UPDATE: Now, you can get these 3000+ questions in booklet/hardcopy format. Click here to know more.
Deconstruction – (Previous Year Questions UGC-NET English)
1. In his “Structure, Sign, and Play in the Discourse of the Human Sciences,” Derrida is all praise for the bricoleur whom Levi-Strauss sees as a supreme methodologist, “someone who uses ‘the means at hand’.” Who does Levi-Strauss contrast bricoleur with in terms of method and approach?
2. One of the key terms in Michel Foucault’s work is discourse. This is best described as:
3. Which of the following statements is not applicable to Derrida’s rejection of the notion of the ‘Metaphysics of Presence’?
4. Michel Foucault’s earlier “archaeological” study is found in:
5. Which of the following is Jacques Derrida’s epigraph to his “Structure, Sign and Play in the Discourse of the Human Sciences”?
6. Given below are two statements, one labelled as Assertion (A) and the other as Reason (R).
Assertion (A):
To give a text an author is to impose a limit on that text, to furnish it with a final signified, to close the writing.
Reason (R):
A text is made up of multiple meanings drawn from many sources, and this multiplicity is focused on the reader.
In the context of the two statements, which one of the following is correct:
7. Match the following:
Terms:
(a) Ambiguity
(b) Aporia
(c) Intertextuality
(d) Heteroglossia
Description:
(i) A term coined by Julia Kristeva to refer to the fact that texts are constituted by a ’tissue of citations’.
(ii) A term used by Mikhail Bakhtin to describe the variety of languages and voices within a novel.
(iii) An irresolvable internal contradiction or logical disjunction in a text, usually associated with deconstructive thinking.
(iv) A term made famous by William Empson to indicate that a word, phrase, or text can be interpreted in more than one way.
(a) (b) (c) (d)
8. Read the following statements:
Assertion (A):
Arts will often work obliquely, by myth or symbol. They may make their best criticism of life simply by being; they may best state by not stating.
Reason (R):
It follows, if even only part of all this is true, that the arts do have an important social function. Arts can give greater depth to a society’s sense of itself. A country without great art might be a powerful collection of thriving earthworms but would be a sorry society.
9. Consider the following statements about Jean Baudrillard:
(a) Jean Baudrillard tells us the postmodern societies are marked by simulacra.
(b) By simulacra he means non-representations of reality.
(c) Simulacra artificially produce a mediated world masquerading as authenticity.
(d) It was not Jean Baudrillard but his interpreters who coined the term ‘simulacra’.
Which of the above statements are true?
10. In Jean Francois Lyotard’s works the term “language games”, sometimes also called “phrase regimens” denotes:
I. the multiplicity of communities of meaning.
II. the breakdown of communities of meaning.
III. the innumerable and incommensurable separate systems in which meanings are produced.
IV. the singular system in which meanings are dispersed and displaced.
The right combination according to the code is:
11. A new historical reading, above everything else, is influenced by the philosophy of:
12. Jacques Derrida’s work received some criticism from analytical philosophers. Who below was a critic of Derrida?
13. According to Roland Barthes, the “writerly text” is:
14. Who was the original English translator for Of Grammatology?
15. Which Flemish poet is Jacques Derrida related to?
16. ‘Anti-foundationalism’ holds that:
17. “A text is not a line of words releasing a single ‘theological’ meaning (the ‘message’ of the Author-God) but a multi-dimensional space in which a variety of writings, none of them original, blend and clash. The text is a tissue of quotations drawn from the innumerable centres of culture.” Which of the following best expresses the position stated above?
18. In his essay “From Work to Text” Roland Barthes says the following about the text:
I. The text is singular.
II. The text can be held in the hand.
III. The text is held in language.
IV. The text is a methodological field.
The right combination according to the code is:
19. Which of the following thinker-concept pair is correctly matched?
20. “There is nothing outside the text” is a key statement emanating from:
21. The structural analysis of signs was practised by:
22. “Panopticism” is the title of a chapter in a well-known book by:
23. To refer to the unresolvable difficulties a text may open up, Derrida makes use of the term:
24. According to Barthes, a text which draws attention to its artifice, to the ways in which it is structured, is called:
25. Which of the following works cannot be categorised under postcolonial theory?
26. “Power circulates in all directions, to and from all social levels, at all times.” Who said this?
