Deconstruction MCQs: Literary Theory Part 8, Derrida, différance and logocentrism
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1000+ Literary Theory MCQs – Part 8: Deconstruction: Derrida, de Man & the Yale School

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Literary Theory · Part 8 of 25 · 1967 onwards

Deconstruction: Derrida, de Man & the Yale School

DifféranceLogocentrismTraceAporia

What is Deconstruction? Deconstruction is Jacques Derrida’s method of showing how a text undoes its own binary oppositions. Launched in Of Grammatology and Writing and Difference (1967), it attacks logocentrism and the privileging of speech over writing, and was carried into American criticism by Paul de Man and the Yale School.

This part covers Jacques Derrida, the key terms of deconstruction, Paul de Man and the Yale School. The questions are drawn from previous UGC NET, SET, PhD entrance and Assistant Professor papers, and every answer comes with a short explanation. Tap an option to check your answer.

Jacques DerridaDeconstruction: Key TermsPaul de Man & the Yale School

Jacques Derrida

1. Name the critical theory which attempts to critique the traditional practice of privileging speech over writing.

  1. Structuralism
  2. New Criticism
  3. Deconstruction
  4. Russian Formalism
Derrida’s deconstruction attacks phonocentrism, the Western privileging of speech as presence over writing, while Saussurean structuralism itself treated speech as primary.

2. Read the following statements:

Assertion (A): There is no unity or absolute source of the myth.
Reason (R): The focus or the source of the myth are always shadows and virtualities which are elusive, unactualisable and nonexistent in the first place. Any search for the discursive unity in the myth is, therefore, misplaced.
In the context of the above statements:
  1. Both (A) and (R) are true and (R) is the correct explanation of (A)
  2. Both (A) and (R) are true but (R) is not the correct explanation of (A)
  3. Assertion (A) is true but Reason (R) is false
  4. Assertion (A) is false but Reason (R) is true
In ‘Structure, Sign and Play’ Derrida, reading Lévi-Strauss, argues that myth has no centre or absolute source because its source is only elusive shadows and virtualities; R explains A.

3. Which of the following theoretical terms was propounded by Jacques Derrida?

  1. Subaltern
  2. Structuralism
  3. Deconstruction
  4. Gynocriticism
Derrida introduced deconstruction in Of Grammatology (1967); subaltern comes from Gramsci and gynocriticism from Showalter.

4. Which of the following options is not a Derridean concept?

  1. différance
  2. pharmakon
  3. phallogocentrism
  4. hommelette
Hommelette, punning on ‘little man’ and ‘omelette’, is Lacan’s term for the formless infant, while différance, pharmakon and phallogocentrism are Derridean.

5. Who asserts that the interpretation of metaphor is often reliant upon another metaphor?

  1. Shakespeare
  2. Socrates
  3. Marlowe
  4. Derrida
In “White Mythology” Derrida argues that philosophy cannot master metaphor, since any concept used to explain metaphor is itself metaphorical.

6. In his “Structure, Sign, and Play in the Discourse of the Human Sciences,” Derrida discusses the bricoleur whom Lévi-Strauss describes as “someone who uses ‘the means at hand’.” With whom does Lévi-Strauss contrast the bricoleur in terms of method and approach?

  1. The botanist
  2. The anthropologist
  3. The engineer
  4. The semiotician
In The Savage Mind Lévi-Strauss contrasts the bricoleur with the engineer, who creates tools from scratch; Derrida argues the engineer is a myth produced by bricolage.

7. Which of the following is Jacques Derrida’s epigraph to his “Structure, Sign and Play in the Discourse of the Human Sciences”?

  1. “More body, hence more writing.” (Hélène Cixous)
  2. “But unlike philosophical reflection, … the reflections we are dealing with here concern rays whose only source is hypothetical …” (Claude Lévi-Strauss)
  3. “We need to interpret interpretations more than to interpret things.” (Michel de Montaigne)
  4. “If Cleopatra’s nose had been shorter the whole history of the world would have been different.” (Blaise Pascal)
Derrida’s 1966 Johns Hopkins lecture opens with Montaigne’s line from the Essays, anticipating his argument about the endless play of interpretation.

8. Jacques Derrida’s work received some criticism from analytical philosophers. Who among the following was a critic of Derrida?

