Deconstruction.docx

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English Honours III year Megha Mannan (0642) Niyati Jaduan (0630) Class assignment

Deconstruction: Feminist approach to deconstruction

Deconstruction is a critique of the relationship between text and meaning originated by the philosopher Jacques Derrida. Derrida's approach consisted in conducting readings of texts with an ear to what runs counter to the intended meaning or structural unity of a particular text. The purpose of deconstruction is to show that the usage of language in a given text, and language as a whole, are irreducibly complex, unstable, or impossible. Throughout his readings, Derrida hoped to show deconstruction at work. Three key features emerge from Derrida’s work as making deconstruction possible. These are, first, the inherent desire to have a centre, or focal point, to structure understanding (logocentrism); second, the reduction of meaning to set definitions that are committed to writing (nothing beyond the text); and, finally, how the reduction of meaning to writing captures opposition within that concept itself (différance). These three features found the possibility of deconstruction as an on-going process of questioning the accepted basis of meaning. While the concept initially arose in the context of language, it is equally applicable to the study of law. Derrida considered deconstruction to be a ‘problematisation of the foundation of law, morality and politics.’1 For him it was both ‘foreseeable and desirable that studies of deconstructive style should culminate in the problematic of law and justice.’2Deconstruction is therefore a means of interrogating the relationship between the two.

Feminism and Deconstruction Deconstructive strategies provided some valuable tools for the feminist critique of hierarchical privileges and the dismantling of

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gendered binary oppositions which more than often ended up devaluing non patriarchal and non heterosexual positions and ways of thinking. In his essay, “Discourse of Others,” Craig Owens undertakes a particular incisive study of the relation between postmodernism (especially deconstruction) and feminism (Owens, 1998). Briefly, we may summarise the following issues highlighted by deconstruction which became particularly useful as strategic tools for feminist theorists: • Loss of mastery of one dominant perspective and acknowledgement of plural perspectives; • Undermining of the authority of the knowing (privileged male) subject by those at the margins; • Exposing the tyranny of the law of the signifier by showing how it permits only certain representations while blocking others; • Undermining and exposing logocentric and phallocentric discourses where the ‘other’ (woman) is spoken for, but does not speak or represent herself; • Encouraging a critique of hegemonic systems, especially patriarchy; • De-centering the unitary, masculine subject and enabling voices at the margins to make themselves heard.

Elizabeth Robins, The Convert This novel, first published in 1907, brings to life Robin's experience and that of her colleagues, Christabel and Emmeline Pankhurst, in the story of Vida Levering, an upper-class British woman "converted" to the working-class suffrage movement. In a suspenseful plot, Robins contrasts the witty dialogue of elegant drawing rooms with the roughand-tumble outdoor meetings of Trafalgar Square, recreating them almost word for word from actual accounts. Ultimately, Vida begins to make her own first speeches and out of the tragic events of her past devises a means of effecting women's political freedom. Jane Marcus puts this "funny, moving, and beautifully structured novel" in a class with Virginia Woolf's Night and Day.

The deconstructive feminist criticism for the text-

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 The text is deconstructive in the sense that for the first time in a conversion novel, we had a woman as the centre and the man as the ‘other’.  The constant absence of vide from her own accounts and the constant shift from herto others.i.e to a woman to others and vice versa,gives us the multiple perspectives of the two genders as well as suffragettes vs men and their differences.  The novel’s male characters uses catcharases. Catchareses are words used in repetition to imply the same meaning.the constant use of words like “insane”,”touched”,”senseless”,”lunatics” reinforces the idea that activist women were strange and dis not deserve a place in the society(according to the patriarchal world)  The patriarchal outlook on feminists andwoman activists is brought out altogether with women activists struggle in a misogynistic patriarchal world.  The innate use of words and by reading the implied meaning behind them ,the deconstructionists try to read how these belief in unitary male values was formed and how can we include a women’s narrative as well.  The novel highlights ,through binaries,mens untired hatred of thinking women.

The Woman Warrior Author: Maxime Hong kingston

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The writer, Maxine Hong Kingston, was one of the leaders during the second wave of feminism, where she and other nonwhite writers focused on the connection of race-related topics to feminism. The idea of intersectionality coined by Kimberlé Crenshaw describes how various overlapping social identities relate to oppression. Kingston analyzes the female identity of Chinese-American women through criticism of misogyny in Chinese culture and racism toward Chinese-Americans in the U.S. “The Woman Warrior” focuses on the relationship between mother and daughter, reflecting aspects of Kingston’s life and emphasizing the dynamic of female relationships as a whole in a patriarchal society. She recounts learning about life through the stories and memories of her mother and grandmother.

"The Woman Warrior: Memoirs of a Girlhood among Ghosts" is a collection of stories clubbed in five chapters.

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No Name Woman The first chapter ,that the narrator discusses in the memoir is 'No Name Woman'. It narrates a family secret about an aunt who bears a child out of wedlock, causing shame and the culmination of her being outcasted. One night her home is raided by the villagers and she is left to give birth in a mess. Next morning, narrator's mother finds her sister-in-law and the new born infant dead in the well. The narrator is never told the complete story which leads her to explore the absences by herself. She talks about the possibility of her aunt being raped or being sexually forward that might have resulted in her being impregnated. The narrator's declaration about her imagination allows the readers to have their own point of view and their alternate version of the story about the ' No Name Woman'.

