The document is a deconstruction paper that outlines literary theory and criticism, focusing on Jacques Derrida's contributions and concepts such as 'différance' and 'deconstruction'. It emphasizes deconstruction's role in analyzing the relationship between language, truth, and reality, arguing against fixed meanings and advocating for the creation of new terms to address philosophical oppositions. Derrida's influence in modern literary and cultural theory is underscored, highlighting his departure from structuralism towards a post-structuralist perspective.

1. Topic: Deconstruction
Paper no.7:Literary Theory & Criticism
Prepared by: Arati R.Maheta
Roll No.:3
P.G.Enrollment No.:13101019
Sem:2
Email id: davearati656@gmail.com
Submitted to:Smt.S.B.Gardi
Department of English
Maharaja Krishnakumarsinhji
Bhavnagar University,
Bhavnagar

2. Jacques Derrida
• Related works by Derrida
1Antecedent example: the Phenomenology vs.
Structuralism debate
2Différance
3Of Grammatology
4Speech and Phenomena
5Writing and Difference
6Derrida's later work

3. What is Deconstruction?
• Deconstruction (French: déconstruction) is a form
of philosophical and literary analysis derived
principally from Jacques Derrida's 1967 work Of
Grammatology
• In the 1980s it designated more loosely a range of
theoretical enterprises in diverse areas of the
humanities and social sciences, including—in
addition to philosophy and literature—
law anthropology, historiography, linguistics,
sociolinguistics, psychoanalysis, political theory,
feminism, gay and lesbian studies

4. Various term by various critics
Darrida

6. Richard
Ellmann

7. 1
2

9. Jeffry
Fischer

10. • “It goes without saying that these effects do not suffice to
annul the necessity for a “change of terrain.” It also goes
without saying that the choice between these two forms of
deconstruction cannot be simple and unique. A new writing
must weave and interlace these two motifs of
deconstruction. Which amounts to saying that one must
speak several languages and produce several texts at once. I
would like to point out especially that the style of the first
deconstruction is mostly that of the Heideggerian questions,
and the other is mostly the one which dominates France
today. I am purposely speaking in terms of a dominant style:
because there are also breaks and changes of terrain in texts
of the Heideggerian type; because the “change of terrain” is
far from upsetting the entire French landscape to which I am
referring; because what we need, perhaps, as Nietzsche said,
is a change of “style”; and if there is style, Nietzsche
reminded us, it must be plural.”
Derrida
In Margins of
Philosophy

11. Main characteristics

12. Main Characteristics
• 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.
• 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.

13. Main figures
• Jacques Derrida (1930–2004)
• Jacques Derrida is responsible for the
pervasive phenomenon in modern literary
and cultural theory known as
“deconstruction.”
• He was the most influential philosopher
in70s&80 of last century.
• His philosophy is the further extension of
Structuralism and is better called as
Post -structuralism

14. • 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.

15. Conclusion
• Finally, Derrida argues that it is not enough to deconstruction to expose
the way oppositions work and how meaning and values are produced and
stop there in a nihilistic or cynic position regarding all meaning, "thereby
preventing any means of intervening in the field effectively".
• To be effective, deconstruction needs to create new terms, not to
synthesize the concepts in opposition, but to mark their difference and
eternal interplay.
• This explains why Derrida always proposes new terms in his
deconstruction, not as a free play but as a pure necessity of analysis, to
better mark the intervals.
• Derrida called undecidables, that is, unities of simulacrum, "false" verbal
properties (nominal or semantic) that can no longer be included within
philosophical (binary) opposition: but which, however, inhabit
philosophical oppositions, resisting and organizing it, without ever
constituting a third term, without ever leaving room for a solution in the
form of speculative dialectics (e.g.différance, archi-writing, pharmakon,
supplement, hymen, gram, spacing).

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