SITING TRANSLATION- Tejaswini Niranjana

This blog is a response to a task assigned by Dr. Dilip Barad Sir. The syllabus of the Department of English, MKBU includes paper no.- 208 Comparative Literature and Translation studies which includes around 9 articles. We (students) are assigned a task of classroom presentation of assigned articles in a pair. In this blog we are supposed to write abstract, key points / arguments and concluding remarks on all two articles of Unit 4 of paper Comparative Literatures and Translation Studies. It also includes the recording of class presentations presented by respective students. Blogger and her partner have made a presentation on the third article, presentation and a video of a particular article is embedded (as per the task).

ARTICLE 1

SITING TRANSLATION

History, Post- Structuralism and The Colonial Content

Tejaswini Niranjana

This article is an Introduction chapter of Tejaswanini’s book Siting Translation. It is divided into three parts:

1. Situating Translation
2. Translation as Interpellation
3. The Question of “History”

SITUATING TRANSLATION

In a post-colonial context the problematic of translation becomes a significant site for raising questions of representation, power, and historicity, the asymmetry and inequality of relations between peoples, races, languages. Conventionally, translation depends on the Western philosophical notions of reality, representation, and knowledge. Reality is seen as something unproblematic, "out there"; knowledge involves a representation of this reality; and representation provides direct, unmediated access to a transparent reality.

Jacques Derrida suggests-

They come out of and circulate through various discourses in several registers, providing a "conceptual network in which philosophy itself has been constituted." In forming a certain kind of subject, in presenting particular versions of the colonized, translation brings into being overarching concepts of reality and representation.

Translation functions as a transparent presentation of something that already exists, although the "original" is actually brought into being through translation. Paradoxically, translation also provides a place in "history" for the colonized. Tejaswini’s concern here is to explore the place of translation in contemporary Euro-American literary theory through a set of interrelated readings. She argues that the deployment of "translation" in the colonial and post-colonial contexts shows us a way of questioning some of the theoretical emphases of post-structuralism. the larger context of the “crisis" in "English'' that is a consequence of the impact of structuralism and post-structuralism on literary studies in a rapidly decolonizing world.

Tejaswini proposes to make a modest beginning by examining the “uses” of translation. The rethinking of translation becomes an important task in a context where it has been used since the European Enlightenment to underwrite practices of subjectification, especially for colonized peoples.

In my writing, translation refers to

(a) the problematic of translation that authorizes and is authorized by certain classical notions of representation and reality; and

(b) the problematic opened up by the post-structuralist critique of the earlier one, and that makes translation always the "more," or the supplement, in Derrida's sense.

This study of translation explores the positioning of the obsessions and desires of translation, and describes the economies within which the sign of translation circulates . The concern is to probe the absence, lack, or repression of an awareness of asymmetry and historicity in several kinds of writing on translation. A representation thus does not represent an "original"; rather, it re-presents that which is always already represented.

Aspect of post-structuralism is a rethinking of translation is its critique of historicism, which shows the genetic and teleological nature of traditional historiography. The essay questions the withholding of reciprocity and the essentializing of “difference”.

TRANSLATION AS INTERPELLATION

In the projects of William jones- who arrived in India in 1783 to take his place on the bench of the Supreme Court in Calcutta- that translation would serve “to domestic the Orient and thereby turn it into a province of European Learning.” He came to India, declared that his ambition was "to know India better than any other European ever knew it.” The main concern in examining the texts of Jones is not necessarily to compare his translation of Sakuntala or Manu's Dharmasastra with the so-called originals. Rather, what Tejaswini proposes to do is to examine the "outwork" of Jones's translations.

The most significant nodes of Jones's work are

The need for translation by the Europeans, since the natives are unreliable interpreters of their own laws and culture.

The desire to ba lawgiver, to give the Indians their “own” laws; and

The desire to “purify” Indian culture and speak on its behalf.

In Jones's construction of the "Hindus," they appear as a submissive, indolent nation unable to appreciate the fruits of freedom, desirous of being ruled by an absolute power, and sunk deeply in the mythology of an ancient religion. In a letter, he points out that the Hindus are "incapable of civil liberty," for "few of them have an idea of it, and those, who have, do not wish it".

