Structure, Sign And Play By Jacques Derrida

Jacques Derrida’s “Structure, Sign and Play in the Discourse of the Human Sciences.” In his essay Derrida, mainly mentions and uses five main terms; Deconstruction, center of the structure, structurality of structure, bricolage and totalisation. Derrida explains deconstruction as “reading the text against itself, reading against the grain”, which means deconstruction is used for to find the gaps and silences in a text which are not mentioned by the author of the text. The purpose of deconstruction is to unvalue, undo the text, not to destroy the text. Derrida deconstructs the ideas of structuralists, the hierarchy between nature and culture, also some of the Levi’s ideas. Structuralists defended that nature is superior than culture,
He asserts that structures are seem to be natural, but they are actually constructed and Derrida claims that each structure is based on another. Then, he mentions about an ‘event’ which is happened around twentieth century, he calls this event as a ‘rupture’ or break. Derrida believes that this event has changed the perpectives of people on structures. Until the rupture, we pretend that the structures are natural, but actually, structures gave themselves a fixed center such as ‘God’ or ‘Reason’ in time, to seem natural. Moreover, Derrida speaks of about bricolage which is an idea of Levi Strauss, Derrida takes this idea and offers this idea as a solution. Derrida explains bricolage as taking pieces from another structures, however we shouldn’t take anything as absolute truths so that we can change the parts when there is a better one. Also Derrida asserts about totalisation, which is the idea of creating a new structure that involves everything. He believes that it is impossible because its too much to involve in one structure and elements in the structure will always be in
By reading this essay, now i can easily see the difference between a structuralist and poststructuralist, since Derrida was a poststructuralist. For example; Levi as a structuralist, claims that center of structure is fixated, it is an absolute, however Derrida says that its not fixated and if we assume it as an absolute center, then it will limit the freeplay of the structure. So this made me realize that structuralists are fan of stability. They don’t really realize that time changes everything, even their ‘absolute’ center will change. However as a poststructuralist Derrida, is able to see that they shouldn’t assume like there is no future, every structure should be replaced when there is a better one, like in the idea of bricolage, Strauss wants to achieve the absolute truth, the idea of totalisation, however Derrida says that we can use this bricolage and upgrade the flexibility of the structures, so, it won’t get old, it will be always renewed as the time changes and better structures comes. I agree with the idea of there is no such a thing as absolute center and also deconstructed idea of bricolage. Structures should always be in motion, if there is a better one, then it should be replaced. So that in time, the structure won’t be ancient, it will be still useful and