One Way to Deconstruct a Text

When you deconstruct a text, you take it apart to discover the underlying prejudices, the cultural assumptions, etc. Things outside the view of the author. So if you deconstruct a political text, you would try not to show the view of the politician, but almost the opposite- what they were trying to hide, the assumptions that lead to their ideas, etc.

Step 1
Choose a text to deconstruct. Focus on a text you know well as you practice textual deconstruction. To avoid bias, though, it's best to focus on a text that isn't personally important to you.

Step 2
Understand the intended meaning of the text, or the accepted meaning of the text. For example, if you have access to the author's opinions of the text's meanings, focus on this as you read; if a classic text is generally interpreted or taught in a particular way, use this information as you read.

Step 3
Locate ways in which the text doesn't conform to its stated or accepted meaning. A classic example of this is Twain's "The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn," which has generally been accepted as an anti-slavery book. However, Huck and Tom continue to pretend Jim is a slave after he attains freedom. They treat him cruelly, as if he is their slave. This section of the book doesn't conform to the accepted meaning.

Step 4
Find tensions and contradictions within the text, looking for ideas that don't readily match other ideas present in the text. Those who deconstruct texts say that they don't actually deconstruct texts; instead, the texts deconstruct themselves through their own instability.

Step 5
Seek out the text's assumptions. Look for what it presents as normal, natural, apparent or primary. Likewise, seek out where the text sets up a distinct binary opposition between two categories. For example, it might insist that there is a firm distinction between gay sexuality and straight sexuality, or it may indicate that heterosexuality is natural, while homosexuality is a perversion.

Step 6
Demonstrate how binaries and hierarchies break down under scrutiny by showing how the text's idea of "normal, natural, apparent or primary" is actually none of those things, or by showing how one thing (such as heterosexuality) needs another (homosexuality) to define itself against. Without both categories, neither one makes much sense.

Tips & Warnings

• Play around with different methods of deconstruction. There are many ways to deconstruct a text, and scholars don't always agree which ones are right.
  
• 
You can deconstruct any sort of text—including cultural and social "texts." In deconstruction, a text isn't necessarily a written document.
  
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Deconstruction is more than just presenting the opposite of common knowledge or assumption. Instead, it's locating and highlighting the hierarchy.
  

Postmodern Texts

The Postmodern world is OUR world. It has shaped the way you and I think, see and know everything. Including what we think about “thinking.” The very way we approach texts (novels, movies, works of art, poems, graffiti, music, advertisements, websites, historical documents, etc.) is a Postmodern approach. Be aware that most of the authors and other text creators that we will read are also aware of this fact.

"Texts are marked by a surplus of meaning; the result of this is that differing readings are inevitable, indeed a condition of meaning at all. This surplus is located in the polysemous nature of both language and of rhetoric. It must be kept in mind that language is what is (for us as cognizant beings), that our sense of reality is linguistically constructed. Consequently the 'meaning of it all' is continually differing, overflowing, in flux.

All texts are constituted by difference from other texts (therefore similarity to them). Any text includes that which it excludes, and exists in its differences from/likenesses with other texts.

A 'text' exists as read. This 'reading' (creation of meaning) is formed, conducted, through certain mediating factors:

• the present structures of discourse, hence understanding, including the present conceptions of the discourse structures of the time of the 'writing' of the text.
  
• the traditions of reading, and the oppositions which those traditions have made possible, of that particular text,
  
• the expectations dictated by the genre of the text and the tradition of genre of the reading,
  
• the relations of meaning which are 'in' the text by virtue of its having been written at all, modified by the fact that these relations have a certain historical existence, a local, situated, and corporeal existence whose reality may or may not be imaginatively recoverable;
  
• the understanding that these 'historical' relations of meaning will to some extent be mystifying and ideologizing relations,
  
• the understanding that insofar as texts have a surplus of meaning they tend to reveal the flaws which the reigning discourse is attempting to mystify,
  
• the conceptual distances between the historical discourse / ideology / cultural codes / genre-traditions of the past and the historical discourse / ideology / cultural codes / genre-traditions of the present, which distance opens up 'new' meanings which the work could not have, in a sense, had before. Post-structuralism is deeply aware of such hermeneutic reading and also suspicious of it, certain that meaning is historical, uncertain that it is recoverable as what it may have meant."
  

-John Lye, 1996

Post-Modern Literature Course Syllabus

Second Semester 2008/2009
Daily 2 10:35-11:30

Overview:
NOTE: This is a foundation course for upper division high school students intending to go to college. It is classified as a WIC (Writing Intensive Course) for the purposes of tracking on a transcript as AP or college preparatory.

The theme of this class deals with philosophical paradigm of Postmodern literature, thought, and artistic and expression. In fact, this is still considered the predominate artistic paradigm of your lives! We will focus most of our time and energy on literature produced during this period, but we will also examine how painters, film makers and musicians express it. Class members will be expected to interpret the texts we study through the lens of Postmodernism generally, as well as through specific movements of Postmodern thought.