As a Supreme Court judge in India, Jones took on, as one of his most important projects, the task of translating the ancient text of Hindu law, Manu's Dharmasastra. In fact, he began to learn Sanskrit primarily so that he could verify the interpretations of Hindu law given by his pandits. In a letter, he wrote of the difficulty of checking and controlling native interpreters of several codes, saying: "Pure Integrity is hardly to be found among the Pandits [Hindu learned men] and

Maulavis [Muslim learned men], few of whom give opinions without a culpable bias". Even before coming to India, Jones had formulated a solution for the problem of the translation of Indian law. Writing to Lord Cornwallis in 1788, he mentions once again the deceiving native lawyers and the unreliability of their opinions. This obvious remedy is the substitution of British translators for Indian ones.

Apart from the fact that giving the Indians their own laws would lead in Jones's logic to greater efficiency and therefore to greater profit for England, there is perhaps also another reason for employing Indian law. This kind of deployment of translation, colludes with or enables the construction of a teleological and hierarchical model of cultures that places Europe at the pinnacle of civilization, and thus also provides a position, for the colonized.

Two main kinds of translators of Indian literature existed in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries: administrators like William Jones and Christian missionaries like the Serampore Baptists William Carey and William Ward. The latter were among the first to translate Indian religious texts into European languages. Often these were works they had themselves textualized, by preparing "standard versions" based on classical Western notions of unity and coherence. Their only salvation, the missionaries would then claim, lay in conversion to the more evolved religion of the West.

Grant contended that only education in English would free the minds of the Hindus from their priests' tyranny and allow them to develop individual consciences. The function of anglicized education was "to form a class who may be interpreters between us and the millions whom we govern; a class of persons, Indian in blood and color, but English in taste, in opinions, in morals, and in intellect." Macaulay's brother-in-law, Charles Trevelyan, wrote about how the influence of the indigenous elite would secure the "permanence" of the change wrought by Western education: "Our subjects have set out on a new career of improvement: they are about to have a new character imprinted on them."

As Gauri Viswanathan has pointed out, the introduction of English education can be seen as "an embattled response to historical and political pressures: to tensions between the English Parliament and the East India Company, between Parliament and the missionaries, between the East India Company and the native elite classes.

Translation is overdetermined, so is the "subject" under colonialism, overdetermined in the sense that it is produced by multiple discourses on multiple sites, and gives rise to a multiplicity of practices. European missionaries were the first to prepare Western-style dictionaries for most of the Indian languages, participating thereby in the enormous project of collection and codification on which colonial power was based.

THE QUESTION OF “HISTORY”

Foucault declares, "effective history affirms knowledge as perspective"; it may be seen as a radical kind of "presentism," which we may be able to work from. Louis Althusser's critique of historicism, which leads him, in Jameson's words, to formulate the notion that "history is a process without a telos or a subject," "a repudiation of ... master narratives and their twin categories of narrative closure and of character.

Derrida is claiming that there is no primordial "presence" that is then re-presented. The "re-" does not befall the original. "History," in the texts of post-structuralism, is a repressive force that obliterates differences in a chain that includes meaning, truth, presence, and logos. He has indicated more than once that translation perhaps escapes "the orbit of representation" and is therefore an "exemplary question." If representation stands for the appropriation of presence, translation emerges as the sign for what Derrida would call “dissemination”.

Since it is part of my argument that the problematics of translation and the writing of history are inextricably bound together. Derrida's double writing can help us challenge the practices of "subjectification" and domination evident in colonial histories and translations. Hybridity can be seen, therefore, as the sign of a post-colonial theory that subverts essentialist models of reading while it points toward a new practice of translation.

Video recording of this article's presentation, presented by my classmates Bhavna Sosa, Dhvani Rajyaguru and Hina Sarvaiya

Presentation of the article by Bhavna Sosa, Dhvani Rajyaguru and Hina Sarvaiya

I am sharing 'I am sharing 'Introduction _ History in Translation ' with you' with you.pptx from HinabaSarvaiya

ARTICLE 2

Shifting Centers and Emerging Margins:

Translation and the shaping of Modernist

Poetic Discourse in Indian Poetry.

