BINARY OPPOSITIONS IN DONALD BARTHELME’S SHORT FICTIONS

This article is going to drag out Derrida’s inversion on Donald Barthelme’s inverted binary oppositions to show the emergence of the large space of nothing/everything between the binaries which could be only noticeable in an instant. This world of nothing is a world which cannot be defined by the simple medium of logos, but in order to be apprehensive and tangible in this logocentric world, a name should be chosen for its identification. In fact, it is an awareness of the possibilities of other possibilities. However, the crucial aim is to depict this world without the usages of language, in a neutralized context by applying the inversion of the inverted postmodern binaries which are totally different from our dualistic expectation, but in order to be apprehended, we have no other way to ignore the language. This research concerns about Donald Barthelme’s three fictions: Me and Miss Mandible, A Shower of Gold and The Glass Mountain. The reading strategy is Derrida’s Deconstruction on the subject of the inversion of the inverted which results in the emergence of a new world protruded in an instant. Although there are many other worlds separated by different bulwarks, this new created world is the first step in permeating into other unknown parallel worlds. Therefore, more investigations are required in this matter. The aim of this article is to show the binary oppositions of selected postmodern short stories (Me and Miss Mandible, A Shower of Gold and The Glass Mountain), which are the inversion of normal fixed binaries of the routine logocenteric mind structure. This postmodern inverted binaries are now becomes naturalized so much as our own daily reality.