Critical Theory Today: A User-Friendly Guide

Deconstruction is often misunderstood. However, it is a useful tool as a critical theory in its own right and when incorporated into other critical theories because it “reveals the hidden work of ideology” (214).

Deconstructing Language

A key domain of analysis for deconstruction is language. Theorist Jacques Derrida argued that language is not a straightforward method of communication. Rather, language is “a fluid, ambiguous domain of complex experience” that transmits and naturalizes ideology (214). Since we all use language every day, we have largely internalized it and therefore overlook its peculiarities and ambiguities. For example, emphasis and tone can vastly change the meaning of a sentence, e.g., “He says she is busy” implies that the subject (“he”) might be lying, whereas “He says she is busy” is a more neutral statement of fact.

Like constructionists, deconstructionists are interested in the formula sign = signifier (sound, image, gesture) + signified (concept to which the signifier refers), but they find it insufficient. Deconstructionists analyze the ambiguity resulting from linguistic polysemy (multiple, overlapping, or unclear meanings) not captured by the formula. Tyson uses the example phrase “This tree is big.” While its meaning seems clear, deconstructionists might ask, “Big compared to what?” or “Is she surprised by its size?” or “Why ‘this’ tree and not another one?” This implies, for deconstructionists, that signs are made of not one signifier and one signified but many possible signifieds. 

Further, deconstructionists interrogate the mental content of the signified. In the example “This tree is big,” “tree” as a signified concept can connect to many signifiers (e.g., leaf, pine needle, branch, autumn, etc.). Taken together, deconstructionists argue that the sign “tree” is mentally interpreted as an interaction of a chain of signifiers with many possible signifieds. They posit that language is nonreferential because it does not refer to real things or even their concepts, but rather to signifiers themselves. 

The meaning is constantly deferred (unsettled and shifting), and what we consider meaning is the “trace” left behind of this interplay between signifiers. The “trace” is established through difference with other chains of signifiers. For example, the meaning of “red” is determined in part through the signifiers of all the colors it is not (blue, green, etc.) because no word for red would be needed if it was not different from other colors. Derrida called this understanding of meaning différance, a combination of “to defer” and “to differ.”

Derrida argued that by coming to terms with language’s instability, one can “stretch it to fit new modes of thinking” (218). This is important because language shapes our understanding of ourselves and the world and it is laden with ideology, so to counter this ideology, new language is necessary. Tyson gives the example of gendered terms for sexually promiscuous people as an example: “Slut” for a woman has negative connotations, and “stud” for a man has positive connotations. This is an example of sexist ideology at work in the language that then shapes personal and global understandings, illustrating The Relationship Between Language and Reality.

Derrida argued that one way of overcoming ideology is to be attentive to the ways that binary oppositions are hierarchical and “not completely opposite” (219). Tyson uses the example of the binary opposition of objective/subjective to illustrate this point. In the hierarchy, “objective” is valued over “subjective.” Further, they are not perfect opposites because an “objective” view is still colored by personal and societal patterns and therefore is itself a form of subjectivity. For instance, a scientist might “objectively” analyze data, but what forms of data they analyze and how is a kind of subjectivity derived from their discipline, disposition, ideologies, etc.

Deconstructing Our World

For deconstructionists, language is the “ground of being” or “the foundation from which our experience and knowledge of the world are generated” (219). As described above, language is fundamentally dynamic. Thus, our ground of being is constantly changing. This differs from other forms of Western philosophy, where concepts of the “ground of being” are inherently stable. Derrida critiqued these “logocentric” philosophies because concepts are “dynamic, evolving, ideologically saturated operations of the language that produced it” (220). The “ground of being” has no center and can be assessed through many vantage points, each with its own language or “discourse.” Language is both the product of, and the producer of, experience.

Deconstructionists differ from structuralists in that structuralists view language as “stable, innate structures,” whereas deconstructionists see language as fluid and shifting. Thus, deconstruction is a “poststructuralist theory.”

Deconstructing Human Identity

For deconstructionists, “the world is infinite text” (221), including human beings. Since language shapes the world, including our own beings, and language is a site of unstable, competing ideologies, our identities are not singular, fixed, and stable but rather multiple, variable, and unstable. Tyson posits that this argument accounts for our different identities in different situations (e.g., the difference between our identity at work and at home) as well as creating opportunities for changing identity (e.g., religious conversions).

Deconstructing Literature

A deconstructionist literary analysis posits that “meaning is produced by the play of language through the vehicle of the reader” (222). There is no one authoritative reading of a literary text, as the text is full of fluid, overlapping meanings. A deconstructionist reading of a literary text will analyze the work’s “undecidability” and its ideological dynamics. “Undecidability” is the plurality of meanings within a single text. Tyson gives a step-by-step guide to analyzing the undecidability of a work:

1. Discover many possible interpretations of the textual elements.

2. Find examples of how these interpretations conflict.

3. Explain how the conflicts cannot be resolved or “how attempts to resolve these conflicts through additional interpretation uncover additional conflicting meanings” (223).

