This general transition from a belief in structures
with centers to a belief in decentered structures has, according to Derrida,
relevance in connection with what is generally called "human
sciences".
To validate this argument, Derrida takes up the
example of Saussure’s description of sign. In Saussure, the ‘metaphysics of
presence’ is affirmed by his insistence on the fact that a sign has two components
– the signifier and the signified, the signified which the mental and
psychological. This would imply that the meaning of a sign is present to the
speaker when he uses in, in defiance of the fact that meaning is constituted by
a system of differences. That is also why Saussure insists on the primacy of
speaking. As soon as language is written down, a distance between the subject
and his words is created, causing meaning to become unanchored. Derrida however
critiques this ‘phonocentrism’ and argues that the distance between the subject
and his words exist in any case, even while speaking – that the meaning of sign
is always unanchored. Sign has no innate or transcendental truth. Thus, the
signified never has any immediate self-present meaning. It is itself only a
sign that derives its meaning from other signs. Hence a signified can be a
signifier and vice versa. Such a viewpoint entails that sign thus be stripped
off its signified component. Meaning is never present at face-value; we cannot
escape the process of interpretation. While Saussure still sees language as a
closed system where every word has its place and consequently its meaning,
Derrida wants to argue for language as an open system. In denying the
metaphysics of presence the distances between inside and outside are also
problematized. There is no place outside of language from where meaning can be
generated.
Unlike Saussure, who just looked at structure as
linear, Derrida insists that all structures have some sort of center. He's
talking mostly about philosophical systems or structures, but the idea applies
to almost any structure. There's something that all the elements in the
structure refer to, connect to, something that makes the structure hold its
shape, keeps all the parts together.
He talks about ethnology as an example of a
decentering system. Ethnology (or anthropology) began as a way for Western
European societies to proclaim themselves as the "centers" of
civilization--to compare all other cultures to what Western
Europe had accomplished. That's called "ethnocentrism"
(to assume your culture is the measure or standard of all other cultures). But
then ethnologists started seeing other cultures as autonomous, as existing on
their own terms, and not necessarily in relation to Western European culture as
the "center." They started to see relative value of each culture, not
its relational value. This moment is the equivalent, in ethnology, to the
"rupture" Derrida talks about in philosophy.
Mostly Derrida uses this introduction of ethnology
as a way to get to his main topic, which is Claude Levi-Strauss' structural
view of the opposition between nature and culture. Levi-Strauss as a
structuralist saw the basic structures of myth (and hence of all aspects of
culture) as binary oppositions, pairs of ideas that gave each other value:
light/dark (light has value or meaning because it's not darkness, and vice
versa), male/female, culture/nature, etc. In looking at the nature/culture
dichotomy, Levi-Strauss defines "natural" as that which is universal,
and "cultural" as that which is dictated by the norms of a particular
social organization. The rule of binary opposites is that they have to be
opposites, so nature/culture, or universal/specific, have to always be
absolutely separate.
And here Levi-Strauss discovers what Derrida calls a
"scandal"--an element of social organization that belongs to BOTH
categories. The prohibition against incest is universal--every culture has one.
But, it's also specific--every culture works out the laws of incest prohibition
in its own way. So how can something be both universal and particular, both
nature and culture?
Derrida subverts the concept of hierarchy of binary
opposition created by Levi- Strauss. He (Levi) creates hierarchy of nature/
culture and says that nature is superior to culture. For him, speech is natural
and writing is culture. So Speech is superior to writing.
Similarly, Levi- Strauss has made the hierarchy
between artist and critic. He claims artist is originator but critic comes
later. Likewise artist uses first hand raw materials as engineer does but
critics use second hand raw materials. In contrary to him Derrida argues that
neither artists nor critic works on first hand materials, rather both of them
use the materials that were already existed and used. In this sense, there is
no hierarchy between them.
In short, Derrida means to say that meaning is
just like peeling the onion and never getting a kernel. Likewise, the binary
opposition between literary and non-literary language is an illusion. But the
prime objective of deconstruction is not to destroy the meaning of text but is
to show how the text deconstructs itself. Derrida's idea of no-center, under
erasure, indeterminacy, no final meaning, no binary opposition, no truth
heavily influenced subsequent thinkers and their theories. These theories are:
psychoanalysis, new historicism, cultural studies, post colonialism, feminism
and so on.
These things are good, according to
deconstructionists, because they deconstruct a structure. If the stability of a
structure depends on these binary oppositions, if you shake those oppositions
and make them unstable, you shake up the whole structure. Or, in Derrida's
terms, you put the elements into "play."
Once you deconstruct a system by pointing out its
inconsistencies, by showing where there is play in the system, Derrida says you
have two choices. One is that you can throw out the whole structure as no good.