  1. John Searle
  2. Jean-François Lyotard
  3. Emmanuel Levinas
  4. Paul de Man
The analytic philosopher John Searle attacked Derrida’s reading of J.L. Austin’s speech-act theory, provoking Derrida’s reply in Limited Inc.

9. Who was the original English translator of Of Grammatology?

  1. Samuel Weber
  2. Jean-Luc Nancy
  3. Paul de Man
  4. G.C. Spivak
Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak translated De la grammatologie into English in 1976, with a long translator’s preface.

10. In which country was Jacques Derrida born?

  1. France
  2. Algeria
  3. South Africa
  4. Belgium
Derrida was born in 1930 in El Biar, near Algiers, in French-ruled Algeria.

11. Which of the following is not Jacques Derrida’s work?

  1. Of Spirit: Heidegger and the Question
  2. The Transcendence of the Ego
  3. Of Grammatology
  4. The Work of Mourning
The Transcendence of the Ego (1936) is by Jean-Paul Sartre; the other three are books by Derrida.

12. The term ‘dissemination’ was coined by

  1. Jacques Derrida
  2. Barbara Johnson
  3. J. Hillis Miller
  4. Paul de Man
Derrida’s Dissemination (1972) uses the term for the scattering of meaning that can never be gathered into a single sense; Barbara Johnson translated it.

13. Although its ultimate aim may be to criticise Western logic, ____ arose as a response to structuralism and formalism.

  1. Post-Structuralism
  2. Modernism
  3. Feminism
  4. Deconstruction
Deconstruction, launched by Derrida in the late 1960s, critiques Western logocentric metaphysics and emerged as a response to structuralist and formalist claims to stable structure.

14. Who coined the phrase ‘archi-writing’?

  1. Roland Barthes
  2. Edward Said
  3. Jacques Derrida
  4. Michel Foucault
In Of Grammatology (1967) Derrida uses archi-writing for the play of difference and trace that precedes and conditions both speech and writing.

15. The work Specters of Marx is written by

  1. Raymond Williams
  2. Jacques Derrida
  3. Fredric Jameson
  4. Terry Eagleton
Derrida’s Specters of Marx (1993) introduces hauntology and argues for the persistent spectral inheritance of Marx.

16. “Structure, Sign and Play in the Discourse of the Human Sciences” was a paper presented by __________ in 1966 at Johns Hopkins University, USA.

  1. Michel Foucault
  2. Roland Barthes
  3. Jacques Lacan
  4. Jacques Derrida
Jacques Derrida delivered “Structure, Sign and Play” at the 1966 Johns Hopkins symposium, critiquing the idea of a centred structure and launching post-structuralism in America.

17. Who is the author of Specters of Marx?

  1. Michel Foucault
  2. Louis Althusser
  3. Jacques Derrida
  4. Raymond Williams
Jacques Derrida’s Specters of Marx (1993) introduced “hauntology”, arguing that Marx’s spirit continues to haunt the post-Cold War “new world order”.

18. Who calls literature a “strange institution”?

  1. Jacques Derrida
  2. Terry Eagleton
  3. Michel Foucault
  4. Stephen Greenblatt
In the interview “This Strange Institution Called Literature” (with Derek Attridge, in Acts of Literature, 1992), Derrida describes literature as an institution that allows one to say anything.

19. Which one of the following is not one of Derrida’s precursors?

  1. Terry Eagleton
  2. Freud
  3. Heidegger
  4. Nietzsche
Derrida drew on Nietzsche, Freud, Heidegger and Husserl; Terry Eagleton is a later Marxist critic, younger than Derrida and often critical of deconstruction.

20. Who is the author of Margins of Philosophy?

  1. Jacques Lacan
  2. Jacques Derrida
  3. Martin Heidegger
  4. Jean-Paul Sartre
Margins of Philosophy (Marges de la philosophie, 1972) is Jacques Derrida’s collection containing “Différance”, “White Mythology” and “Signature Event Context”.

21. “There is nothing outside the text” is a statement by:

  1. Viktor Shklovsky
  2. Harold Bloom
  3. Roland Barthes
  4. Jacques Derrida
Jacques Derrida wrote “il n’y a pas de hors-texte” in Of Grammatology (1967), meaning there is no access to meaning outside systems of signification.