Texts:
Wallace Stevens, “The Snowman” and “Man Carrying Things”
Thomas Pynchon, excerpts from Crying of Lot 49 and Gravity's Rainbow
T.S. Eliot, The Wasteland and The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock
Jorge Luis Borges, selected short stories
Samuel Beckett, Waiting for Godot
Toni Morrison, Jazz
Being John Malkovich
Run, Lola, Run
selected Postmodern Poets, various
TBA Novel

Attendance: You are expected to attend every single class, be on time and be prepared (having done the readings, homework, have the necessary materials). Obviously, Life Happens and everyone will end up missing a day or two. If you miss a day, it is up to YOU to talk to your classmates and get notes, assignments, etc. You can also check Kurtattrillium.blogspot.com for major assignments and syllabus updates.

You are considered to be absent if you are more than Ten (10) minutes late.
Absence issues will be dealt with on a case by case basis and may involve different consequences for different students.

Consequences for tardies (from 1 sec - 9:59 min late) will be dealt with on a case by case basis.

Five skipped classes and you will be dropped from class with no grade given.
Skipped Class = You leave class for more than five minutes without instructor acknowledgement or permission OR you have been in the school for the previous period or are in the school during Daily 2 and do not attend this class.
Grading Policy:
The grading is based on a point system with a possible 100 points being the maximum. Completion of the course awards .5 Language Arts credit.

Participation = discussion and attendance 15 points
Paper 1 10
Paper 2 10
Paper 3 10
Postmodern Art Project 20
“Emergent” assignments/homework 15
Final Exam 20

Breakdown:
100 A+
99 - 92 A
91 - 90 A-
89 - 88 B+
87 - 82 B
81 – 80 B-
79 – 78 C+
77 – 72 C
71 – 70 C-
69 – 60 D
59 – 0 F

NOTE: While it is officially “passing”, Oregon colleges (as well as some others) do not accept credit for classes that receive a D grade or lower.

Final Exam:
A multiple choice/essay test at the end of the term will be administered to cover plot, character, author’s purpose, sub-text, symbolism and metaphor, and how each selection reflects specific and general ideas of Postmodernism

Papers:
Three papers will be assigned. All are required. All papers must be typed, using standard margins and fonts and meet MLA formatting and style guidelines. Students will be able to select from a set of provided essay topics or present their own (based on instructor pre-approval!). Always print up two copies: one for me and one for you to have just in case. Always make sure to save a copy of your paper to a disc, back up hard drive or even something like Google Docs. All papers turned in after the due date will be penalized with 10% off the final grade for each school day they are late. All papers are due at the START of the class on the day they are due. The instructor reserves the right to suggest or REQUIRE A RE-WRITE. If a re-write is assigned the student and instructor will agree upon a new due date with the same late penalties as before. Suggested or required re-writes will earn new (usually better!) grades if the work improves. Details TBA.

Art Project:
One major art project will be assigned. The student must create a piece of visual art (painting, collage, interpretive dance, etc.) that exemplifies or questions the artistic paradigm in question. All Art Projects must include a short essay that interprets and explains how the work of art fulfills the given criteria. Details TBA.
COURSE CALENDAR
Please note that due to class interest and our school's emergent curriculum philosophy, unforeseen events, etc. the assignments and due dates are subject to change. As you can clearly see the Syllabus becomes less specific towards the end of the semester. Those of you who know Trillium will understand that these unplanned weeks will allow for more time to follow avenues of study as they arise as well as to catch up and complete what was already assigned. Specific reading assignments (by chapter and/or page) will be given on a daily and weekly basis once the semester begins.

Also note that possible essay topics will most usually be developed as the material is presented and discussed as a class. This allows class interest and discussion to truly guide our study and curriculum as much as possible.

Week 1 2/2
Introduction: From Romanticism to Modernism to Postmodernism
“Postmodern” defined...or not
What is a “text” and how do I “deconstruct” one?
Excerpts from Crying of Lot 49 and Gravity's Rainbow

Week 2 2/9
“The Snowman” and “Man Carrying Things”
“The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock”
1st paper assigned

Week 3 2/16 (No school on Monday)
“The Wasteland”
Begin Borges stories

Week 4 2/23
More Borges
Waiting for Godot
1st Paper Due

Week 5 3/2
Finish Waiting for Godot
Ism-Fest '09! (Postmodern Theories)

Week 6 3/9
Being John Malkovich

Week 7 3/16
Begin Jazz
2nd Paper assigned
POMO Art Project Assigned

Week 8 3/23 SPRING BREAK: NO SCHOOL
read Jazz

Week 9 3/30 SPRING BREAK: NO SCHOOL
read Jazz

Week 10 4/6
Finish Jazz

Week 11 4/13
2nd Paper due

Week 12 4/20
Begin our last TBA Novel

Week 13 4/27
TBA Novel
3rd Paper Assigned

Week 14 5/4
TBA Novel
POMO ART PROJECT DUE

Week 15 5/11 (Camping Trips?)
Finish TBA Novel

Week 16 5/18
Run Lola Run
POMO poetry

Week 17 5/25
3rd paper Due
more POMO poetry

Week 18 6/1 INTENSIVES WEEK: NO CLASS

Week 19 6/8
Probable Exhibitions this week
TBA
FINAL EXAM

Week 20 6/15 There might be two or three days of class this week.
TBA