[Framework Post] Week 6: Jacques Derrida & Deconstruction.

This week, I turn to the lecture given by Jonathan Roffe on Jacques Derrida and his famous deconstruction. Roffe aptly explains deconstruction as a process of “setting new ideas uneasily in the confrontation of the old”. In Brent Allpress’s follow-up lecture, Allpress ascribes four stages to the process of deconstruction, namely “opposition”, “reversal”, “displacement” and “reinscription”.

To understand what deconstruction means first requires one to understand that Derrida proposes that tradition binaries like presence/ absence, male/ female, day/night have deep-seated hierarchies attached to either end of a binary. What is questionable is why one would be given more power than the other: say for example, male over female. The process of deconstruction then involves the opposition of the traditionally felt power to reverse its role with the dominant, resituate itself in the context, resulting in not only a displacement of the old reading of what it meant for the dominant to be in that specific spot but also rewrite what it would mean for the unprivileged other to be in that context.

What is most interesting, however, is Roffe’s claim that the process of deconstruction is “all already going on” in a peculiar “experience of the impossible”, heralding a vision of an “other world” that isn’t so much a final destination but a process or at best a spectre.

I find it most useful to think of the process of deconstruction by situating it in the process of writing critical academic papers, often in the field of the humanities or social sciences. The concept of developing a thesis often begins with the very simple premise of arguing a seemingly arguable truth that is “not obviously or patently true, but one alternative among several” (Gordon Harvey, Elements of the Essay). In fact what most essays do is to shift previously conceived ideas into a different light to reveal or disclose new truths or ideas relevant to its context. This method of discovery is closely related to that of deconstruction.



References:

1. Allpress, Brent. Deconstruction In Architecture. RMIT. 6 Apr. 2006.

2. Harvey, Gordon. Elements of the Essay. 29 Mar. 2006.


3. Roffe, Jonathan. Introduction to Deconstruction. RMIT. 6 Apr. 2006.