Deconstruction

• "1b. Philos. and Lit. Theory. A strategy of critical analysis associated with the French philosopher Jacques Derrida (1930–2004), directed towards exposing unquestioned metaphysical assumptions and internal contradictions in philosophical and literary language" ("Deconstruction," OED).
  

• Deconstructive analysis identifies a) the differential relations between terms in a text and b) the contradictory meanings of each term, in order to c) expose the artificiality and instability of societal norms, discourses and identities. Deconstructive analysis often aims to explore the metalinguistic meanings of a text and to question implied assumptions in Western culture.
  
  
• " Deconstructionist criticism subscribes to the poststructuralist vision of language, wherein the signifier (the form of a sign) does not refer to a definite signified (the content of a sign), but produces other signifiers instead" (Guillemette and Cossette).
  

• "A method of literary criticism and a theory of language. Deconstruction contends that it is impossible completely to master the meanings within a literary text because there is an inherent paradox in the attempt. All meaning arises from the context of a work of literature (or philosophy), but, deconstructionists insist, a literary work itself exists in multiple contexts simultaneously—the language in which it was written, the genre type, the social milieu of the writer, and philosophical assumptions, for example. Context is essentially unlimited. Accordingly, there can be no self-consistent, determinate meaning for a work.
   
  Deconstruction criticism attempts to show how variable meaning may become in the melee of “warring forces of signification within the text,” as literary theorist Barbara Johnson put it. Jacques Derrida, the philosopher-in-chief of deconstruction, argued that the absence of an ultimate referent in literary works or in language itself allowed an endless interplay of meanings. However, that does not mean that the criticism is whimsical or a form of relativism. On the contrary, deconstruction strives for objective analysis—but always based on an objectivity that refuses to take a text as an isolated entity. Critical analysis destroys the illusion of self- containment and demonstrates the shifting, larger influences occurring within the text and impinging on it from beyond" ("Deconstruction," Literary Reference). 

Derrida, Jacques (1930-2004)

• French philosopher and academic famous for deconstruction
  

• His book, Dissemination, hints at the purpose of deconstructive analysis: to trace the shifting meanings of language. He follows variations on and sometimes contradictory meanings of words related to pharmakos (wizard, magician, poisoner) in Plato in order to establish the valuation of the written word in Western philosophical tradition (Derrida 130, 134). Dissemination is thus part of a larger post-1945 academic movement that explores the iterability of texts and remains open to outside disciplines, such as philosophy, oral history, performance, and anthropology (cf. Walter J. Ong's Orality and Literacy, 1982).
  

• See Derrida talk about love on YouTube
  

Dialectic

• "2a. In modern Philosophy: Specifically applied by Kant to the criticism which shows the mutually contradictory character of the principles of science, when they are employed to determine objects beyond the limits of experience (i.e. the soul, the world, God); by Hegel (who denies that such contradictions are ultimately irreconcilable) the term is applied (a) to the process of thought by which such contradictions are seen to merge themselves in a higher truth that comprehends them; and (b) to the world-process, which, being in his view but the thought-process on its objective side, develops similarly by a continuous unification of opposites" ("Dialectic").
  

• Mode of philosophical thinking most commonly associated with Hegel.
  

• thesis --> antithesis --> hypothesis / synthesis (possibly also: truth, God/transcendence)
  

Dimorphism

"b. Biol. The occurrence of two distinct forms of flowers, leaves, or other parts on the same plant or in the same species; or of two forms distinct in structure, size, colouring, etc. among animals of the same species.

 c. Philol. The existence, in one language, of a word under two different forms, or of two words of the same ultimate derivation (doublets)" ("Dimorphism").

Essentialism

• "1a. Philos. The belief in real essences of things, esp. the view that the task of science and philosophy is to discover these and express them in definitions"  2a. A doctrine that concentrates on the existence of the individual, who, being free and responsible, is held to be what he makes himself by the self-development of his essence through acts of the will (which, in the Christian form of the theory, leads to God). b.  [tr. French essentialisme.] The doctrine that essence is prior to existence (opp. to existentialism n.)" ("Essentialism").

Existentialism

• Sartre: "Existence Precedes Essence."  
  

• " . . . the philosophical theory which holds that a further set of categories, governed by the norm of authenticity, is necessary to grasp human existence . . . themes popularly associated with existentialism—dread, boredom, alienation, the absurd, freedom, commitment, nothingness, " (Crowell).
  

• Works of Sartre, Kierkegaard, Fear and Trembling (Frygt og Bæven, 1843); Nietzsche, On the Genealogy of Morals (Zur Genealogie der Moral, 1887); Martin Heidegger, Being and Time (Sein und Zeit, 1927),
  

Gender and/vs. Sex

• Gender "3 b. Psychol. and Sociol. (orig. U.S.). The state of being male or female as expressed by social or cultural distinctions and differences, rather than biological ones; the collective attributes or traits associated with a particular sex, or determined as a result of one's sex. Also: a (male or female) group characterized in this way."

