scholarly journals Understanding Derrida’s “Structure, Sign, and Play”

2020 ◽  
Vol 2 (4) ◽  
pp. p43
Author(s):  
Najah A. Almabrouk
Keyword(s):  
Critical Theory ◽  
Literary Criticism ◽  
Jacques Derrida ◽  
Review Paper ◽  
Structural Theory ◽  
Human Sciences ◽  
International Colloquium ◽  
Theory Structure ◽  
The Past ◽  
Binary Oppositions

Deconstruction, a philosophical post-structural theory derived mainly from the work of the French philosopher Jacques Derrida, has evoked a great controversial debate over the past few decades. Promoting a sophisticated philosophical view of literary criticism, deconstruction has always been a complicated topic to comprehend especially for students and novice researchers in the field of literary criticism. This article review paper attempts to present an explanation of the main notions of the theory by reviewing one of Derrida’s most influencing articles on critical theory: “Structure, Sign, and Play in the Discourse of the Human Sciences”. The article which marked the birth of post-structuralism theory, was first delivered in 1966 at John Hopkins International Colloquium on “The Language of Criticism and the Sciences of Man”. This seminal work of Derrida criticizes structuralism for the great importance given to centralism and binary oppositions for the sake of accessing meaning. It can be claimed that the article sums up his ideas on deconstruction which in fact attacks all notions of center, totality and origin. Deconstruction is perceived as a method of breaking down and analyzing text in an attempt to approach some new interpretations which might be totally different from any other previous ones.

Literature in Our Time, or, Loving Literature to Bits

CounterText ◽  
2015 ◽  
Vol 1 (2) ◽  
pp. 232-269 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ivan Callus
Keyword(s):  
Literary Criticism ◽  
Jacques Derrida ◽  
Anthony Trollope ◽  
Don Quixote ◽  
Time Machine ◽  
Paul Auster ◽  
Anne Michaels

In this essay Ivan Callus provides some reflections on literature in the present. He considers the tenability of the post-literary label and looks at works that might be posited as having some degree of countertextual affinity. The essay, while not setting itself up as a creative piece, deliberately structures itself unconventionally. It frames its argument within twenty-one sections that are self-contained but that also echo each other in their attempt to develop an overarching argument which draws out some of the challenges that lie before the countertextual and the post-literary. Punctuating the essay and contributing to its unconventional take on the practice of literary criticism is a series of exercises for the reader to complete, if so wished; the essay makes no attempt, however, to suggest that a countertextual criticism ought to make a routine of such devices. The separate sections contain reflections on a number of texts and writers, among them, and in order of appearance, Hamlet, Anthony Trollope, Jacques Derrida, The Time Machine, Don Quixote, Mark Z. Danielewski, Mark B. N. Hansen, Gunter Kress, Scott's Reliquiae Trotcosienses, W. B. Yeats, Kate Tempest, David Jones, Anne Michaels, Bernice Eisenstein, Paul Auster, J. M. Coetzee, Billy Collins, Deidre Shauna Lynch, Tim Parks, Tom McCarthy – and Hamlet again. The essay's length fulfils a performative function but also facilitates as extensive a catalogue of aspects of the countertextual in literature and elsewhere as is feasible or as might be dared at this stage.

Veiled Theory: The Transmutation of Anthropology in T. S. Eliot's Critical Method

Paragraph ◽  
2006 ◽  
Vol 29 (3) ◽  
pp. 77-94 ◽  
Author(s):  
Adam Trexler
Keyword(s):  
Critical Theory ◽  
Literary Criticism ◽  
Literary Theory ◽  
Institutional Framework ◽  
Philosophical Investigation ◽  
Institutional History ◽  
Human History ◽  
Critical Practice ◽  
The Absolute ◽  
Historical Moment

While literary criticism is often seen as an unself-reflective forerunner to literary theory, this article argues that T.S. Eliot's theory of critical practice was a philosophically informed methodology of reading designed to create a disciplinary and institutional framework. To reconstruct this theory, it enriches theoretical methodology with intellectual and institutional history. Specifically, the article argues that Eliot's early critical theory depended on the paradigms of anthropology and occultism, developed during his philosophical investigation of anthropology and Leibniz. From this investigation, Eliot created an occult project that used spiritual monads as facts to progress toward the Absolute. The article goes on to argue that Eliot's methodology of reading was shaped by anthropology's and occultism's paradigms of non-academic, non-specialist reading societies that sought a super-historic position in human history through individual progress. The reconstruction of Eliot's intellectual and institutional framework for reading reveals a historical moment with sharp differences and surprising similarities to the present.

