방법론적 모델로서의 구조: 데리다의 구조 해체에 대한 기호학적 비판

The Structure as a Methodological Model: A Semiotic Critique of Derrida"s Deconstruction of Structure

&nbsp;&nbsp;We can apprehend and explain a given object only through its model since we have no direct epistemological access to reality, natural or cultural. The model ranges from a simple cognitive schema to a highly complicated operative tool. Structure is the system of connections which links up parts within an ordered whole, and functions as such a model especially when it comes to objects involving relations among their elements. But, for Derrida, the concept of structure is misleading and to be deconstructed. The structure cannot be a pure methodological tool since it is a metaphysical concept. Through the principle of presence, metaphysics necessarily endows the discourse with truth value by organizing it into a centered and fixed totality, which is a structure.<BR>&nbsp;&nbsp;However, Derrida&quot;s deconstruction of structure turns out to be problematic because his conception of sign, the element of the structure, cannot account for the fact that the sign is formal and dynamic at the same time, which allows the structure to be a form not permanently fixed by a certain truth value. Peirce&quot;s doctrine of sign and phenomenology show that, unlike Derrida&quot;s thesis, the sign proper is not another metaphysical concept, the stable union of the intelligible and the sensible, but solely an intelligible form whose dynamicity arises from the translatability or interpretability between culturally constructed and operative forms. Besides, the distinction of the intelligible and the sensible is necessary to the function of the sign. The sign proper is the general-intelligible form (type-sign), according to which its individual-sensible actualization (token-sign) is repeatedly produced and identified as a sign.<BR>&nbsp;&nbsp;Derrida criticizes all the formalist schemata in that they rely upon Empiricism, whose appeal to experience is necessarily involved with the principle of presence, and whose scientific objectivism reveals its pursue of truth value. This critique presupposes that perception, the base of all experience is intuitional. But perception is, as Peirce shows, not intuitional but inferential. In fact, perception is a form of signification, an iconic one whose resultant meaning is the cognitive schema of the given object. And any signification entails interpretation as it is dependent upon the interpretative act, which is performed as a form of inference, namely, abduction. Consequently, perception and hence experience are interpretative, which means they are fallible and tentative. The structure is then not a metaphysical illusion involving invariable truth. Rather, it is interpretative and must be taken as a fallible and tentative form. As an interpretation of reality, the structure is a methodological tool, an apprehensive and explicative model of the object.