Derrida’s Essay, "Sign and Play in the discourse of the 'Human Sciences" is an introduction to the theory of Deconstruction, or a look at language and meaning as opposed to the object or thing language and meaning is used to describe. Deconstruction seems to center around the idea that language and meaning are often inadequate in trying to convey the message or idea a communicator is trying to express. Since the confusion stems from the language and not the object then one should break down or deconstruct the language to see if we can better understand where the confusion stems.

Derrida discusses his idea of "interpreting the interpretations," through the ideas of an event, the structure of that event and the play of the elements of that make up the structure. The basic idea of deconstruction works. To really understand a thing, in this case language, one would need to break down what language is, how it works, why we adhere to that structure as our means of communications etc. The problem is that we use language to analyze language and I don’t think you can do that.

To effectively use deconstruction theory and apply it to language or the human sciences, one would have to create a new language. Math has its own language, made of signs and symbols and numbers, deconstruction needs its own language. The obvious problem with that idea is that a deconstructionist would say, you would need to break down that language to see if it is communicating effectively. However, I see that as a good place to start.

Another problem is that much of Derrida’s essay seems to be circular or contradictory. The idea of the center being inside and outside of a structure is senseless to me. Derrida doesn’t full explain his idea that a structure has a center but the totality of that structure has its center elsewhere (278) It is circular logic that doesn’t hold up. Also, Derrida spends much of the essay speaking on Levi-Strauss and his theories only to spend the latter half of the essay discrediting or finding contradiction in much of what Levi-Strauss had to say. The idea of the bricoleur and the engineer as it applies to language and lit theory in particular work for me.

Yet, after Derrida spends a great deal of time explaining those ideas he spends a great deal of time explaining why it doesn’t work, and why Levi-Strauss was off the mark in relying on the idea of the bricoleur and engineer or empiricism if you will, as a means to dissect language and theory. The question then becomes, "What does Derrida believe," and leave not fully having the answer that to the question and also believing that Derrida is unsure of the answer to that question himself.

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