On the specfics of postcolonial research in the conetmporary Ukrainian literary studies

2019 ◽  
pp. 446-461
Author(s):  
Ekaterina Baydalova
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Identity ◽  
Literary Criticism ◽  
Postcolonial Theory ◽  
Postcolonial Studies ◽  
Culture Studies ◽  
Self Presentation ◽  
Science Culture ◽  
The Past ◽  
Modus Vivendi ◽  
Ambivalent Attitude

The postcolonial studies have been under discussion in the Ukrainian historiography, social science, culture studies and literary criticism since 1990 years. They have originated from American, European, and Australian academic studies and became more and more popular in modern Ukrainian culture recently. The nation and the nationalism, Orientalism, multicultural and ambivalent individuality self-presentation, the search of cultural identity, the problem of ambivalent attitude to the past are in the paradigm of postcolonial studies. The problems of national identity, the totalitarian past, the interactions with neighboring countries especially Russia and Poland, the instable Ukrainian society’s condition are analyzed under the postcolonial ideas in the Ukrainian intellectual discourse. The postcolonial theory has become the main interpretative strategy of the Ukrainian researchers lately. Nevertheless, there is no unconditional modus vivendi in the Ukrainian academia about postcolonial conceptions, strategies and principles. One of the most important unsolved issues is the question of correlation of postcolonial and postmodern components of the Ukrainian national literature. The inclusion of the studies of trauma and anticolonial and posttotalitarian discourses into the framework of the postcolonial studies is the most distinguishing feature of postcolonial studies in the Ukraine.

CONSCIOUSNESS AND TIME. IS SUBJECTIVE TIME OBJECTIVE?

2019 ◽  
Vol 29 (2) ◽  
pp. 177-188
Author(s):  
G.S. Prygin
Keyword(s):  
Quantum Physics ◽  
Psychological Aspect ◽  
Subjective Time ◽  
Human Sciences ◽  
The Unconscious ◽  
Time Consciousness ◽  
The Past ◽  
Equilibrium Processes ◽  
Time Quantum ◽  
Temporal Modes

We study the problems of time consciousness from the standpoint of philosophy, physics and psychology; it is argued that such a sequence in the analysis of the problem allows us to reveal the actual psychological aspect of the problem of the objectivity of the consciousness of time, which is the goal of the study. Both the philosophical concepts of the time consciousness of I. Kant, E. Husserl and F. Brentano, and the physical theories of the study of time (quantum physics, cosmology, the physics of non-equilibrium processes) are analyzed. It has been established that in philosophical theories, the concepts: consciousness, memory, perception, representation, and others do not have clear definitions and can change their meaning depending on the context. It is emphasized that in physical and human sciences time is investigated, as a rule, in connection with the concept of “space”. It is shown that when analyzing the problem of the consciousness of time, one should first decide on the concept of “reality”, which allows us to remove contradictions in the understanding of time in various physical theories. It is concluded that the existence of both objective and subjective time can only be spoken when we operate with concepts; outside of this the concept of “time” has meaning only when a person is considered as part of society. It is shown that in relation to the collective and personal unconscious, the temporal modes of the "past", "present" and "future" do not make sense, since "the whole diversity of everything" is represented in the unconscious field simultaneously and extra-spatially.

Double Thoughts

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andrew Dean
Keyword(s):  
Literary Criticism ◽  
Jacques Derrida ◽  
Postcolonial Theory ◽  
Cape Town ◽  
Literary Texts ◽  
Paul De Man ◽  
Literature And Philosophy ◽  
De Man ◽  
University Of Cape Town ◽  
The University

Coetzee’s interest in destabilizing the boundaries of literature and philosophy is most evident in later fictions such as Elizabeth Costello. But as Andrew Dean argues in this chapter, this interest in moving across boundaries in fact originates much earlier, in Coetzee’s quarrel with the institutions and procedures of literary criticism. Coetzee used the occasion of his inaugural professorial lecture at the University of Cape Town (Truth and Autobiography) to criticize the assumption that literary criticism can reveal truths about literature to which literary texts are themselves blind. Influenced in part by such figures as Jacques Derrida and Paul de Man, Coetzee posed a series of challenging questions about the desires at stake in the enterprise of literary criticism. Developing these thoughts, Dean explores the way in which Coetzee’s earlier fiction, including such texts as Foe (1986), is energized by its quarrelsome relationship with literary criticism and theory, especially postcolonial theory.