E.V. Ramakrishnan

To watch presentation of all the articles CLICK HERE

I hope this blog is useful.

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Derrida and deconstruction; Deconstruction in practice

Hello! This blog is in response to a task assigned by Dr. Dilip Barad sir. In this Blog I am going to deal with my own understanding of deconstruction and going to elaborate deconstruction with examples. Derrida and Deconstruction, we learnt this topic in Flipped learning, to read my learning outcome CLICK HERE.

Derrida and Deconstruction

What is deconstruction?

It is a form of textual analysis. The theory of Deconstruction was introduced by the French Philosopher Jacques Derrida along with Paul de Man and his fellow Yale Deconstructionists; Harold Bloom, Geoffrey Hartman and J. Hillis Miller. Deconstruction is one of the important strings in Post Structuralism. Deconstruction had an immense influence on Literary studies (though this is more marked in the English- speaking world than in France) philosophy and Historiography. Gayatri Chakravarty Spivak was Derrida’s translator and had a major impact on Postcolonial theory and also became important element in Queer theory.

Deconstruction is a very difficult term to be defined; many of its practitioners insist that it is not a theory or philosophy that can be applied or can be defined in a set of propositions But its number of general principles can be identified.

Deconstruction relies upon extremely close reading of the texts under analysis and tends to refrain from introducing external evaluative criteria. Deconstruction can be called as an extreme form of Immanent critique. De Man states that it is not something that is added to the text.

Derrida says,

“Language bears within itself the necessity of its own critique.”

A literary text deconstructs itself because it simultaneously asserts and denies the authority of its own rhetoric.

Derrida was not the initiator of this theory but it is ancestry is traced in Friedrich Nietzsche that there are no facts, only interpretations and Marti Heidegger’s critique of the priority that is traditionally given to the present tense in attempts to discuss the nature of being. While Derrida’s one of the constant concerns is with ‘Metaphysics of Presence’; to read the absence in the present of presence. Also can be said that the ‘subject’ can be self- understanding and can express itself fully in speech. Derrida also criticizes logocentrism or phono centrism which says that speech exists prior to writing. Logocentrism emphasizes the privileged role that logos, or speech, has been accorded in the Western tradition.

He claims that speech is the primal and the full form of expression. Logocentrism ignores or conceals the fact that if writing is a supplement to speech then definitely something must be absent in the speech that has to be supplemented. Speech does not have a point of origin but it arises from an ordinary lack. Following Saussure, Derrida describes language as a series of supplements and substitutions But he argues that the theory of the sign is itself an instance of logocentrism.

While in the critic of the sign Derrida introduce a new word ‘Differance’

Difference= differ + defer

This demonstrates that language has one point of origin and on end. The ‘meaning’ of the word is always a product of the difference between signs and it is always ‘deferred’ by a temporal structure that never comes to end.

For e.g.: It is a tree because it's not a plant

It's dark due to absence of light

Women due to absence of masculinity

So, there is never a final reading of the text, every reading infuses a supplementary reading.

The universalist ambition of structuralism is also challenged by deconstruction’s emphasis on undecidable apereas which cannot be described in terms of sets of binary oppositions. E.G. Plato’s ‘PHARMAKON’ which means both poison and antidote.

Derrida’s Grammatology which in detail studies Saussure exemplifies deconstruction’s insistence on unraveling the logic and contradictions of the text itself. Derrida explains deconstructing a philosophical text means working through its concepts and logic in such a way as to discover and determine what it cannot describe, what its history has excluded in order to constitute it as what it is.

Paul de Man makes a similar point in his argument that if they are to be coherent and self- consistent, Literary texts must of necessity be blind to the ‘metaphors’ and other figures of rhetoric that constitute them as texts. Deconstruction’s rigorous examination of those figures reveals the weakness of the links that hold them together.

Deconstruction is a poststructuralist theory, based largely but not exclusively on the writings of Derrida. It is in the first instance a philosophical theory and a theory directed towards the (re)reading of philosophical writings.