• Sex " 1a. Either of the two main categories (male and female) into which humans and many other living things are divided on the basis of their reproductive functions; (hence) the members of these categories viewed as a group; the males or females of a particular species, esp. the human race, considered collectively."

• Butler, however, rejects these distinctions b/c they stress normative gender traits; gender is necessarily performative and produced through repetitive acts: "If the inner truth of gender is a fabrication and if a true gender is a fantasy instituted and inscribed on the surface of bodies, then it seems that genders can be neither true nor false, but are only produced as the truth effects of a discourse of primary and stable identity" (Butler 111). See also the last page (Butler 115).
  

Hegemony / Hegemonic Power

• "Leadership, predominance, preponderance; esp. the leadership or predominant authority of one state of a confederacy or union over the others: originally used in reference to the states of ancient Greece, whence transferred to the German states, and in other modern applications" ("Hegemony").

• Mentioned in Butler 106-07 + 112.
  

Logocentrism

• The primacy of the written word in Western thought, according to Derrida. Feminists have used this idea to discuss phallologocentrism.
  

Performativity

• In general: The study of gesture and speech acts and the way they relate to the formation of identities.
  

• Performativity is "the notion that gender is not inherent but is engendered by disciplinary pressures that coerce us into performing, that is behaving, in a way society assumes is appropriate for a certain gender" (Miller 224); performativity assumes "that human beings have no innate selfhood or subjectivity but become what they are through more or less forced repetition of a certain role" (Miller 225).
  

• J. L. Austin, in How to Do Things with Words (Oxford: Clarendon, 1962), established the notion of performative utterances.  "I pronounce you man and wife," or "I promise to finish this essay" are words that constitute performative speech acts.
  

• "In what sense," Butler asks, "is gender an act?" (114). For Butler, "The iterability of performativity is a theory of agency" (101). Performativity helps to widen Butler's concept of gender because it avoids essentialism and is based on "the irreducible complexity of sexuality and its implication in various dynamics of discursive and institutional power" (102). Performativity is central to Butler's definition of gender: "If gender attributes and acts, the various ways in which a body shows or produces its cultural signification, are performative, then there is not preexisting identity by which an act or attribute might be measured; there would be no true or false, real or distorted acts of gender, and the postulation of a true gender identity would be revealed as a regulatory fiction" (Butler 115). 
  

Phallocentrism

• Luce Irigaray and Hélène Cixous's critique of patriarchal control over language and thought (consider the patriarchal roots of the word dissemination)
  

Phenomenology

• "1b. c. Philos. A method or procedure, originally developed by the German philosopher Edmund Husserl (1859–1938), which involves the setting aside of presuppositions about a phenomenon as an empirical object and about the mental acts concerned with experiencing it, in order to achieve an intuition of its pure essence; the characteristic theories underlying or resulting from the use of such a method. In more recent use: any of various philosophical methods or theories (often influenced by the work of Husserl and his followers) which emphasize the importance of analyzing the structure of conscious subjective experience" ("Phenomenology").
  

• Asks questions like: What is truth? What is appearance? What is reality? How does the individual become a subject?
  

Poststructuralism

• "This term concerns several schools of literary criticism that apply the structural linguistic theory of Ferdinand de Saussure and his followers. For these theorists, literature is a system of arbitrary signs that, if analyzed, serve to expose the basis of concepts behind them. These thinkers were also influenced by the Marxist view that human beings are constructs of the socioeconomic conditions around them and by the Freudian view that human consciousness is driven wholly or in part by subconscious forces. In a synthesis of these ideas, poststructuralists denied the existence of either an abstract source of value outside of human consciousness or the ability of consciousness to determine value on its own (as the existentialists had proposed) because understanding arises from use of language, which is arbitrary and ambiguous. Among the proponents of such ideas were Michel Foucault, Roland Barthes, and Jacques Derrida" ("Poststructuralism").

• Mentioned Butler p. 101
  

Queer Theory

• The study of gender relations as they pertain to sexuality (heterosexuality, homosexuality, transgender, bisexual, etc.). 

Reality

Semiotics

• "The science of communication studied through the interpretation of signs and symbols as they operate in various fields, esp. language" ("Semiotics," OED).

• "The study of signs as social phenomena. The signs include facial expressions, gestures, body language, music, pictures, nonverbal sounds, and words. Signs convey meaning because of a natural resemblance to what they signify (iconic signs), a causal relation (indexical signs), or an arbitrary conventional association (symbolic signs). Semiotics is thus important in sciences focusing on social behavior—linguistics, psychology, sociology, and anthropology. In literary criticism, semiotics addresses the third type of signs, symbols. They are regarded as an underlying code that creates meaning and include generic forms, modes of discourse, and literary conventions as well as diction" ("Semiotics," Literary Reference).
  

Structuralism

Tautology / Tautological