeniable that the “Deconstruction Theory” has promoted boldly oppugning and freely questioning; it ca n lead us to “go beyond conventional ideas” and found some new problems. For instant, Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice sings the praises of the wisdom, kindness, talent and eloquence Portia; explodes Shylock’s greed, ignorance, stereotypes and vengefulness. We may change a perspective, to reverse the relation between them, and seriously listen to the statement of Shylock, identifythe lines of Shakespeare in a sense, unconsciously revealed the contradictory signs, perhaps we will discover some interpretations which are “contrary to common sense,” but is “refreshing” and exciting. In the late 1970s, “New Historicist” re-raised this big historical flag in the rise in the United States, and criticized the narrow of “New Criticism” the in the works which completely out of culture and history. Literature is a refraction of life, but also the active participation of lives. Only concentrating on the artistic value of works, but historical literary criticism means it has great limitations. “New Historicists” oppo sed to make literature and history against each other, because literature had its historic, it was also a text in history. They attempted to establish a new “cultural poetics”, which displayed a panoramic historical marshland from different cultural perspectives; they began with the desire to speak with the dead. They tried to do their utmost to broaden their horizons, according to avoid the “elite’s will to re-tell history and to say in their jargons, the word history is not the capital, and numerous historical lowercase truly constitute the colorful history of mankind. In virtue of the power of “Deconstruction Theory”, “New Historical Criticism” has established the “hierarchy formed” in deconstruction literary history. They re-scanned the various notes of mainstream literature, pointed out the one-sidedness and limitations, and put more cultural factors into the study of the analysis of works.“Deconstruction” is opposed to any center exists, it is not a constructive idea, but it can be an effective method to read and criticized strategy. In literary criticism practice, we can take advantage of its “destructive” to the smash the shackles of ideology or monastery, then with the other literary criticism theory, enrich and enhance the performance of literary criticism, so that they are more energetic, more exciting.【References 】［1］Keesey, Donald. 1994. Contexts for Criticism［M］.California: Mayfield.[2] Selden, Raman. 1989. Practicing Theory and Reading Literature: An Introduction［M］.New York: Harvester WHEATSHEAF.[3] Veeser, H. Aram. 1989. The New Historicism［M］.New York: Routlege.[4] 包亚明，何佩群.德里达访谈录——一种疯狂守护着思想［M］.上海人民出版社，1996.[5] 索绪尔.普通语言学教程［M］.商务印书馆，1987.浅析“解构理论”对西方文学批评的影响［摘要］法国哲学家德里达的“解构理论”促使我们跳出现存思维模式，挣脱一切已经确立的结构束缚。