White Tiger The next story 'White Tiger' is about an empowered and respected warrior woman - Fa Mu Lan. She contests Gender identity by training as a male fighter to take place of her father

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in battle . When Mu Lan was 7-years-old , she followed a bird to the mountains where she met an old man and a woman who trained her to blend in with her surroundings and to gain precision over her own body. She was made to run blindfolded towards mountains where the White Tigers lived. She had to figure the way back home on her own ,without any supplies . She learnt the ways of the dragon and returned back disguised as a man. She participates in the battle and wins it but this story of a female warrior also culminates in marriage. The narrator finds it hard to reconcile with the story. This folklore seems to empower women by making a female the hero of the battlefield but it also displays the old Chinese sexism that creeps in when Mu Lan has to always disguise as a man and marry in the end of the folklore.

Shaman Shaman, in dictionaries, is explained as someone who has access or influence over good and evil spirits. They are also sometimes referred to as medicine man or medicine woman. This memoir is about the narrator's mother, Brave Orchid. It also explains that why her mother's name is Brave.

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Brave Orchid went to a medical school in China. Though she was older than any of the girls in the school, it never stopped her from pursuing her passion. She studied and became one of the scholar students. She was smart and not afraid of anything. She volunteered to sleep alone in a supposedly haunted dormitory. Next, a sitting ghost pinned her to bed. Brave, threatened it and berated it the next night. Brave Orchid left China to join World War with her husband .Brave , fighting against the ghost and joining world war is like a woman warrior fighting against structures that are not explicitly visible.

The Western Palace The Western Palace is a story in which Brave Orchid brings her sister, Moon Orchid to America. Brave wants Moon Orchid to reclaim her status, after thirty years of marriage, as the wife of a successful doctor in Los Angeles. When both the sisters meet up with him to confront ,he asks Moon to go back stating that he has a new family of his own. Moon begins to live with the Mexicans. She soon moves in with her sister since she finds it difficult to get accustomed to the American way of life. Her

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condition worsens, she is convinced that the government is watching her and someone would come and take all of them away. At the end of the chapter, Brave Orchid takes her sister to a mental asylum, where she eventually dies. The Western Palace also mocks the western way of living where the lives of the coloured people are threatened by the white racism and patriarchy.

A Song For a Barbarian Reed This chapter encompasses many issues and events in the narrator's life. The narrator says that her mother cut her tongue when she was born. This, probably means that she was not supposed to voice her opinions. Brave Orchid claims that she did it to help her daughter. We see that she has a hard time speaking up except in the case of the mother. Narrator only talks through the medium of the memoirs. We don't see her talking to any of the characters in the memoirs .The idea of silence is prevalent in her memoir. The silence takes the identity away as a Chinese-American, a woman and a human being by preventing them from having a voice. We also see her bullying a silent

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girl.This silent girl can be seen as the narrator's reflection. She hates it that how she is never allowed to speak and ends up hating and bullying the silent girl. All we know about the silent girl is her silence which also holds true in the case of the narrator. The narrator takes up the issue of insanity. She talks about several crazy women in her neighbourhood. She fears that she will be the next. This creates a space where images of histeria and 'The Mad Woman in the Attic'. It questions that why only women in large numbers end up in histeria , why is this condition not questioned . The real question is not how these unnamed woman die rather why and what amounts to this condition, why are they forgotten and ostracised by the society.

The book ends with a story that begins with Brave Orchid's tale and ends with the narrator's. In China, Brave Orchid's mother insisted her whole family attend the theater. When bandits attacked one of the performances, her whole family miraculously survived unscathed. From then on, Brave Orchid's mother was convinced the theater would always keep them safe. The narrator says she hopes her family got to hear the

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poetry of Ts'ai Yen. Ts'ai Yen was a scholar's daughter who was kidnapped by barbarians. While living among them, she learned to fight. She always felt alienated from the barbarians, even her own children. One night, Ts'ai Yen became inspired to sing. Her song fascinated the barbarians. She became a prolific poet. When Ts'ai Yen was returned to her family, she brought a song with her called "Eighteen Stanzas for a Barbarian Reed Pipe." As the narrator says, "It translated well."

The song and the theatre saved life. The readers must notice that theatre and the song are both oral in nature hence challenging the patriarchal view that writing, a predominantly male space is superior to the oral form of literature.

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Stories that are told by brave through her daughter, both, reflect and create a Chinese past. Kingston rewrites the folklores with her own understanding of the Chinese patriarchal society and exposes the unjust

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discrimination between women and men. The stories spoken by the women in the Woman Warrior find their space along with their own point of view too. Each female narrator is her own author. The very contexts of 'talk story' constantly remind the reader of a potential feminist perspective, with their strong location in mother/daughter socialisation. The narrator's father speaks but does not narrate or 'talk story'. In western culture the privileging of writing is a patriarchal system of representation. The female stories subvert a paternal view. These stories question the reality of patriarchal hierarchy, racism and sexism, Brave Orchid and her daughter could be said to engage in feminist deconstruction.

An excerpt from One of the passage in The Woman Warrior reads as-

I saw two people made of gold dancing the earth's dances. They turned so perfectly that together they were the axis of the earth's turning . They were light ; they were molten, changing gold -- Chinese lion dancers, African lion dancers in midstep. I heard high Javanese bells deepen the missing to Indian bells, Hindu Indian, American Indian.

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These lines from the passage is a deconstruction of hierarchy. The two dancers who are creating the world are not represented hierarchically and neither is any of the religion or ethnicity subjected to any order if the hierarchy. Kingston banishes all hierarchical structures be it related to ethnicity, race or gender.