and cultural (the exact kinship relationships that are banned varies from culture to culture).

How can that be, wondered Derrida? How can what is supposed to be strictly "either/or" turn out to be "both?" How can something be both natural and cultural when the two are supposed to in binary opposition?

Derrida came to the conclusion that the language (signs) and structures we set up to organize knowledge –– the way we know –– are imperfect. They are simply kluges we come up with so that we can function. It's as if we had to support a roof but without having the proper beam: in that situation, we would prop the roof up with whatever we had at hand. When the roof started to sag or crumple, we would find something else to prop it up. Derrida called the odds and ends we might use to prop up the roof "bricolage." He also called the structures of knowledge we patch together so we can think and do intellectual work bricolage.

Because the knowledge framework in which we work is imperfect, it has no transcendent significance. In other words, we shouldn't take it too seriously. We should be willing to discard systems that don't work. But more importantly, rather than fall into a suicidal state because our structures of knowledge are imperfect, Derrida suggests that we see this as a positive. It brings jouissance, play, into our intellectual pursuits. We can play with ideas, deconstruct systems, and ask new questions.

Derrida writes that there are two ways to interpret “the interpretation” of “structure, sign, and play."

“The one seeks to decipher, dreams of deciphering a truth or an origin which escapes play and the order of the sign, and which lives the necessity of interpretation as an exile.” In other words, this interpretation (Levi-Strauss's) seeks to determine an origin of truth that will have a stable structure with a certain center. The stability of this structure, with its immobile center, solidifies its truth in that it (namely the center) is always true and therefore always “present.” This sounds good in terms of defining truth but such a stubborn idea eliminates the possibility of interpretation and scoffs at the idea of change in time, space, and history itself. Levi-Strauss tries to account for this (and fails) by saying that he has provided an outline (structure) of South American mythology which may be subject to reinterpretation. Levi-Strauss's argument deconstructs itself because he proposes a general, universal (originary) structure and yet one that may be transformed.

“The other, which is no longer turned toward the origin, affirms play and tries to pass beyond man and humanism, the name of man being the name of that being who, throughout the history of metaphysics or of ontotheology—in other words, throughout his entire history—has dreamed of full presence, the reassuring foundation, the origin and the end of play.” In other words, this second interpretation of structure, sign, and play seeks to affirm play: the substitution of centers and structures. 

For example, Levi-Strauss cites the “Bororo myth” as the “reference myth” which gives it a position of origin upon which the Bororo center some of their cultural traditions. As original, this myth would also have the definition of an origin, a center: something within the structure but, being unchanging, is somehow outside of that structure. But then Levi-Strauss says that this “key myth” is actually a transformation of other myths. Thus, he cites something as an origin and also an interpretation. 

In challenging Levi-Strauss, Derrida explains that centers are subject to change just as other elements of a structure are. Therefore, he focuses on the differences, substitutions, and supplements of structures and centers. He does not seek to establish a set of stable, unchanging structures because he recognizes that, through time, history, and the function of language itself, change and difference are the natural and cultural functions of meaning.

In Levi-Strauss's thinking, there are structures that are essentially stable and therefore always present, always true in their always present “Being.” Derrida seeks to show how such a notion limits play. Play disrupts this notion of set unchanging structures. Deconstruction frees one from this insistence on the unchanging structural presence. 

The "play" of the "sign" (word, myth, story, structure, center) is freed to change when we acknowledge that structures and their centers are changeable. 

Derrida's "Structure, Sign, and Play in the Discourse of Human Sciences" is an extraordinarily important essay in the post-structuralist movement. It highlights several major theoretical principles of deconstruction.

First, the essay questions the idea of a transcendental signifier. It asserts that the principles that provide the basis for thought in Western culture are themselves merely useful theories we cobble together, not unalterable, transcendent truths. Derrida uses as his main example in the essay the nature/culture binary. Separating aspects of life into two distinct categories as either natural or cultural is useful, but it is not absolute: some things, such as the incest taboo, are both natural and cultural simultaneously. Foundational methodologies we use to interpret the world, are, therefore, Derrida asserts, themselves simply human constructs. They are useful, but like a bridge we might cobble together from spare parts to cross a river, they are not eternal or inviolable: if a bridge starts to have holes we can fall through or we find a way to build a better bridge, we should do it and not simply hang onto the old.

Second, because the foundations on which we build knowledge and understanding are human constructs, we don't have to take them with the utter seriousness of immutable divine principles: we can play with them, have fun with them, and be creative. This sense of jouissance, joy and play, is integral to post-structuralism. We can own a certain sense of freedom over cultural constructs.

Finally, because the essay takes apart a binary construct—the nature/culture divide—it created an environment in which deconstructing binary oppositions such as male and female, black and white, and inside and outside became a major focus of deconstructive practice.

I reread this classic essay, and it holds up as well now as when I was in graduate school. If you read only one Derrida essay to understand deconstruction (a term today misapplied indiscriminately to almost any kind of analysis or interpretation) this would be the essay to read.

Derrida begins by discussing how thinkers like Nietzsche, Freud and Heidegger radically critiqued the very disciplines they worked in. The problem with all three, however, was that they critiqued the discipline by using the structure (the way the discipline organizes its thinking) of the discipline they were critiquing. Nietzsche, for example, might have undone philosophy as we understood it to that point, but he did it within the structure of philosophical thought. 