27. The etymological meaning of the word “trope” is:
28. Match the items in List – I with items in List – II according to the code given below:
List – I (Theorist):
i. Michel Foucault
ii. Judith Butler
iii. Alan Sinfield
iv. Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick
List – II (Book):
1. Gender Trouble
2. Epistemology of the Closet
3. History of Sexuality
4. Cultural Politics-Queer Reading
i ii iii iv
29. Derrida’s American disciples were:
30. According to Foucault sexuality points to discourses about all the following EXCEPT:
31. Which country is Jacques Derrida born in?
32. Which of the following is not Jacques Derrida’s work?
33. Which of the following statements does not describe Michel Foucault’s position?
34. Foucault believes that the facts of history will protect us from:
35. Identify the two important works of Paul de Man from the following list:
(a) Blindness and Insight
(b) Allegories of Reading
(c) Theoretical Essays
(d) Criticism and Ideology
The right combination according to the code is:
36. Who among the following proposed that the First Gulf War had never taken place, it was simply a hyperreal, media-generated spectacle?
37. Deconstructionist critics argue that texts are never free from:
38. “We know now that a text is not a line of words releasing a single ‘theological’ meaning (the ‘message’ of the Author-god) but a multidimensional space in which a variety of writings, none of them original, blend and clash…. literature…. by refusing to assign a ‘secret’, an ultimate meaning, to the text (and to the world as text) liberates what may be called an anti-theological activity, that is truly revolutionary since to refuse to fix meaning is, in the end to refuse god and his hypostases- reason, science, law.” The passage comes from which of the following essays?
39. By which two of the following processes, according to Michel Foucault, does power operate?
(a) By right rather than technique
(b) By normalization rather than law
(c) By control rather than punishment
(d) By repression rather than agreement
40. Who among the following analysed the naturalizing of connotative meanings into myths?
41. Which of the following sociologists’ ideas on the practice of receiving and giving gifts are used by J. Hillis Miller to reinforce her arguments in the essay, “Critic as Host”?
42. Match the critics and their works:
Critics:
(a) Edward Said
(b) Terry Eagleton
(c) Francis Mulhern
(d) K. M. Newton
Works:
(i) The Illusion of Postmodernism
(ii) Contemporary Marxist Criticism
(iii) Theory into Practice
(iv) Culture and Imperialism
43. Who among the following explored the shifting and contested power-relations, knowledge and the human body?
44. Given below are two statements—one is labelled as Assertion (A) and the other is labelled as Reason (R):
Assertion (A):
Language constructs meaning.
Reason (R):
Language structures meanings depending on the speaking subjects’ perception, context and auditor(s).
In the light of the above two statements choose the correct option:
45. Which of the following describes Foucault’s views on knowledge?
46. Which of the following stylistic features characterize spoken discourse?
(a) Greater use of explicit connectives
(b) Greater dependence on verbal connectives
(c) Greater syntactic embedding
(d) Greater use of fillers and repetitions
47. Which two of the following are associated with Deconstruction?
(a) Jacques Derrida
(b) Raymond Williams
(c) Paul De Man
(d) Jonathan Dollimore
48. Match the theorist with the text:
Theorists:
a) John Fiske
b) Michel de Certeau
c) Pierre Bourdieu
d) Jean Francois Lyotard
Texts:
i. Distinction
ii. The Postmodern Condition
iii. Reading the Popular
iv. The Practice of Everyday Life
49. Given below are two statements: one is labelled as Assertion A and the other is labelled as Reason R:
Assertion A:
Signs are never neutral or innocent.
Reason R:
In all cases signs are organized into systems that convey some meaning.
In light of the above statements, choose the correct answer from the options given below:
50. Who among the following presented the concept of ‘multi-accentuality of the sign’, saying that signs possess an inner dialectical quality and ‘evaluative accent’?
51. Which one of the following assumptions best expresses the position of Post-Structuralist criticism?
52. Match List I and List II:
List I – Terms:
A. Superreader
B. Biopower
C. Bricolage
D. Chronotope
List II – Theorists:
I. Michel Foucault
II. Mikhail Bakhtin
III. Michael Riffaterre
IV. Claude Levi-Strauss
53. Match List I and List II:
List I – Terms:
A. arche-ecriture
B. cyborg
C. genotext
D. hermeneutic circle
List II – Theorists:
I. Julia Kristeva
II. Donna Haraway
III. Friedrich Schleiermacher
IV. Jacques Derrida
Thank you sir
You’re weclome, Aishwarya.
Very informative..thanks
Ab NET pass krne se koi nahi rok paega🤘😅yyaass!!!!