Derrida and Deconstruction

Paper no:E-c-203

Topic: Derrida and Deconstruction

Name: Gohil Hetalba

Roll No :5

Class:M.A,Sem-2

Submitted To:

Dr.Dilip Barad

Department of English

Bhavnagar University

Bhavnagar.

    Jacques Derrida was an Algerian-born French philosopher, known as the founder of deconstruction. His voluminous work has had a profound impact upon literary theory and continental philosophy. His best known work is Of Grammatology. Distancing himself from the various philosophical movements and traditions that preceded him on the French intellectual scene (phenomenology, existentialism, and structuralism); in the mid 1960s he developed a strategy called deconstruction. 

    Derrida was one of the most widely revered and widely  reviled thinkers of the mid-to-late twentieth Century

Deconstruction:
     Deconstruction is a school of philosophy and literary criticism forged in the writings of the French philosopher Jacques Derrida. Deconstruction can perhaps best be described as a theory of reading which aims to undermine the logic of opposition within Texts. For Derrida this requires a scrutiny of the essential distinctions and conceptual orderings which have been constructed by the dominant tradition of Western philosophy

Differance

    Differance is a French word coined by the French philosopher and deconstructionist, Jacques Derrida. The word is a play on several other words that illustrate Derrida’s meaning. The concept of differance is a complex theory that tries to illuminate the way words are used and how their specific meaning is derived. Derrida called difference a "neographism," meaning a term that is neither a word nor a concept and is used to describe a literary idea.

   In his theory of deconstruction, Derrida claimed that because each person has different moods, backgrounds, and ways of experiencing things, a word or choice of words will not conjure up the same idea to every person.

‘’….in language there are only differences without positive terms’’
This idea leads him the two key concepts 1) Sign 2) Structure.

Logocentricism and Phonocentricism

     To speak a little bit of Derrida, it might be said that like the logocentrics of old we anal-retentive, logo-phallo-centric philosophers privilege logos – that is, meaning, reason, spirit and we take speech to be prior, in the order of signification, to writing. And by privileging speech over writing, we privilege presence over absence. We hanker after transcendental signified -- signified that transcend all signifiers, meanings that transcends all signs.

  The spoken word to be somehow prior to the written word, we do all that nasty stuff. Studying texts, even the texts of the canon with its oppressive metaphysics of presence, allows us to recognize and acknowledge what is absent.

Metaphysics of Presence

   Derrida borrows this phrase “Metaphysics of Presence” from heideggar.By logos or presence, derrida signifies “ultimate referent” a self-certifying and self-sufficient ground or foundation available to us totally outside the play of language itself that serves to be a “center” to guarantee the structure of a linguistic system.

For instance,

Raft

Boat

Ship

Ocean liner

Its relationship to the other words (a boat is bigger than a raft but smaller than a ship) Derrida focuses on the center of it and then tries to deconstruct that center.

Decentring the center

   According to derrida, the center also closes off the play which it opens up. As center it is the point at which the substitution of contents, elements or terms is no longer possible.Futher says that center is paradoxically “within the structure and outside it” or even “the center is not the center”

  To sum-up, the innate to the theory of meridian and deconstruction are disturbing, provocating and challenging.

Art of Characterization in Oliver Twist

Paper no:E-C-204

Topic:  Art of Characterization in Oliver Twist

Name: Gohil Hetalba

Roll No :5

Class:M.A,Sem-2

Submitted To:

Dr Dilip Barad

Department of English

Bhavnagar University

Bhavnagar

       

Oliver Twist was enormously influential in bringing to light the atrocious treatment of paupers and orphans in Dickens's time. The novel is not only a brilliant work of art but also a tremendously important document in social history.

Oliver Twist 

  A Symbolic character: Oliver is the central character of the novel. He is also a link among the three different worlds depicted in the novel-the workhouse, the crime world and the world of the genteel middle class people. Dickens wanted to make him an instrument of exposing the inhumanity and the callousness o0f the workhouse and the underworld. He belongs to no class. Oliver is symbolic of the principle of good. And Oliver being a deprived and out casting child. Monks He is more a mysterious force than a real character. 