4. Assess the text’s undecidability using evidence from steps 1-3.

A Deconstructive Reading of Robert Frost’s “Mending Wall”

Tyson contrasts the deconstructionist focus on the “self-contradictions” in the ideology(-ies) of a work with the new critical emphasis on unity of meaning in a text. She counterposes deconstructionist and new critical readings of “Mending Wall” by Robert Frost to make this point. For instance, the theme of “Mending Wall” from the new critical perspective is a critique of “mindless conformity to obsolete traditions” (225). This theme makes up one half of the binary opposition in a deconstructionist reading. For a deconstructionist, this theme is “the poem’s overt ideological project” (225). The other half of the binary is conformity to traditions. 

Tyson presents textual evidence that supports the claim that the poem privileges the nonconformity part of the binary, such as the language that promotes the speaker’s judgement of his neighbor for adhering to pointless traditions. However, this is complicated by evidence of positive representations of conformity in the poem, most notably in the fact that the old-fashioned idea of “good fences make good neighbors” holds true (225), as mending the fence brings the neighbors together. This tension between conformity/nonconformity and the symbolic language to describe the binary in the poem reflects “mixed feelings” about these concepts in society.

This reading shows that, unlike new criticism, deconstruction does not try to create a “stable, unified” meaning of the text but rather an unstable, fragmented one.

Some Questions Deconstructive Critics Ask About Literary Texts

Tyson describes two questions that summarize deconstructionist approaches to literature (211):

1. How does the instability of language and undecidability of meaning contribute to different interpretations of the text or contradictions in the text?

2. What ideology does the text promote? How does it show the limits of that ideology?

“…the Thrilling, Returning Trains of My Youth…”: A Deconstructive Reading of The Great Gatsby

Tyson notes that the Marxist reading of The Great Gatsby provided in Chapter 3 is an example of a deconstructive reading as well because it analyzes the binary of the novel’s overt critique and implicit support of the ideology of capitalism.

In this deconstructive reading of The Great Gatsby, Tyson analyzes the work’s “overt ideological project,” the critique of American excess in the Jazz Age that eclipsed the “wholesome innocence of a simpler time” (228-29). She then argues that this critique is “undermined” by its “ambivalence” toward the binaries of that ideology: “past/present, innocence/decadence, and West/East” (229). Her analysis focuses on the ambiguities of the novel’s characterization of Jay Gatsby.

The essay opens with a discussion of the “nostalgia for the past” that is found throughout the novel (229). Tyson argues that the modern present is shown as harsh and unforgiving compared to the pastoral idylls of the past. She analyzes how this is shown in the character arc of Nick, who ends his summer in West Egg feeling disillusioned about the East (New York) and modernity and deciding to return West (Minnesota) and thereby to a more pastoral past. Tyson then analyzes Gatsby as an example of a romantic ideal at odds with the “shallow vulgarity of the time in which he lives” (231). She then contrasts descriptions of modern New York with those of Minnesota and the past more generally in the novel to support this argument.

Tyson then argues that this ideology is complicated by the novel’s treatments of the less valorized elements of the binaries (present, decadence, and East). First, there is the text’s acknowledgement that “the past was not idyllic for everyone” (234). For instance, Jimmy Gatz’s past was so terrible that he reinvented himself as Jay Gatsby. Further, Nick and the narrator find themselves drawn to decadence. Tyson then analyzes the settings of the novel to establish that the West is associated with nature and thereby with innocence, whereas the East is associated with civilization and corruption. She argues that this binary is challenged in the way that nature is transformed into a corrupted element of civilization in that it is “owned” by the wealthy families of West Egg.

Tyson then turns to the analysis of this “ambivalence” in the novel’s characterization of Gatsby. She notes that although Gatsby is a romantic hero, he was formed by the corruption and civilization in which he thrives. She then does a close reading of the final passage of the novel, which associates the “fresh, green breast of the world [of West Egg before settlement]” with the “green light at the end of Daisy’s dock” to illustrate how “pristine nature, the innocent past, cannot be separated in this passage from the civilization that exploits it, just as Jay Gatsby cannot be separated from the corrupt world that exploits and is exploited by him” (238). She concludes that deconstruction brings to light these conflicting ideologies in The Great Gatsby and, therefore, in the world.

Questions for Further Practice: Deconstructive Approaches to Other Literary Works

Tyson provides model questions to guide deconstructive literary analysis. These questions explore how deconstructive concepts, such as ideological conflict, can deepen a reader’s understanding of texts. Topics include the following (239-40):

1. The critique and promotion of stereotypes about Mexican Americans in “Los Vendidos” by Luis Valdez

2. The ideological project of “sexual fulfillment for women” in “The Storm” by Kate Chopin and its limits as depicted in its use of nature imagery and plot

3. The ideology of nonconformity as depicted in “The Road Not Taken” by Robert Frost and its simultaneous reinforcement of conformity

4. The promotion and the thwarting of the Romantic sublime in Frankenstein, with a particular focus on the characters of Victor Frankenstein and the monster

5. The articulation of the ideology of racial equality in “The Little Black Boy” by William Blake and the way the text simultaneously reinforces white supremacy with a particular focus on the comparisons between the Black boy and the white boy