Feudal Europe, 800–1300: communal discourse and conflictual practices

1992 ◽  
Vol 46 (2) ◽  
pp. 427-466 ◽  
Author(s):  
Markus Fischer
Keyword(s):  
Critical Theory ◽  
Social Science ◽  
International Relations ◽  
Social Theory ◽  
Structural Theory ◽  
Historical Change ◽  
Fundamental Significance ◽  
The Social ◽  
Social Scientific ◽  
Scientific Argument

The discipline of international relations faces a new debate of fundamental significance. After the realist challenge to the pervasive idealism of the interwar years and the social scientific argument against realism in the late 1950s, it is now the turn of critical theorists to dispute the established paradigms of international politics, having been remarkably successful in several other fields of social inquiry. In essence, critical theorists claim that all social reality is subject to historical change, that a normative discourse of understandings and values entails corresponding practices, and that social theory must include interpretation and dialectical critique. In international relations, this approach particularly critiques the ahistorical, scientific, and materialist conceptions offered by neorealists. Traditional realists, by contrast, find a little more sympathy in the eyes of critical theorists because they join them in their rejection of social science and structural theory. With regard to liberal institutionalism, critical theorists are naturally sympathetic to its communitarian component while castigating its utilitarian strand as the accomplice of neorealism. Overall, the advent of critical theory will thus focus the field of international relations on its “interparadigm debate” with neorealism.

Mapping Logistical Capitalism

2021 ◽  
pp. 026327642199042
Author(s):  
Eugene Brennan
Keyword(s):  
Critical Theory ◽  
20Th Century ◽  
Social Life ◽  
Review Article ◽  
Global Capitalism ◽  
Racial Capitalism ◽  
The Past ◽  
Black Lives Matter ◽  
Class Composition

This review article engages with a rich field of scholarship on logistics that has gathered momentum over the past decade, focusing on two new publications by Laleh Khalili and Martín Arboleda. It contextualizes how and why logistics is bound up with the militarization of contemporary political and social life. I argue that the later 20th century rise of logistics can be better understood as both a response to and symptom of capitalist crisis and I situate this scholarship on war and logistics in relationship to Giovanni Arrighi’s account of crisis and ‘unravelling hegemony’. I also show how logistics provides essential critical and visual resources that contribute to efforts to map global capitalism and to debates on totality and class composition in contemporary critical theory. Finally, contemporary events such as the ongoing Coronavirus crisis and the reemergence of Black Lives Matter are considered in light of this analysis with reference to the centrality of logistics to racial capitalism.

scholarly journals Healthcare Applications of Artificial Intelligence and Analytics: A Review and Proposed Framework

2020 ◽  
Vol 10 (18) ◽  
pp. 6553
Author(s):  
Sabrina Azzi ◽  
Stéphane Gagnon ◽  
Alex Ramirez ◽  
Gregory Richards
Keyword(s):  
Artificial Intelligence ◽  
Chronic Care ◽  
Review Paper ◽  
Research Community ◽  
Patient Needs ◽  
Care Needs ◽  
Healthcare Applications ◽  
Medical Specialties ◽  
The Past ◽  
Promising Application

Healthcare is considered as one of the most promising application areas for artificial intelligence and analytics (AIA) just after the emergence of the latter. AI combined to analytics technologies is increasingly changing medical practice and healthcare in an impressive way using efficient algorithms from various branches of information technology (IT). Indeed, numerous works are published every year in several universities and innovation centers worldwide, but there are concerns about progress in their effective success. There are growing examples of AIA being implemented in healthcare with promising results. This review paper summarizes the past 5 years of healthcare applications of AIA, across different techniques and medical specialties, and discusses the current issues and challenges, related to this revolutionary technology. A total of 24,782 articles were identified. The aim of this paper is to provide the research community with the necessary background to push this field even further and propose a framework that will help integrate diverse AIA technologies around patient needs in various healthcare contexts, especially for chronic care patients, who present the most complex comorbidities and care needs.

Professional judgements of risk and capacity in situations of self-neglect among older people

2010 ◽  
Vol 30 (6) ◽  
pp. 1055-1072 ◽  
Author(s):  
SHANNON MCDERMOTT
Keyword(s):  
Critical Theory ◽  
Older People ◽  
Cultural Context ◽  
Sociological Theory ◽  
Qualitative Interviews ◽  
Medical Illness ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Social ◽  
Professional Intervention ◽  
Sydney Australia

ABSTRACTOver the past 50 years, self-neglect among older people has been conceptualised in both social policy and the academy as a social problem which is defined in relation to medical illness and requires professional intervention. Few authors, however, have analysed the concept of self-neglect in relation to critical sociological theory. This is problematic because professional judgements, which provide the impetus for intervention, are inherently influenced by the social and cultural context. The purpose of this article is to use critical theory as a framework for interpreting the findings from a qualitative study which explored judgements in relation to older people in situations of self-neglect made by professionals. Two types of data were collected. There were 125 hours of observations at meetings and home assessments conducted by professionals associated with the Community Options Programme in Sydney, Australia, and 18 professionals who worked with self-neglecting older people in the community gave in-depth qualitative interviews. The findings show that professional judgements of self-neglect focus on risk and capacity, and that these perceptions influence when and how interventions occur. The assumptions upon which professional judgements are based are then further analysed in relation to critical theory.

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