HANDOUT ON "APPLIED" DECONSTRUCTION: J. HILLIS MILLER AND JOAN W. SCOTT

Assignment for next time

• J. Hillis Miller, "Thomas Hardy, Jacques Derrida, and the 'Dislocation of Souls,'" Theory into Practice, ed. K. M. Newton (New York: St. Martin's, 1988) (on reserve)

• J. Hillis Miller, "Heart of Darkness Revisited," Heart of Darkness, ed. Ross C. Murfin (New York: Bedford, 1996) (on reserve)

• Joan W. Scott, "Deconstructing equality-versus-difference: Or, the uses of poststructuralist theory for feminism," The Postmodern Turn, ed. Steven Seidman (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1994): 282-98 (on reserve)

Study questions

1. Before reading Miller's article, read over two quotations from Heart of Darkness--you'll find them on 207 and 211. Given your reading of Derrida, what would you expect a deconstuctionist critic to say about those quotations?

(NOTE: The first quotation, as Miller says, is not just tricky, but "mind-twisting" [209]. The quoted passage distinguishes between two different kinds of stories. In the first kind, the details of the story are like a nutshell, and the meaning of the story like the meat of the nut. In the second kind of story, the kind that Marlow and Conrad are telling us, the story is like the moon, and the meaning like a haze illuminated by the moon.)

2. In the essay on Hardy, Miller (following Derrida) plays with the idea of the "performative utterance," the utterance that does not describe reality, but actually constitutes it. (The classic example of a performative utterance is "I now pronounce you man and wife." See why that's such a good example?) What would you expect a deconstructive critic to say about such utterances--or their supposed differences from other kinds of utterances? What, finally, does this have to do with Miller's "law of multiple simultaneous selves" (135)?

3. Joan Scott spends a lot of time talking about arguments advanced in the 1979 sex discrimination case brought against Sears and Roebuck. How does Scott's analysis of those arguments help her to demonstrate the "use of poststructuralist theory for feminism"?

4. Why does Scott think that the "equality-versus-difference" debate has put feminists in an "impossible position" (295)? What does she think feminists can do to get out of that position? Do you agree with her assessment and her advice? More generally, do you think that deconstruction can be put to political uses?

What next?

• Homepage for English 60a
  
• Syllabus for week three (Derrida and deconstruction)
  
• Students' responses to J. H. Miller and J. W. Scott
  
• "A deconstructionlike reading" of Shakespeare's Sonnet #116, prepared by John Lye of Brock University.
  
• Links to internet resources on Derrida and deconstruction.