This is my basic understanding about deconstruction. Further in the blog I am going to deconstruct some ads and some Bollywood songs

This is Dr. Dilip Bard sir's presentation which instructs ‘How to Deconstruct a Text?’

How to Deconstruct a Text? from Dilip Barad

Language bears within itself the necessity of its own critique

Deconstruction insists not that truth is illusory but that truth is institutional.

पैरों में पायल की बेड़ी से बंध के मैं ना रहने वाली

मैं अल्हड़ पुरवा के जैसी हूँ, परदेसों तक बहने वाली

मुझे गहनों से बढ़ के सपनों की चाहत है

जिन सपनों को सच हो जाने की आदत है

कट्टी है मेरी मर्दों से, यारी फ़िल्मों के पर्दों से

The above lines is from the Bollywood song “Param Sundari” from 2021 Laxman Utekar’s movie ‘Mimi’. Movie is about young ambitious woman who wants to be a actress and for money she opts to be a Surrogate mother for a foreign couple.

This is a stanza from the song sung by the female protagonist, the four lines of the song are very appealing that a woman is trying to come out from the traditional female role and loves her dreams. But the last line of the stanza again takes us back to the idea of limitations of women’s dreams. Dreams of beautifying themselves, dreams of being admired. In Contrast , dreams of male Bollywood characters are like ideal, sophisticated dreams. For example ‘Kabir Singh’ is a love story, male protagonist is toxic, still he is a top surgeon and is honest to his work, no image damage as a doctor, and lives his dream. . While the female protagonist dreams to have a happy life, being admired, money and to be beautiful. Another instant example is also a ‘Fashion’ movie.

Tarak Mehta ka Ooltah chashmah is a Hindi sitcom based on the weekly column "Duniya Ne Undha Chasma" by Taarak Mehta in Chitralekha magazine. It is produced by Asit Modi. This serial focuses on the members of Gokuldham Society who come from different backgrounds, It attempts to deliver a beautiful notion of India which believes in Unity in Diversity. .Gokuldham is also referred to as "Mini India" in the show. But, deconstruction is always about finding loops. Perhaps it shares the unspoken socio- political condition of India. The Serial has one ‘Muslim” character Abdul. And he has no place in Gokuldham society, he owns a shop outside the society. He is part of every occasion but not of society. The society which is called Mini India perhaps really tries to bring a critic of India’s religious (Hindu- Muslim) biases. Or perhaps it is speaking the language of authority and trying to set viewers mentally.

Fairness cream ads are majorly problematic. It prioritizes fairness, white skin for being a leading personality in any field. It downgrades the talent, and beauty is prioritized. Here is the series of ads for ‘Ponds white cream’ . It's a storyline in which a boy breaks up with his beloved and falls for a white girl. But comes back to the girl once she starts looking fair. This brushes the racist ideology in the human mind. If a girl wants love or a job she needs to be fair. This ad also brings out the idea of colonizers and colonized. Still the colonizers are colonizing us, this ad makes us feel beneath them. Especially to women, there are white skinned people who won't let have a dreamt or happy life. Continuous telecast of this type of ads boosts this ideology in the culture.

Even the taglines of beauty products are like; Fair and lovely taglines- “Badal do apni kahani” and “Guaranteed Fairness. Guaranteed Fame.” To change life, to have fame one has to be fair.

Even our Bollywood songs praising the white skin “गोरे गोरे मुखड़े पे, काला काला चस्मा”