That would be like a radio announcer announcing the death of radio but only ever using the radio as his medium or a person announcing the death of smoke signals a a medium of communication using only smoke signals. What we need, Derrida, is a rupture.

Derrida finds that rupture in the work of ethnologist Claude Levi-Strauss. He owes a great debt to Levi-Strauss's self conscious understanding and articulation of the limits of his own discipline. What happened was that Levi-Strauss (and almost everyone else in his field), in studying cultures from around the world, used a binary model of pitting "nature" against "culture." If a practice cut across all cultures, Levi-Strauss (and other anthropologists and ethnologists) called it "natural." If a practice was specific to one or only a few cultures, it was called "cultural." What Levi-Strauss noticed was that incest taboos were both universal (all cultures have them) and yet specific (the rules vary from culture to culture.) They were thus both "natural" and "cultural." Yet how could that be? That would be like saying a person was both a man and a woman. The binary rules of the game said that a practice (or person) was either one OR the other.

Levi-Strauss solved this problem by arguing that the structures we use to understand our disciplines are not perfect, transcendent, Platonic forms, but kluges: tools that serve a purpose. We use binary thinking as a tool to help us understand ethnography, but the tool itself is a flawed improvisation. We use, so to speak, whatever we can find on our junk truck to hold the building up. Levi-Strauss and Derrida called the tool at hand a bricolage.

From there, Derrida makes his leap: there is no transcendent signifier, no perfect structure that stands outside of the mess of language and reality. We want a perfect form, a perfect structure, a perfect system, perfect stasis, perfect presence but we can't have it. Instead we have freeplay, large areas of indeterminacy in sign systems where meanings are fluid and changing.

Derrida notes that Levi-Strauss gives up the idea that we can pinpoint or determine a moment when the first word develops in the human consciousness. We jump, says Levi-Strauss, from no language to language fully formed. There is no determinate point of origin. We also create grammars of language based on small samples: we can never encompass an entire language in its totality in any one grammar because meanings are always changing and we know, too, that in the future, language will add words, and we can't know now what those words will be. This inability to totalize a system is called indeterminacy. So Levi-Strauss shows again that our structures are imperfect, punctuated by freeplay. Likewise, Levi-Strauss says we can't capture the mythology of a culture completely and the mythology we construct as we gather mythologies itself creates a new mythology. We also can't locate an original, first myth: myths are ever changing. This structural fluidity is true, says Derrida, not just for ethnography, but for all disciplines. Our sign systems (be they spoken languages or the dialect of a particular discipline or mythologies) are open-ended and indeterminate and the structures we use to understand them are imperfect as well. Locating the contradictions or inconsistencies in a structure (such as where binaries dissolve, as in the case of the incest taboo) is the work of deconstruction. 

According to Derrida, we can keep trying to impose rigid structures on our disciplines to attempt to create what he deems an "impossible" presence or we can accept and enjoy what "freeplay" (or play) has to offer us.

Questions: What is a binary opposition? Give an example from Levi-Strauss.

What does Derrida say about the transcendent signifier?

Anywhere in life, what are some examples of bricolage?

How might Derrida's emphasis on indeterminacy make us uncomfortable? 

In "Structure, Sign, and Play," Jacques Derrida discusses the tendency of scholars (such as Nietzsche, Freud, and Heidegger) to denounce each other. He is particularly concerned with metaphysics. Ultimately, Derrida borrows a term from the work of Claude Lévi-Strauss - bricoleurs - to describe how all thinkers, and all people in general, are creative tinkerers who must use the language and tools available to them, no matter how flawed or inevitably problematic. Our analyses will always be troubled, as language itself is troubled, and we do not have access to perfect media. The solution, then, is not only to use language, but to accept, exploit, and explore the ruptures of said language.

There are many examples which one could use to illustrate Derrida's point. For example, one could imagine a painter who, despite his best intentions, has only a supply of cheap, dirty paint. If he does not use these materials, he will create absolutely nothing; if he does use them, however, he can not only create a work of art, but learn how to use his imperfect tools in the best and most innovative way possible. If another painter were to critique him for his use of dirty paint, he would not only be missing the point (that is, the impetus to search, and to create), but also a fine opportunity to study the ways in which the painter's specific tools function, and what their imperfections may reveal.

We could also take the example of a dancer who is extremely upset with her teacher for what she perceives to be sloppy technique. However, if she were to disavow her teacher entirely, she would be unable to dance; she would have to forget everything she has learned, or rely solely on moves she has learned from others. She could theoretically develop her own form of dance, but this would be incredibly time-consuming, and she would almost certainly wind up borrowing from another imperfect teacher. Thus, in Derrida's view, the dancer should not abandon her teacher, but use the tools she has been given. Her dance may be sloppy, but it will still exist, and she will be able to work with, and study, the holes in her technique.

Last, we can use an example from Derrida's own scholarship. In later work, Derrida posits the notion of différance, or the way in which language is marked by a simultaneous difference and deferral of meaning. Words and signs can never fully summon forth what they mean, and so they only take on meaning via deferral to additional words; also, words take on meaning through their difference in relation to broader webs of language. Hence, language is a necessarily imperfect and chaotic medium, and it cannot be escaped. There is no perfect language, only différance.