Reflection on Chang Tsu: An Analysis of the Literary Theory of Structuralism and Deconstruction

"If there is no other, there is no I. If there is no I, there is no one to perceive". This quote, by Chuang Tsu, is essentially describing the relevance and existence of something in relation to the things around it, much like the discussions of individualism and the signifier/signified relationship featured in the third and fourth chapters of Eagleton's Literary Theory. I believe that the literary theories of Structuralism and Deconstruction can best explain this quote, in light of it's relation to the human subject, 'I'.

Eagleton states that Structuralism "scandalized the literary Establishment with its neglect of the individual" (94). Structuralism 'decenters' the human subject, implying that the individual parts of a work of literature have no importance. This was a shock to most American and European cultures, which all have very individualistic attitudes toward the human subject. Asian cultures, on the other hand, have very group-oriented ideals - one person means nothing except for their connections to and relationships with others. Structuralism brings to mind the notion that an individual really has no purpose; all single elements of literature are replaceable, including the actual content, as long as the structural pieces follow the same framework and ideas. Structuralism searches for a 'monolithic unity', in which individualism is unimportant; if there are no other parts to a text other than the single individual, there will be no individual because there is nothing to relate and connect it to. Similarly, if there is no individual there will be no content to bracket off from and analyze.

This notion of meaning by relationships to other things is tied to the Deconstruction discussion of signifiers and signified; according to this critical theory, all signifiers carry a certain meaning only because they do not have other signifiers' meanings. For example, the signifier 'dog' has the signified meaning we connect it to, simply because we do not connect it to the signified the word 'cat' produces. There are only slight differences between the words 'sad' and 'mad'; yet they carry different signified meanings and evoke different responses. Essentially, "the signified [...] is the product of the difference between two signifiers" (110), and has no meaning alone. Someone who does not speak English will not be able to grasp the signified meaning of the word 'car', because they do not know of any other signifiers to compare it to. In this way, the theory of Deconstruction is tied to the quote mentioned above: no individual (or 'I') can exist or have meaning with out everything around it. Naturally, if there is no 'I', or signified meaning, there will exist nothing in the human subject.

In both Structuralism and Deconstruction, the idea of the unimportance of an individual, without its connection to those around it, is presented. These two theories accurately describe the meaning put forth in the quote by Chuang Tsu; realistically, there is no 'I' without anything else to compare and contrast it to or separate it from.

Work Cited
Eagleton, Terry. Literary Theory: An Introduction. Second Edition. Minneapolis: The University of Minnesota Press, 1996.