Sunday, 11 May 2014

Deconstruction

For this project, we are asked to read the essay by Jacques Derrida and then do some further research into Deconstruction.

As a start, I wished to make sense of Derrida's famous assertion that: 'il n'ya pas de hors' texte'. The course notes suggest there are alternative meanings to this statement.

The literal Engluish translation is: 'there is nothing outside text'. Derrida later reformulated to “Il n’y a pas de hors contexte,” or “There is nothing outside of context”. Bryce (2011) expands thus:

"As [Darrida] later clarified, the meaning of a text must be situated within a context that includes competence in the language of the text including its grammar and vocabulary as used in the epoch in which it was written, rhetorical uses of the language, the history of the language itself, and knowledge of the history of the society in which the language is/was used."
This is interesting as it rather goes against the ideas of Foucault and Barthes that were the subject of the last project. They viewed that the writer was a mere scriptor, a sort of messenger, and that the message should be seen in complete isolation from the scriptor.

In French books the hors-texte is where all the prefatory, introductory material. By denying there was such a thing, Derrida emphasises that these parts of the text are actually an integral part of the whole - you might say there is no hors texte. (Valentine, 1994) This makes a great deal more sense.

Some further reading included Chandler's Semiotics for Beginners. This article helps us understand Derrida in simple terms. The key is that texts (or images) do not 'mean what they say'. Contradictions alway exist and "searching for inexplicit oppositions can reveal what is being excluded." (Chandler). Derrida made much of binary opposition, a pair of related terms that are opposite in meaning: homosexuality and heterosexuality, for example. Key concepts of a text depend on unstated oppositional relations to absent signifiers.

This seems to be saying no more than to be aware of what is unsaid in a text: "what is conspicious by its absence". This in turn leads on to paradigmatic analysis, which:

"involves comparing and contrasting each of the signifiers present in the text with absent signifiers which in similar circumstances might have been chosen, and considering the significance of the choices made." (Chandler)
I take two contrasting front page images from The Economist to show this in practice:






The first image is for the issue May 17-23, the second April 19-25. Anyone who does not live in a cave will be familiar with the news stories behind the allegories, but from a visual culture point of view, what is interesting is how they are visualised, and, specifically for this project what is omitted in each in favour of what is included.

If we take the first, we can see the following:
  • the common people characterised similarly to a Brueghel painting (in my ignorance, this may be a montage based on an actual painting, I just cannot identify it). They are constrained, bullied, beaten, mostly in a state of undress, being done to rather than controlling;
  • Political leaders shown imprisoned: Merkel is hanging upside down; Cameron on a pyre; Hollande in the stocks (with a crash helmet as a reminder of his affair with Julie Gayet exposed early in 2014);
  • Signs to polling stations in different languages;
  • Several anti European politicians playing mischief (Farage lighting the pyre beneath Cameron, Wilders drumming in the bottom right behind a 'Non' sign, Beppe Grillo acting as a comedian) or triumphantly riding, as in case of Le Pen at the bottom.
Other allusions to current euro concerns: the grim reaper holding an euro currency logo, a flag of the Ukraine, for example

So the montage is all about the problems besetting the EU and the distinct possibility of significant anti EU voting in the forthcoming election as demonstrated by leading players.

So what is missing, the absent signifiers?:

A map - typically a diagrammatic showing of how the continent might vote;
Any kind of optimistic signifiers. It is all darkness and negativity

In a sense the absent signifiers simply emphasise the message from those that are present.

If we look at the second image, there are no personalities included; instead the map of Russia is carefully drawn to resemble the front of a bear, its mouth open ready to devour eastern Ukraine. Crimea is already in the bear's stomach.

The allusion is clear: The big neighbour to the east stands ready to take over that part of Ukraine that is more pro Russia. But the most notable absence (in contrast to the montage) is any people; Russia is portrayed as the amorphous monolithic state devouring a portion of a neighbour. Perhaps surprisingly in light of his bullish statements on the issue, Russia's President Putin is absent from the image. As with the montage, the absent signifier accentuates what is in this case a nationalistic rather than personality based message.


References:

Bryce (2011) “There is Nothing Outside of the Text” Available from http://www.brycerich.com/2011/02/there-is-nothing-outside-of-the-text.html. Accessed on 7 May 2014

Chandler Semiotics for Beginners Available from http://users.aber.ac.uk/dgc/Documents/S4B/sem-gloss.html#D Accessed on 7 May 2014

Valentine (1994) Sticky Transfers in Grabes (ed.) (1994) Aesthetics and Contemporary Discourse

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