Nature - autonomous learning

140 de-naturalisationDe-constructing discourses of natureCronon’s understanding of discourse is, arguably, lacking in theoreticalprecision. Other human geographers, by contrast, have offered a moreexacting understanding of how discourses operate. Derrideans, as the namesuggests, take their understanding of discourse from the works of Frenchphilosopher Jacques Derrida (1930–2004). Derrida is usually classed asa post-structuralist, begging the question of what structuralism is (orwas). In Derrida’s case, the structuralism in question was that of the Swisslinguist Ferdinand de Saussure (1857–1913). Saussure’s great influenceas a theorist of language derived from the following claims. First, he arguedthat the relationship between words, meanings and things is entirelyarbitrary. This is demonstrated by the fact that different languages usedifferent words and sounds to denote the same things. Second, Saussureargued that meaning is produced within language rather than languagemirroring an exterior social and natural world. Indeed, he’s credited withidentifying the signifier–signified–referent chain to which I referred inChapter 1. Specifically, Saussure argued that all words and sounds takeon a stable meaning in any society only because of their ‘horizontal’ and‘vertical’ relationships with other words and sounds. For instance, considerthe sentence ‘The President’s authority has diminished because his foreignpolicy has been economically costly’. According to Saussure we understandthe meaning of this sentence only because (i) we understand howthe meaning of each word is conditioned by its relations with the othersin the sentence and (ii) we understand the absent synonyms and antonymsfor each word (for instance, we could substitute the words ‘electedleader’ for President without changing the meaning of the sentence). ForSaussure, then, ‘language does not map on to pre-existing differencesout there in the world, but creates those differences’ (Edgar and Sedgwick2002: 209). Finally, this led Saussure to conclude that language is a systemor structure with definite rules that control what can and cannot be saidat any given moment in time. Just as rules of a game circumscribe the movesof players, so those of language (langue) frame the particular utterances(parole) of interlocutors.Derrida, whose ‘de-constructive’ writings began in the 1960s, tookSaussure’s structural linguistics a step further. Derrida argued that if allreference is arbitrary and if meaning is generated within linguistic systems,then it is impossible to establish final or correct representations of anything.