Usually then you try to build another structure with no inconsistencies, no
play. But of course, according to Derrida, that's impossible--that's just like substituting
one center for another and not seeing that the center (or transcendental
signified) is just a concept, which has "play" like any other, and
not a fixed and stable "truth."
This leads Derrida to his theory of the bricoleur
inspired from Levi Strauss. He argues that it is very difficult to arrive at a
conceptual position “outside of philosophy”, to not be absorbed to some extent
into the very theory that one seeks to critique. He therefore insists on
Strauss’s idea of a bricolage. It is thereby important to use
these ‘tools at hand’ through intricate mechanisms and networks of
subversion. For instance, although Strauss discovered the scandal, he continued
to use sometimes the binary opposition of nature and culture as a
methodological tool and to preserve as an instrument that those truth value he
criticizes. Strauss discusses bricolage not only as an intellectual exercise,
but also as “mythopoetical activity”. He attempts to work out a
structured study of myths, but realizes this is not a possibility, and instead
creates what he calls his own myth of the mythologies, a ‘third order code’.
Derrida points out how his ‘reference myth’ of the Bororo myth, does not hold
in terms of its functionality as a reference, as this choice becomes arbitrary
and also instead of being dependent on typical character, it derives from
irregularity and hence concludes, “that violence which consists in centering a
language which is describing an acentric structure must be avoided”.
Thus, the bricolage is to keep
using the structure, but to recognize it's flawed. In Derrida's terms, this
means to stop attributing "truth value" to a structure or system, but
rather to see that system as a system, as a construct, as something built
around a central idea that holds the whole thing in place, even though that
central idea (like the idea of binary opposites) is flawed or even an illusion.
The person that does it a "bricoleur."
This is somebody who doesn't care about the purity or stability of the system
s/he uses, but rather uses what's there to get a particular job done. In
philosophical terms, I might want to talk about a belief system, so I refer to
God because it's a useful illustration of something that a lot of people
believe in; I don't assume that "god" refers to an actual being, or
even to a coherent system of beliefs that situate "god" at the center
and that then provide a stable code of interpretation or behavior.
I think about my playroom at home. My kids have lots
of toys. But at the end of the day, the playroom is a wreck. This is bricolage.
They make use of whatever is at hand to do or make whatever it is that catches
their attention at the moment. That is bricolage, and the kids are bricoleurs.
Bricolage doesn't worry about the coherence of the
words or ideas it uses. For example, you are a bricoleur if you talk about
penis envy or the oedipus complex and you don't know anything about
psychoanalysis; you use the terms without having to acknowledge that the whole
system of thought that produced these terms and ideas, i.e. Freudian
psychoanalysis, is valid and "true." In fact, you don't care if
psychoanalysis is true or not (since at heart you don't really believe in
"truth" as an absolute, but only as something that emerges from a
coherent system as a kind of illusion) as long as the terms and ideas are useful
to you.
Derrida contrasts the bricoleur with the engineer.
The engineer designs buildings which have to be stable and have little or no
play; the engineer has to create stable systems or nothing at all. He talks
about the engineer as the person who sees himself as the center of his own
discourse, the origin of his own language. This guy thinks s/he speaks
language, s/he originates language, from her/his own unique existence. The
liberal humanist is usually an engineer in this respect. I'm the engineer when
I try to clean up my playroom every evening and try to get all the tinkertoy
parts back into the tinkertoy box, all the legos in the lego box, etc.Bricolage is mythopoetic, not rational; it's more
like play than like system.
The idea of bricolage produces a new way to talk
about, and think about, systems without falling into trap of building a new
system out of the ruins of an old one (88b). It provides a way to think without
establishing a new center, a subject, a privileged reference, an origin. It
also inspires creativity and originality, making possible new ways of putting
elements together.
Derrida reads Levi-Strauss' discussion of myth in The
Raw and the Cooked as a kind of bricolage.
Play is Derrida’s way of simultaneously recognizing
the infinite range of deconstruction is possible not because there is an
infinite range of information but because the inherent quality of all
information is to be lacking and for there to be no suitable material
(information) with which to fill that lack. This leads to the notion of the
supplementary: “The overabundance of the signifier, its supplementary
character, is thus the result of a finitude, that is to say, the result of a
lack which must be supplemented” (207). Because positive, concrete
definition is impossible for any term, every term necessarily requires a
supplement or supplements, something or some things which help(s) it exist and
be understood. Yet, at the same time, the object(s) which the supplement is
(are) supplementing is (are) (a) supplements itself. Extend this web in all
directions and the relationship between bricolage, play, and the supplementary
begins to make sense.