सुन्दर हो और सुशील

रंग चांदी सा चमकीला

डिग्री भी हो फैशन भी जाने सोनिये

हो सीता जैसे नारि और जाने दुनिया दारी

पिया को सब कुछ ही वो माने

दिल से दिल्ली हो वो धड़कन से हो लंदन

ढूंडू में ढूंडू

मेरे ब्रदर की दुल्हन

मोहब्बत की हो वो गूगल

जो देदे हर क्वेश्चन का हल

नज़र के एक ही क्लिक से सोनिये

वाक पे सुनती हो जाने

ब्रदर को खुश करना जाने

जो सबके दिल में दुआ सी बस्से

मॉडल हो वर्ल्ड बेस्ट पर मिटटी हो इंडियन

ढूंडू में ढूंडू

मेरे ब्रदर की दुल्हन

Mere Brother Ki Dulhan (translation. My Brother's Bride) is a 2011 Indian Hindi -language Romantic comedy film written and directed by Ali Abbas Zafar. The above lines are from its titular song. In this line a male protagonist is singing the characteristics he wants in his sister-in-law (Bhabhi). It suggest he want a hi-fi women who is capable to stand in this hi-fi world but should not leave her traditional values like husband is everything “pati Parmeshwar” idea पिया को सब कुछ ही वो माने. He demands a beautiful lady shining like a diamond, knowing fashion along with education but she should also be like SITA (mythical character from Ramayana). Should be loving, responsible, modern and could also make or keep his brother happy. She should be all rounder but traditional ideal Indian lady characteristics should be there.

Here we can see the demanding society, a woman should be more than 100% no guarantee about the men.

The same film also has a dialogue.

So here I end my blog, I have tried my best to make deconstruction easier for the readers. I hope it was useful to you. Thanks for visiting.

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Derrida and Deconstruction: Flipped Learning

This blog is assigned the task of flipped learning about Derrida and Deconstruction. We are assigned the task of watching the selected videos, attempt a quiz, write brief answer related to it, write our understanding on it and to raise question/ bring own doubts.

Flip learning is the modern form of education. And it's the complete opposite of the traditional learning process. In this class work is done as homework and home work is done as classroom. This process is accepted in order to engage a number of students in the discussion happening. IN flip learning students carry out the research by their own or under the task allotment and discuss with teacher or ask doubts about in the classroom. It provides freedom to students to select their own atmosphere to study.

Derrida and Deconstruction

Video 1

Video 5.1 discusses Derrida and Deconstruction. It discusses the question like why is it difficult to define deconstruction? Is Deconstruction a negative term? How does deconstruction happen on its own?

Derrida himself questioned “is it possible to define something? What are the limitations or to what extent can we define anything?”. Derrida also claimed that all of his essays were attempts to define what deconstruction is, and that deconstruction is necessarily complicated and difficult to explain since it actively criticizes the very language needed to explain it. Actually, we are accustomed to clear cut definitions, we want definition, whereas it is not possible to define Deconstruction.

Deconstruction cannot be considered as a negative term. Why? Deconstruction (in a verb form) means "undo the construction of, take to pieces," 1973, a back-formation form. Basically deconstruction doesn't mean to destroy but to inquiry in the foundations. Derrida’s aim while introducing this theory was to transform the people’s way of thinking.

The reason behind the deconstruction happening on its own is - the conditions which give 'meaning' to the system, that very conditions put a limit to it. So, when the foundations of meanings are inquired, it break free the limitations. Thus, an inquiry into foundations destroys the institution. So we can say that deconstruction happens on its own.

E.g.: the term ‘emancipation’

Meaning of this word is - the fact or process of being set free but if we deconstruct this term inquiring its foundations it is to transfer ownership; i.e. going into another control from one.

Video 2

Video 5.2.1 discusses The influence of Heidegger on Derrida and Derridean rethinking of the foundations of Western philosophy. Derrida was influenced by Heidegger, Nietzsche and Freud for the deconstruction philosophy and He acknowledged them in his essay ‘Structure, sign and play’. He was influenced by philosophical ideas of Heidegger, The seeds of deconstruction were sprouted in Heidegger.

Heidegger argued that the western thought has neglected or repressed the question of Being of beings which has resulted in a deep crisis in the western civilization.

Derrida in the first book Of 'Grammatology'  (1968) argues that neglect and the repression of the question of writing in its conception of language as speech is another such blind-spot in the western thought and the rigorous pursuit of this question can similarly ‘deconstruct’ the tradition of western thinking.

Heidegger demands the destruction (Destruktion) of the Western philosophical tradition, which is not its destruction but total transformation.

Derrida continues and critiques the Heideggerian themes of radical rethinking of the very foundations of western thought by dismantling the metaphysical tradition and raising the key question of language and reinvention of the language of western philosophy. Heidegger in his later work points out that it is ‘language that speaks, not Man’ and that language is ‘the house of Being’.