Oliver is the hero of the novel. But he’s also a child, and can’t always act for himself. We often find that we know things that he doesn’t, just by virtue of being older and wiser than he is. We don’t always sympathize with him the way we do with protagonists that are older and more worldly. So Oliver’s status as a child protagonist is one element that bears more consideration. 

Mr. Bumble 

The parish beadle; a rat man and a choleric with a great idea of his oratorical powers and his importance. He has a decided propensity for bullying. He derived no inconsiderable pressure from the exercise of petty cruelty and consequently was a coward. Halfway through the book, bumble changes. When he marries Mrs. Corney, he loses authority. She makes all the decisions. 

The Artful Dodger 

   A talented pickpocket, recruiter, Jack Dawkins, as the artful dodger, is a charming rouge. Fagin’s most esteemed pupil. A dirty snub nosed, flat-browed, common-faced boy (short for his age). Dickens makes Dodger look more appealing by describing his outrageous clothes and uninhibited manners. 

Fagin 

   A master criminal, whose specialty is fenang (selling stolen property),. He employs a gang of thieves and is always looking for new recruits. He is a man of considerable intelligence, though corrupted by his self-interest. His conscience bothers him after he is condemned to hang. He does have a wry sense of humor and an uncanny ability to understand people. He is a very old shriveled Jew, whose villainous looking repulsive five was obscured by a quantity of matted red hair and wit. 

Mr. Brownlow 

 A generous man, concerned for other people. A very respectable looking person with a heart large enough for any six ordinary old gentleman of humane disposition. 

Nancy 

Nancy might be the most complicated character of the novel. Despite being a relatively minor character, she has a very important role to play. Nancy Nancy is a drab (prostitute) working for Fagin’s gang. Only two aspects of her nature are given prominence-.She agrees to respect Oliver and bring him back him back to Fagin’s den. Later when she overhears the conspiracy being hatched by Fagin and Monks, She decides to restore Oliver to the genteel world from where she had captured him. She might have been if she had grown up in a different environment

Socio-Psycho analysis in Tara

Paper no:E-C- 202

Topic: Socio-Psycho analysis in Tara

Name: Gohil Hetalba

Roll No :5

Class:M.A,Sem-2

Submitted To:
Dr .Dilip Barad

Department of English

Bhavnagar University

Bhavnagar

  

  “Tara”, is a play by Mahesh Dattani. This play is a family tragedy in which the members of the family are torn apart in pieces ‘Tara’ a tragic play, based on family relationship and gender discrimination that is totally disheveled and shattered because of Siamese twins Chandan and Tara who are to be considered as a scapegoat for Bharti and Mr. Patel, parents of two children.. Why did not she get two legs during the operation? Why did her mother favor the boy? Why did not Bharti favor Tara? These are the crux of the play.

    Sex and gender should be differentiated before going ahead. Sex is a biological term while gender is decided by social gospels and dogmas. Woman should behave like this and that, keep limit in her behavior. The social psychological bonds in ‘Tara’ lie at the zenith “of the discussion and argument. On one hand if we think for a while that all family members are suffering from gender discrimination, naturally, psychology of the characters is to be blamed. In his plays, Dattani takes on what he calls the ‘invisible issues of Indian society’. Now, here, we can observe Dattani’s use of those stereotypical roles of man and woman. This thing also shows the gender perspective of the Indian society.

   These are stereotypical gender roles in own Indian society and Dattani makes full use of them. Another example, in which we can see this Indian Gender perspective. When Tara to Roopa about the conversation between father and son, she says that, 

“The men in the house were deciding on whether they were going to hunting while the women looked after the caves.”

