Jacques Derrida Structure Sign and Play in the Discourse of Human Sciences
Jacques Derrida (1930-2004) first presented ‘Structure, Sign, and Play in the Discourse of Human Sciences’ as a paper in a conference titled ‘The Language of Criticism and the Sciences of Man’,held at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, USA in 1966. This lecture was later published as a chapter in one of Derrida’s seminal works ‘Writing and Difference’ (1967). Derrida, in ‘Structure, Sign, and Play in the Discourse of Human Sciences’ appraise Structuralism for repressing the “structurality of structure” and in his critique of structuralism, looks at structure diachronically, i.e. both historically and synchronically (caught in a particular frame at a particular point in time).
Derrida‟s essay divides into two parts:
1. “The structurality of structure”: An examination of the shifting relationships between structure and centre, and their implications. The results of this examination is roughly the following: whereas traditionally, a structure was conceived of as grounded and stabilised by a moment of presence called the centre, we are now at a time when that centring has been called into question. And to call the centre into question is to open up a can of worms, destabilising and calling inot question the most basic building blocks of thought (Idea, origin, God, man etc.).
2. An analysis of Levi-Straussian structuralism as an instantiation of the problems of thinking through the relationship between structure and centre. The basic point here comes at the end of the essay, and can be stated in one sentence Whereas Levi-Straussian structuralism posits itself as a decentring, it re-creates the centre in a particular way: as the loss of a centre. In other words, how one decentres matters; and there is, above all, a crucial difference between conceiving a structure as simply being acentric (of just not having a centre) and between conceiving of a structure as being acentric because it has lost a centre it once had. It is precisely these two forms of decentering
Derrida‟s essay divides into two parts:
1. “The structurality of structure”: An examination of the shifting relationships between structure and centre, and their implications. The results of this examination is roughly the following: whereas traditionally, a structure was conceived of as grounded and stabilised by a moment of presence called the centre, we are now at a time when that centring has been called into question. And to call the centre into question is to open up a can of worms, destabilising and calling inot question the most basic building blocks of thought (Idea, origin, God, man etc.).
2. An analysis of Levi-Straussian structuralism as an instantiation of the problems of thinking through the relationship between structure and centre. The basic point here comes at the end of the essay, and can be stated in one sentence Whereas Levi-Straussian structuralism posits itself as a decentring, it re-creates the centre in a particular way: as the loss of a centre. In other words, how one decentres matters; and there is, above all, a crucial difference between conceiving a structure as simply being acentric (of just not having a centre) and between conceiving of a structure as being acentric because it has lost a centre it once had. It is precisely these two forms of decentering