22. Jacques Derrida’s autobiographical work was published in 1991 under the title:

  1. The Post Card
  2. Shibboleth
  3. Circumfession
  4. Specters of Marx
Circumfession (1991) is Derrida’s autobiographical text, printed beneath Geoffrey Bennington’s “Derridabase” in the volume Jacques Derrida.

23. Which of the following is not a work by Jacques Derrida?

  1. Of Grammatology
  2. Writing and Difference
  3. The History of Sexuality
  4. Margins of Philosophy
The History of Sexuality (1976-84) is by Michel Foucault; Of Grammatology, Writing and Difference (both 1967) and Margins of Philosophy (1972) are Derrida’s.

24. “There are only, everywhere, differences and traces of traces” is:

  1. A structuralist statement
  2. A post-structuralist statement
  3. A postmodern statement
  4. None of the above
The statement is Derrida’s (Positions, 1972): without a centre or presence, signification is an endless play of differences and traces, a post-structuralist position.

25. Derrida describes the concept of a source of meaning that is situated above and beyond the structure of signification as:

  1. Transcendental signified
  2. Trace
  3. Différance
  4. The metaphysics of presence
Derrida’s transcendental signified is an ultimate meaning outside the play of signifiers, such as God, Reason or Being, which would anchor all signification.

26. Who seeks an assumed binary opposition in an author’s narrative, then rereads the text against the author’s wishes from the perspective of the marginalised position, finally showing that the correct interpretation is undecidable?

  1. Roland Barthes
  2. Emmanuel Levinas
  3. Jean-François Lyotard
  4. Jacques Derrida
Jacques Derrida’s deconstruction locates a hierarchical binary, reverses it from the subordinate term and shows the text’s meaning to be ultimately undecidable.

27. ‘There is nothing outside the text’: this statement by Derrida means ____.

  1. the text is a repository of meanings
  2. reality is mediated through texts
  3. our interpretation should be textual
  4. the written text is superior to speech
Derrida’s “il n’y a pas de hors-texte” (Of Grammatology, 1967) means there is no access to reality unmediated by textuality, language and the play of signs.

28. In Of Grammatology, Jacques Derrida argues what about literature?

  1. No fixed, stable meaning is possible.
  2. Language must be studied in conjunction with history in order to create meaning.
  3. Literature is timeless, and thus meaning does not change.
  4. All of the above answers are correct.
In Of Grammatology (1967) Derrida argues that the endless play of différance among signs defers any final, stable meaning.
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Deconstruction: Key Terms

29. The term “logocentrism” was coined by:

  1. Todorov
  2. Derrida
  3. Ludwig Klages
  4. Saussure
The German philosopher Ludwig Klages coined Logozentrismus in the 1920s; Jacques Derrida later popularised logocentrism in Of Grammatology (1967) as the privileging of speech and presence.

30. Which term best describes a world in which we cannot know where we are, since all the concepts which previously defined the centre, and hence also the margins, have been “deconstructed”, or undermined?

  1. Absurdism
  2. Decentred universe
  3. Allegorical interpretation
  4. Binary oppositions
Following Derrida’s ‘Structure, Sign and Play’ (1966), the decentred universe is one in which no fixed centre or transcendental signified guarantees meaning or position.

31. Which term, popular in deconstructive criticism, literally means an impasse?

  1. Aporia
  2. Parole
  3. Imagism
  4. Langue
Aporia, Greek for an impassable path, names the point of undecidability where a text’s contradictory meanings cannot be resolved, a favourite term of Derrida and de Man.

32. Which among the following statements is incorrect with regard to Derrida’s concept of the ‘transcendental signified’?

  1. Derrida defines it as an external source of meaning-making.
  2. It can be in the form of an author standing outside the text and yet guiding the meaning.
  3. It creates an illusion that the language structure has a centre.
  4. Derrida uses the concept of transcendental signified to replace Saussure’s concept of langue.
For Derrida the transcendental signified is an ultimate meaning outside the play of signs that would anchor a centre; he deconstructs it rather than substituting it for langue.

33. Which of the following statements is not applicable to Derrida’s rejection of the notion of the ‘metaphysics of presence’?

  1. All presences are necessarily metaphysical and, therefore, are to be rejected.
  2. The desire for immediate access to meaning privileges presence over absence.
  3. A fleeting meaning of the text is created through the play of ‘difference’ and ‘différance’.
  4. Metaphysics involves installing hierarchies and orders of subordination in the various dualisms that it encounters.
Derrida does not simply reject presence; he shows it is an effect of différance and that one cannot step outside metaphysics, only deconstruct its hierarchies from within.