         Now, here, we can see explicitly the Indian Gender Perspective that man’s work for taking care of his family, where as women have to work only in the house. Her work is to look after her house, husband and children. This is her world. She can’t break this rule.

Mr. Patel: “I was just thinking… It may be a good idea for you to come to the office with me.”

         So, here, we can see that these above words of Mr. Patel represent the male-dominance of Indian society. Mr. Patel says to join the office to Chandan, not to Tara.

Bharti’s dialogues are so long that symbolizes those women who cannot justify their argument. They keep speaking. It suggests that women are not to be focused on. Society does not give even little respect and honors to them. Roopa’s language is frequently abusive, satirical and absurd. She stands for society
 Another example in which we can see the disappeared female gender identity. Dan talks with himself, he utters…

“What is Tara?”
         

   These words question where is Tara’s identity? Her disappeared identity shows her helplessness. The responsible thing for this is male-dominant society. She is the victim of the patriarchal society. In a way, Chandan is responsible for that.
    Because during the operation Bharati and her father favored boy and told the doctor to save the boy. This shows the cruel identity of the Indian society.

It indicates Tara is going to be more and more tragic. One will remember that climax of the drama, Bharti is ready to give her own kidney because she loves very much and then Tara’s reply is very much sarcastic and mordant, ironical and so much symbolic that becomes everyone’s sentence,

“Because you love me so much.” 

Does Bharti love her much? Is the question and answer in disguise? Where was her love when she gave birth to conjoined children? This makes Tara mentally broken and conquered. She is so much fragile and natural that is easily affected by emotions

Tara: “That’s okay. I can handle them.”

 Dattani has shown Tara physically challenged, but mentally strong. Mahesh Dattani has presented an analysis of gender identity in an unbelievable way in “Tara

Culture Studies and its Four Goals

Paper no:E-E- 205

Topic: Culture Studies and its Four Goals 

Name: Gohil Hetalba

Roll No :5

Class:M.A,Sem-2

Submitted To:

Dr.Dilip Barad

Department of English

Bhavnagar University

Bhavnagar.

CULTURAL STUDIES AND ITS FOUR GOALS:-
INTRODUCTION: - “CULTURAL STUDIES”


  The word “culture” itself it so difficult to pin down, “cultural studies” is hard to define. Cultural studies “is not so much a discrete approach at all, but rather a set of practices. As Patrick brantinger has pointed out, culturalstudies in not ‘a tightly coherent, unified movement with a fixed agenda.”But a loosely coherent group of tendencies, issues, and question.” 


1. FIRST :- GOAL
“Cultural studies transcends the confine of a particular discipline such as literary criticism or history.
  “practiced in such journal as critical inquiry , representations, and boundary 2 , cultural studies involves scrutinizing the cultural phenomenon of a text – for example Italian opera, a Latino telenovela, the architectural styles of prisons, body piercing and drawing conclusion about the change in textual phenomena over time.
    Cultural studies are not necessarily about literature in the traditional sense or even about “art”. In their introduction to cultural studies , editors Lawrence grossberg,cary nelson , and Paula trencher emphasize that the intellectual promise of cultural studies lies in the attempts to “ cut across diverse social and political interests and address many of the struggles within the current scene.”


- Intellectual works are not limited by their own “borders” as single texts, historical problems or disciplines , and the critic’s own personal connections to what is being analyzed Amy also be described.


- Hendy Giroux and others write in their Dalhousie review manifesto that cultural studies practitioners are “resisting intellectuals” who see what they do as “an emancipator project.” Because it erodes the traditional disciplinary divisions in most institutions of higher education.


- SECOND GOAL:-


“ Cultural studies is political engaged”
cultural critic see themselves as “ oppositional” not only within their own disciplines but to many of the power structures of society at large. They question inequalities within power structures and seek to disover modles for restructuring relationship many dominant and “minority” or “subaltern” discourses. Because meaning and individual subjectivity are culturally constructed , they can thus be reconstructed. Such a notion , taken to a philosophical extreme , denies the autonomy of the individual, whether an actual person or a character in literature , a rebuttal of the traditional humanistic “great man” or “great book” theory, and a relocation's of aesthetics and cultural from the idal realms of taste and sensibility, into the arena of a whole society’s everyday life as it is constructed.


