Deconstruction/Deconstructive Architecture (Page 4)

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This 'between can be marked within a text or language through what he prefers to call 'undecidables'. "Undecidables result from the independence of syntactic, the formal arrangement of words, from semantic, the meaning of words and sentences. Traditionally Words are arranged in sentences in an order to mean what we wish to mean. Hence, the arrangements of Words always play a secondary role to the meaning implied. Part of Derrida's criticism has also been to systematically undo this preference of "semantic' over 'syntactic.' If the meanings in a text are made impertinent, the arrangement of Words may no longer be dependent on meaning.

Both the arrangement of Words as well as the meaning of the text may, hence, become independent of each other. The words could then be rearranged, with some words moved or removed and punctuation changed, as may be necessary based on its own rules. While the meanings or 'semantic' would remain but it may not be treated as prior to the arrangement of words or 'syntactic' any longer.

Derrida has shown one such "undecidable', by making the arrangement of words independent of meaning and then rearranging the words as desired, in the writings of Stephen Mallarme. Mallarme's 'Mimique" describes a bizarre, brutal, mimodrama of a mime who tickles his beloved wife to death for being unfaithful to him and finally kills himself in grief. Since the mime mimes the role of both the murderer and the murdered, where one tickles another to death and the other dies laughing, and so on, meaning is no longer pertinent.

The mimicry is not only a memory of a crime in the past that is yet to be committed but is as much an act of love. Although the meanings remain, but, there is no longer any certainty of meaning and is, hence, impertinent. Mallarme's careful rearrangement of words, with some words moved or removed, coupled by his calculated punctuation bring undecidabilities in 'Mimique".

(Continues...)





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