34. “There is nothing outside the text” is a key statement emanating from

  1. Feminism
  2. Deconstruction
  3. New Historicism
  4. Structuralism
“Il n’y a pas de hors-texte” comes from Derrida’s Of Grammatology and is a founding claim of deconstruction.

35. To refer to the unresolvable difficulties a text may open up, Derrida makes use of the term

  1. supplement
  2. différance
  3. erasure
  4. aporia
Aporia (Greek, impasse) names the undecidable point where a text’s logic contradicts itself and meaning cannot be resolved.

36. Deconstructionist critics argue that texts are never free from

  1. the equivocal and ironically unstable worldview of the author
  2. the material conditions that determine their production and reception
  3. distortions inherent in the rhetoricity of language
  4. the interpretations bestowed by the totalizing critic
Deconstructionists such as de Man argue that the figurative, rhetorical nature of language always unsettles a text’s literal claims.

37. Which of the following statements best describes the term ‘deconstruction’?

  1. It emphasises the importance of historical context.
  2. It advocates ‘subjective’ or ‘free’ interpretation.
  3. It seeks to expose the problematic nature of ‘centred’ discourses.
  4. It is a method of critical analysis.
Deconstruction exposes how discourses organised around a stable centre or presence rely on hierarchical oppositions that undo themselves; Derrida denied it was a method.

38. Which of the following statements best describes the term ‘deconstruction’?

  1. It seeks to expose the problematic nature of ‘centred’ discourses.
  2. It advocates ‘subjective’ or ‘free’ interpretation.
  3. It emphasises the importance of historical context.
  4. It is a method of critical analysis.
Deconstruction exposes how discourses organised around a stable centre or presence rely on hierarchical oppositions that undo themselves; Derrida denied it was a method.

39. Read the Assertion and Reason and choose the correct code.

Assertion (A): Deconstructive reading is apolitical.
Reason (R): It focuses exclusively on language. It primarily holds that all texts or linguistic structures contain within them a principle of destabilisation, and hence it is difficult to pin down meaning. Such a reading, therefore, is unable to assign historical agency.
  1. A is true, but R is false
  2. Both A and R are true
  3. A is false, but R is true
  4. Both A and R are false
Marxist and historicist critics charge deconstruction with being apolitical because its exclusive focus on linguistic instability leaves no ground for historical agency.

40. What is ‘aporia’?

  1. Lucidity
  2. Close reading of a text
  3. Clarity of thought
  4. Deadlock of meaning
In deconstruction, aporia is an undecidable impasse or deadlock where a text’s contradictory meanings cannot be resolved.

41. “Logocentrism” is a term associated with:

  1. Todorov
  2. Derrida
  3. Saussure
  4. Barthes
Jacques Derrida popularised logocentrism (a term first used by Ludwig Klages) for Western metaphysics’ privileging of presence, speech and the logos over writing.

42. Which term is not generally associated with Derridean deconstruction?

  1. trace
  2. différance
  3. logocentrism
  4. interpellation
Trace, différance and logocentrism are central Derridean terms; interpellation is Louis Althusser’s concept of ideology hailing individuals as subjects.

43. Derrida makes use of the term ‘aporia’ to mean:

  1. Postponement
  2. Inadequacy and inevitability of language
  3. Unresolvable difficulties of a text
  4. Improvisation in a human endeavour
Aporia (Greek “impassable path”) denotes the undecidable impasse or self-contradiction a text reaches, which deconstructive reading exposes.

44. What, according to Derrida, is “neither a word nor a concept” and indicates a juncture?

  1. Jouissance
  2. Différance
  3. Metalanguage
  4. Textuality
In the essay “Différance” (1968) Derrida says différance is literally neither a word nor a concept; it joins differing and deferring in the production of meaning.

45. Given below are two statements:

Statement I: Language is not a reliable tool of communication, says deconstruction, but argues in favour of a theory of sign as a self-sufficient union of signifier and signified.
Statement II: Deconstruction claims that language is non-referential since it refers neither to the things in the world nor to our concepts of things but only to the play of signifiers.
In the light of the above statements, choose the most appropriate answer from the options given below:
  1. Both Statement I and Statement II are correct.
  2. Both Statement I and Statement II are incorrect.
  3. Statement I is correct, but Statement II is incorrect.
  4. Statement I is incorrect, but Statement II is correct.
Deconstruction denies that the sign is a stable, self-sufficient union of signifier and signified; meaning arises only from the endless play of signifiers, so Statement II alone is correct.