Derrida gave the idea of Logocentrism while Heidegger shared the phonocentric idea.

Que: what were the themes of Heidegger and did Derrida continued them all?

Video 3

Video 5.2.2 discusses Ferdinand de Saussure and Derrida and talks about How does Derrida deconstruct the idea of arbitrariness? Concept of metaphysics of presence.

Saussure in his ‘Course in General linguistics’ work gave the relation between words and its meanings is not natural but conventional one. 'What connects a word with its meaning is the convention and the convention is always social.’ E.g.: mother; it doesn't have any natural meaning but it presents a connection with humans. It shows the arbitrariness of the meaning of a word. Any Word can be used to talk about anything.

Derrida deconstructing this idea points out that the meaning of the word is nothing but the other word, meaning is thought of something in our mind.

Metaphysics of Presence is a term from Heidegger which points out that when we consider being of something we often connect it with its presence. While Derrida pointed out that western philosophy is built on the differences of binary opposition- just like human language. Saussure also stated- there is no positive lament in language but only negative one. We recognize elements of language by contrasting it. Presence of something can only be understood by the absence of something. And this is the only method of Western philosophies. 

E.g.; Women? Absence of manliness; Dark? Absence of light

However, Derrida points out that these oppositions are not equal but hierarchic where the second term is considered either derivative or inferior to the first, the privileged one.

Que- Please explain Logocentrism and Phonocentrism in relation to deconstruction?

Video 4

Video 5.3 discussed about the Derridean concept of DiffArnce, Infinite play of meaning and Diffarnce= to differ and to defer.

Différance is a French term coined by Jacques Derrida. It is a central concept in Derrida's deconstruction, a critical outlook concerned with the relationship between text and meaning. Derrida says there is no ultimate or final meaning, it is a myth. It is a tendency of language to Postpone. If we search for a meaning in a dictionary we get another group of words not a meaning and we assume that we have grasped. Saussure says- sign is equal to signifier which signifies something but Derrida says- Sign is a free play of signifiers signifying nothing. Derrida calls it deferring. In Western Philosophy we assume that final meaning is grasped but final meaning is transcendental (beyond language) signified. Saussure 'sign' is equal to 'signifier' which 'signifies' some meaning; but Derridean 'sign' is 'FREE-PLAY' of signifiers, signifying nothing.

Infinite play of meaning suggest that there is no specific meaning to any word, another words is assumed as the meaning of the word

Eg.: Internet- money, hobby, attraction, advantage, share in business these are the meanings through which we understand words. But actually these words are a group of words. We also have to find its meaning, meaning of meaning. This way the infinite play of meaning continues.

DifferEnce/ DifferAnce= to differ + to defer

Differ is to disagree and defer is to put off or to choose to do something at a later time, postpone. Difference- it applies force, it's not an idea or a concept but force which makes differentiation possible, which makes postponing possible.

Que- Differance 'is force which makes differentiation possible, which makes postponing possible'- elaborate.

Video 5

Video 5.4 discussed structure, sign and play in the discourse of the human sciences and “language bears within itself the necessity of its own critique” statement from the same essay.

Quoted statement by Derrida sums up the deconstruction in itself.” It implies that structuralism began as criticism or attack on metaphysics on one hand and science (predominant of getting knowledge in the west.) on other hand.

Structure Sign and Play in the Discourse of the Human Sciences’ was read at the colloquium on 'Structuralism' at John Hopkins Uni.(1966). It inaugurated post- structuralism, going beyond structuralism. Essay is critic of Claude Levi- Strauss, a famous French Anthropologist who made structuralism very popular.

Derrida questions how Levi's is using the same assumptions that we find in metaphysics and science, in his own practice of structuralism? So structuralism is criticism of science and metaphysics on the other hand it is criticism of the same assumptions.

One word is used again and again so it doesn't go out of tradition, it has to work under the inherent legacy of that tradition; and this happens because of the language, because language contains all the assumptions coded into it. As we already saw, the final meaning can not be grasped; it can be promised or deferred.

