Centerless Freeplay...Jacques Derridas' "Structure, Sign, and Play in the Discourse of the Human Sciences"

Wow. I am depending on a few metaphors that I created reading the chapters in Barry on Structuralism and Post-Structuralism. In that reading, so as to get through the articles from last week without frying my brain, I adopted as quick and dirty substitute the idea of paradigm to replace structure.

Then, as I understand it, the structures these writers are referring to are various paradigms (according to these theories/theorists linguistic constructions by their very nature) not only for literature but for life, even reality, as a whole.

Jacques Derridas then (along with other Post-Structuralist) kicks the supports out from under the structures/paradigms, setting them all into motion against a moving background of other moving structures/paradigms. Interesting to me was the deconstructionist's own catch-22. Derridas saying (Ironic how easily the density of his text forces us into a Post-structuralist distrust of our own language and understanding, leaving a language full of conditional qualifiers not unlike his own article) that in this orgy of deconstructing all centers the post-structuralist "ought to extend his refusal to the concept and to the word sign itself" seems the equivalent of telling Descartes that he ought to deny his own existence despite the fact that he is there thinking (Derridas 117). However, just as Descartes sought to deny everything and so get to some starting point and found that he could not deny his own existence because something was there having these thoughts, Derridas admits the impossibility of denying "the concept and the word sign itself" (117).

It seems however, that having reached his Descartesian basic, the sign (as opposed to thought) he did not decide to then move forward proving other ideas, but rather insisted that since everything else can be denied, everything other than the mere existence of "the concept and the word sign itself" can and should be doubted. Or at least approached with caution (117).

Derridas does seem to wrestle further with this concept (and I would love to quote if I was referring to anything other than a vague holistic impression of a general argument, but I am not), stressing that it "ought to be abandoned" (117). For Derridas, the basis, the foundation he cannot deny is a frustration, a symbol of being trapped within a paradigm/structure and being unable to fully deconstruct it, analyse it, or even understand it, because one is incapable of viewing it from the outside.

In finishing, therefore, I would argue that while the deconstructionist is able to go around kicking holes in everyone else's linguistic/literary boats, he/she must disgustedly realize that their own boat is leaking badly and that they are, due to the catch-22 in which they find themselves, unable to bail effectively to keep from getting wet. To do so would require the ability to escape reality as constructed by language, to escape the necessity of the sign. This is after all "precisely what cannot be done" (117).