46. A finite set of determinately multiple meanings is called ________ by Derrida.

  1. polysemism
  2. dissemination
  3. ambiguity
  4. polymorphemic
Derrida distinguishes polysemy, a finite, determinable plurality of meanings, from dissemination, an irreducible and uncontrollable scattering of meaning.

47. The term “logocentrism” was coined by ____.

  1. Ludwig Klages
  2. Derrida
  3. Saussure
  4. Todorov
The German philosopher Ludwig Klages coined logocentrism in the 1920s; Derrida later made it central to deconstruction’s critique of Western metaphysics.

Paul de Man & the Yale School

48. In which of Barbara Johnson’s works is the following definition of deconstructive reading found: “Deconstruction is not synonymous with ‘destruction’. It is in fact much closer to the original meaning of the word ‘analysis’, which etymologically means ‘to undo’”?

  1. Trustee from the Toolroom
  2. The Age of Innocence
  3. The Critical Difference
  4. Of Grammatology
Barbara Johnson, a Yale deconstructionist, gave this definition in The Critical Difference (1980), stressing that deconstruction teases out a text’s own warring forces of signification.

49. Which Flemish poet is Paul de Man related to?

  1. Anton Bergmann
  2. Jan Van Beers
  3. Jan Frans Willems
  4. Karel L. Ledeganck
The Flemish poet Jan Van Beers was the great-grandfather of Paul de Man, the Yale School deconstructionist and nephew of Hendrik de Man.

50. Which of the following theorists had Paul de Man as his/her intellectual mentor?

  1. Jacques Derrida
  2. I. A. Richards
  3. Jacques Lacan
  4. Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak
Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak wrote her doctoral dissertation on Yeats under Paul de Man at Cornell, and his deconstructive reading shaped her later work.

51. Derrida’s American disciples were

  1. Gertrude Stein, Barbara Johnson, Michael Ryan
  2. Geoffrey Hartman, Paul de Man, J. Hillis Miller
  3. Barbara Johnson, Michael Ryan, Mary Ellmann
  4. Jean Baudrillard, Gilles Deleuze, Félix Guattari
Hartman, de Man and J. Hillis Miller, with Harold Bloom, formed the Yale School that spread deconstruction in America.

52. 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
  1. A and B
  2. A and C
  3. B and C
  4. B and D
Paul de Man wrote Blindness and Insight (1971) and Allegories of Reading (1979); Criticism and Ideology (1976) is by Terry Eagleton.

53. Which of the following sociologists’ ideas on the practice of receiving and giving gifts are used by J. Hillis Miller to reinforce his arguments in the essay “The Critic as Host”?

  1. Émile Durkheim
  2. Max Weber
  3. Marcel Mauss
  4. Daniel Bell
Miller draws on gift-exchange theory associated with Marcel Mauss’s The Gift to explore the reciprocal host-guest relation between critical and literary texts.

54. Which two of the following are associated with Deconstruction?

(A) Jacques Derrida
(B) Raymond Williams
(C) Paul de Man
(D) Jonathan Dollimore
  1. A and B
  2. A and C
  3. A and D
  4. B and D
Derrida founded deconstruction and Paul de Man was its leading American exponent; Williams and Dollimore are cultural materialists.

55. “The Deconstructive Angel” is an essay by:

  1. Paul de Man
  2. Barbara Johnson
  3. Jacques Derrida
  4. M.H. Abrams
M.H. Abrams wrote “The Deconstructive Angel” (1977), a critique of deconstructive reading, especially J. Hillis Miller’s, arguing it makes determinate meaning impossible.

56. Derrida’s American disciples were:

  1. Geoffrey Hartman, Paul de Man, J. Hillis Miller
  2. Gertrude Stein, Barbara Johnson, Michael Ryan
  3. Barbara Johnson, Michael Ryan, Mary Ellmann
  4. Jean Baudrillard, Gilles Deleuze, Félix Guattari
Geoffrey Hartman, Paul de Man and J. Hillis Miller, with Harold Bloom, formed the Yale School that carried Derridean deconstruction into American criticism.

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