1. DECONSTRUCTION
Definition:
Deconstruction is not a theory unified by any set of consistent rules or procedures, it has been
variously regarded as a way of reading, a mode of writing, and, above all, a way of challenging
interpretations of texts based upon conventional notions of the stability of the human self, the
external world, and of language and meaning..
Main Characteristics:
1. Deconstruction is often regarded as undermining all tendency toward systematization.
2. The most fundamental project of deconstruction is to display the operations of “logocentrism”
in any “text”. Logocentrism refers to any system of thought which is founded on the stability
and authority.
3. Deconstruction tries to reinstate language within the connections of the various terms that
have conventionally dominated Western thought: the connections between thought and
reality, self and world, subject and object.
4. For deconstructionists, there is no “truth” or “reality” which somehow stands outside or behind
language: truth is a relation of linguistic terms, and reality is a construct, ultimately religious,
social, political, and economic, but always of language, of various linguistic registers.
Main figure
Jacques Derrida (1930–2004)
Jacques Derrida is responsible for the pervasive phenomenon in modern literary and cultural
theory known as “deconstruction.”
Derrida has conducted deconstructive readings of numerous major thinkers.
Derrida’s seminal work, “Structure, Sign, and Play” exhibits some of the persistent concerns of
deconstruction and reveals both what he owes to structuralism and his divergence from it.