- THIRD GOAL:-
“Cultural studies denies the separation of high and low or elite and popular culture .
Being a “cultured” person used to mean being acquainted with “highbrow” art and intellectual pursuits. Cultural critics today work to transfer the term culture today work to transfer the term culture to include mass culture, whether popular , folk , or urban.


“The practice of every life”
Studying literature as an anthropologist would, as a
Phenomenon of culture, including a culture’s economy,
Rather then determining which the “best” works are
Produced, culture clinics describe what is produced and
How carious productions relate to one another. They aim to
Reveal the political, economic reasons why a certain
Cultural product is move valued at certain times then
Others.


FORTH GOAL:-
“Cultural studies analyze not only the cultural work, but also the means of production. Marxist critics have long recognized the importance of such par literary questions as these: who supports a given artist who publishes his or her books, and how are these books distributed? Who buys books? For those matters, who is literate and who is not? The impact upon reading such technical innovations as cheaper eyeglasses, electric lights, and trains; the book of the month club; and how writers and texts go through fluctuations of popularity and canonical. These studies help up recognize that literature does not occur in a space separate from other concerns of our lives.
      Cultural studies thus join subjectivity – that is, cultural in relation to individual lives- with engagement, a direct approach to attacking social ills.

Different Approaches in Frakenstein.

Paper no:E-C- 201

Topic:  Different Approaches in Frakenstein

Name: Gohil Hetalba

Roll No :5

Class:M.A,Sem-2

Submitted To:
Dr.Dilip Barad.

Department of English

Bhavnagar University

Bhavnagar

Frankenstein

      Frankenstein was written in 1818 by Mary Shelley, wife of p.b Shelley.There is two different approaches which is used in Frankenstein.

1) Moral and Philosophical Approaches.

2) The Formalist Approaches.

Moral and Philosophical Approaches.

 The moral and philosophical approaches is as old as classical Greek and roman critics.

      Frakenstein is akin to some scientists of our own day against whom ethics bring charges that the scientists attempt and achieve development more and they have the ethical clarity to direct their studies. Frakenstein stoked his ambition by the self-0deluding thought that he would discover the secret of life and create a living being that in turn would be the flower of humanity.

      He does not think through the full range of possibilities, including the possibility of disastrous failure in the midst of his seeming success.

     There is another moral dimension in Mary Shelley’s novel besides the creation of another life; momentonsas being enters the world and society. There the moral dimensions extend to responsibility for one’s own children.Frakensteinis moral culpable for his failure to accept responsibility. Frakenstein refuses to accept responsibility for his progeny and to society for the horrors he himself has inflicted upon it.

        While pursuing the moster we can see absence of love and a person has totally lost his moral compass and if Frankenstein challenges a moral universe, frakenstein, the 19th ceatury novel challenges the 21^st century.

The Formalist Approach.

      The outward form ,almost the visual shape of Mary Shelley’s Frakenstein.Infact ,the entire book is placed within a frame of the letters,so that the frame itself becomes a formalist deviceand especially important at the beginning and the end of the book,with the extensive letters of captain Walton to his sister.We occasionally have a box-within a box effect which in turn introduce a possibility of a shifting  point of view.For a formalist reader,this entails attension to who the speaker/writer is and which perception change accordingly,if any.

     The closer reader of the novel  must  soon perceive two opposing ideas and concept which forms the major theme of the novel.The theme of hope and despair,Frakenstein and walton’s dreams for great scientific successes  but both fails stupendously while sacrificing the lives of other(Frakenstein) or endangering lives(Walton)

The contrast between hubris hopes and human despair form a major theme of the novel.