So when a philosopher criticizes any system he uses the same language, ideas and assumptions. So he says structuralism falls prey to what he wants to pray upon (science and metaphysics). When you start criticizing something you start resembling that thing. And this happens due to language according to Derrida. As we cannot capture the final meaning of the language.

So any philosophical language contains blind spot, which asks for criticism and that applies as much to deconstruction also, that's why deconstructive writing is most of the time auto- critical. It questions itself

Que- Criticism doesn't go out of tradition. what does it say 'a word' or 'an idea' doesn't go out of tradition?

Video 6

Video 5.5 talks about the Yale School- a hub of the practitioners of deconstruction in the literary theories and the characteristics of the Yale School of Deconstruction.

During the 1970s, the Yale School has been a hub of the practitioners of deconstruction in literary theories. Yale University has played a vital role in propagating Derrida’s idea in America and the whole world. Earlier it was confined to continental traditions of European philosophy. It became a kind of new thing breaking on the scene after new criticism, and so it became famous. The four people Paul de Man, J. Hillis Miller, Harold Bloom and Geoffrey Hartman made it very popular. All these four are very different from each other in occupation but still Yale school played an important role for bringing Deconstruction in literary criticism, earlier it was largely in philosophy domain.

Important Characteristics: Looking at literature as rhetorical or figurative construct.

As Language is full of Figurative components, it becomes an unreliable tool for communication of meaning. Figurative puts language as a very problematic entity. So all four focused on the figurative components of literature and showed that literature can create multiplicity of meaning by focusing on various figures of speech.

E.g.: my love is like a red red rose, that's newly sprung in June.

No logical or rhetorical sense if we look at it logically but its use of figurative gives it a multiplicity of meanings.

Secondly, they question both the aesthetics as well as the formalist approach to literature; and also question the historicist and sociologist approach to literature.

They point out that language is not a transparent medium of communication as it doesn't take us directly to the society and what makes it non- transparent is figurative components. Materiality of signifiers is what creates aesthetic delight or illusion, Paul de Man argues that aesthetic is the very illusory effect of language and so is social and historical. So the people who read literature from sociologists as well as aesthetic approach for both deconstruction is very challenging.

Third important characteristic of Yale School is their preoccupation with romanticism.

They read romantic literature from the deconstruction approach and later give it to us. Romanticized literature uses metaphors and symbols but Paul de Man demonstrates that it is the allegory and metonymy which are the most important devices in romantic poetry. Thus, he wants to show that the whole romantic desire to transcend the difference between subject and object as in Wordsworth the subject is the poet just be current and object is the nature and so this desire for transcending this binary is achieved through the use of metaphors and so metaphor being more organic in romanticism but Paul de Man shows that its not metaphor but allegory that is more important in romanticism. His reading of Romanticism is very counter and conventional.

Que: how is Paul de Man proving that 'not metaphor but allegory that is more important in romanticism'?

Video 7

Video 5.6 discussed about the other critical schools like New Historicism, Cultural Materialism, feminism, Marxism and Postcolonial theories.

We will see the difference between the Yale school of deconstruction and how other critical approaches used deconstruction. Yale school was primarily preoccupied with rhetorical and figurative analysis of literary texts and in demonstrating that literary text has a multiple range of meanings so that was one of the most important preoccupations of Yale school.

While the other critical approaches like New Historicism, Cultural Materialism, feminism, Marxism and Postcolonial theories all of them have been influenced from Derrida’s writing. 

E.g.; Postcolonial theories fascinated by the ability to show that the texts of the discourse of the colonizers can be deconstructed from within narratives.

Feminist theory interested because it deals with how to subvert the binary between male and female and deconstruction provided tools to subvert patriarchal discourse.

Cultural materialism is interested in it to emphasize the materiality of language, Derrida emphasized language is material construct and it has an ability to unmask the hidden ideological agendas and program.

New historians are also influenced by it and of what Louis Montrose stated new historians are interested in reciprocal concern between textuality of history and historicity of texts so he meant that text itself is a historical context, being shaped by the history and what is known about history is also from text. Montrose points out about is historicity of texts and textuality of history’

We can see that Derrida has an impact on multiple approaches to literary criticism.

I hope my blog is useful.

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