Understanding Jacques Derrida

For Structuralists, rules govern a system. Thus, structuralists developed methods to make sense of language. For instance, using binary oppositions which govern the mechanism of a given system, they use a method that gives order to chaotic systems. Otherwise, anything might be chaotic. Therefore, structuralists try to avoid exceptions. On the other hand, for post-structuralists like Derrida, exceptions show that a system does not have strict rules.

Derrida argues that structuralists expose reality. To make binary oppositions work, they develop a cognitive structure to examine the subject matter. Thus, binary oppositions are not natural contradictions but they are the products of structuralist minds. In this way, structuralism creates a more dynamic point as opposed to the traditional descriptive studies that define an entire situation without creating an argument. The system of structure organizes the whole structure and it limits potential “plays” that are exceptions or improvisations in the structure. Thus, Derrida shows that structuralism fails to understand the structure as his post-structuralist view problematizes the validity of binary oppositions and it also problematizes the functioning system with a stable and fixed center. In this sense, Derrida’s “play” has a positive quality.

Derrida thinks that centers are tyrannical as authoritarians spreading their norms to the entire system. Therefore, there is no playfulness or improvisations. However, while controlling the central idea, the central figure acts the way s/he wants to. Derrida argues that the center is in the structure to govern it but also, it is outside of the structure to exempt it from the structures that organize principles. The rules which are the governing parts of a given structure do not apply to the center.

Derrida has a wider sense of structure as he stresses that structural thinking dates back to antiquity. Thus, the rules of structure apply to the elements of structure but they do not apply to the center of the structure. The ideology is what determines the center. In this sense, a center is not central to the structure and the ideology in the center reproduces itself in many ways. The limitations of playfulness which is a defense mechanism for the center’s anxiety give power to the center that is no longer troubled by unexpected improvisations or actions outside the norms of structure. Derrida argues that the central concept, point of reference, changes over time but the function of the center as the regulatory does not change in the Western mind and people make sense of the world with this point of reference.

Derrida thinks that the center’s presence in a structure is about its repetition. If centers cannot reproduce themselves in institutions or society, they cannot act as centers. The center can temporarily be occupied, which is unimportant as it can change. The structure is a mechanism that organizes itself using a central function that is predetermined. Thus, at the center, substitutions are possible. This means that the center does not determine a structure but its repetition mechanism does. The Center is there to regulate no matter what its content is. Looking for meaning in a text is in vain since literary texts constantly deconstruct themselves. Literary texts start as a system having a central idea but then they move against that idea. This shows that the center is not as strong and desirable as it was first imagined. Deconstruction destroys a text’s norms that have been established before and this makes the establishment of the text itself stumble.  

Anything can occupy the center. For instance, a literary text deconstructs itself and it shows that the central can be questioned by taking the opposite idea as a starting point. Therefore, a literary text creates ambiguity.

Derrida uses the concept of supplements for a center that is not present. The absent center is substituted. Therefore, a new center shapes the structure. In this way, a structure is imagined as a play of substitutions rather than a distinct center. If the structure had a fixed center, it could not have been substituted. Thus, there is an essential lack of a center in any center as it is not fixed.

He gives two possible responses about the center that do not exist. One view is about the structure that does not have a center. The other is about the center which is lost when it is replaced. For Derrida, there is no stable or controlling center in a structure as there is a void in the place of the center and this void is filled with other centers throughout history.