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IF I WERE A POST-STRUCTURALIST CRITIC...




Hello Readers,

This blog is a part of my Classroom activity given on this blog.

It is impossible to define Deconstruction like Philosophy or Literary criticism once and for all.  Jacques Derrida himself doesn’t define it. Deconstruction is not a destructive activity, but it is an inquiry into the foundations of everything. Post-Structuralist critics go deep into the foundation of text and then they try to undermine it. Derrida says that every text contains element which can deconstruct itself.

 As per Derrida,
 “Each and every text is read as event and events can be read with different perspective.”

He also throws light on free play of meaning. The meaning of one word is set of another word, so one word leads to another and so on. Derrida says “FINAL MEANING IS ALWAYS POSTPONED.”

 He also talks about Phonocentricism and logocentricism as well as Metaphysics of Presence. He denies western tendency to privilege speech over writing by giving examples of the Binary oppositions.


If I were a Post-Structuralist critic, I would like analyse the following advertisement of Coca-Cola:-


After watching this advertisement from the perspective of Derrida, we find many things are problematic.
 We find the binary oppositions like Urban/Rural, Vegetables/ Perennial grass, Car/Tractor, Western clothes/ Traditional Indian Clothes in this advertisement. The language itself is problematic here and it reflects these binary oppositions.

 For example: - The dialogue between two girls
Girl 1- “ Chal chal yaha puchte hain,Kya yahan pe cold drink milega?”(points out to farmer)
Girl 2- (making fun) “ Haan haan cold drink kyu, disco bhi puchte hai na idiot.”
This show how urban is privilege over rural. The girls think that a man of rural area won’t know about cold drink and disco.

 Another example:-  The farmer says,
“Ganne ke khet which tamatar kitho????”
This show how the tomato; vegetable is privilege over sugarcane; perennial grass. By this they are trying to look down on the people living in rural areas.
In starting also we see a ‘Tractor’ representing rural area and a ‘Car’ representing urban area. Similarly Clothes also signifies the differences.

 Now if we go deep inside,
It can be see that the Coco-Cola is an American multinational beverage corporation. So now we can see India in the binary side and America or western countries in the privilege side. The main occupation of India is agriculture. Here we can see that a farmer or in a way Indians are looked down by the western countries.
If the advertisement is looked without keeping Derrida in mind, People feel proud that see even farmers know about Coco-Cola. They will happily buy this product and they have.
Here we can see how the language is used by the power.


Thank you.

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