| This study is an attempt to offer a new approach in analyzing Traiphum Phra Ruang, a Thai Theravada cosmological narrative and the most influential text in Thai literary history. By applying deconstructive criticism to the structural analysis of this text, this study explores the "ruptures" in the discourse that formulate a pattern of undecidability, which produces logical irresolvability to the overall structure of the text. Since deconstructive ruptures usually appear as marginal elements, this study highlights the textual elements that tend to be disregarded, especially in terms of their effects on the overall structure of the Traiphum.; Chapter 1 reviews the historical context of the Traiphum and its influences on Thai society, culture, and arts. This chapter also reviews recent scholarship on the Traiphum and shows the limitations of the scholarship in terms of textual strategy. Chapter 2 focuses on the traiphum cosmographical structure. By applying Derrida's notions of displacement, decentering, and paregonality, this chapter proves that the Traiphum's cosmology illustrates a "play of the structure" in which the notions of center, frame, and the totality of the universe itself are all put in question. Chapter 3 investigates hierarchy and the ways this notion is disrupted. By being put "under erasure," hierarchy here is simultaneously asserted and denied, making the structure of the Traiphum operate inside and outside hierarchy at once. Chapter 4 underscores the representation of nibbana (nirvana ) in the Traiphum and its relation to the overall structure of the text. Under the light of Derrida's denegation and supplementarity, nibbana becomes a "double gesture" that not only eludes categorization in terms of presence and absence, but also represents another rupture that makes the entire discourse of the Traiphum's narrative "slide."; As this study reveals, the notions of center, frame, totality, hierarchy, and presence, which are the key concepts that deconstruction aims to subvert, are all put into question in the Traiphum. But instead of the end in itself, the play of undecidability in the Traiphum is a means to subvert all notions of self-presence in order to convey the Theravada teaching on anatta or non-substantiality as the underlying logic of the text. |
