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1. "Deconstruction in Literary Theory:
An Analytical Exploration"
Prepared by :
Name : Anjali Rathod
Sem : 3 (2022-24)
Subject : "Deconstruction in Literary Theory: An Analytical
Exploration"
Contact Info : rathodanjali20022002ui@gmail.com
Submitted to : S. B. Gardi Department of English , MK Bhavnagar
University

2. Table of contents
01
05
04
02
06
03
Jacques Derrida
Difference between
phonocentrism and
logocentrism
Postmodernism
Origins of
Deconstruction
Post-Structuralism
What is
Deconstruction?

3. Jacques Derrida
❖ Jacques Derrida was French philosopher , Theorist and Writer.
❖ Derrida was born to Sephardic Jewish parents in French-governed
Algeria.
❖ He Studies Philosophy at the elite school École Normale Supérieure
(ENS) in Paris.
❖ In 1967, Derrida arrived as a philosopher of world importance. He
published three momentous texts ; Of Grammatology, Writing and
Difference, and Speech and Phenomena.
❖ Deconstruction has frequently been the subject of some controversy.
When Derrida was awarded an honorary doctorate at Cambridge in 1992,
there were howls of protest from many ‘analytic’ philosophers. (Britannica)

4. Origins of Deconstruction
❖ The term “deconstruction” is related to the French verb “deconstuire”, which in English
connotes “to undo the improvement of or the development of, to take to pieces.”
❖ In philosophy, the word “deconstruction” was coined by the French philosopher
Jacques Derrida in the late 1960s as response to the idea of “destructive” analysis
rendered by the German word ‘destruktion’ of Martin Heidegger, which literallymeans
“destruction” or de-building.
❖ The word “deconstruction” is genealogically linked to Heidegger. Instead of applying
Heidegger’s term of destruction to textual readings, Derrida opted for the term
“deconstruction”.
❖ Since , the word “deconstruction” has entered the philosophical, literary, and political
vocabulary, though it existed before, at least in grammatical and architectural jargon.
(Sikirivwa#44)

5. What is Deconstruction?
❖ Deconstruction is variously defined by Derrida among his descriptions is the allusion to structure. As
he explains himself, when he used the word “deconstruction” the first time,…there was the dominance
of structuralism: deconstruction was considered then at the same time to be a structuralist and
anti-structuralist gesture.
❖ Derrida’s Deconstruction was inspired by what Heidegger calls the “destruction” of the philosophy’s
tradition. He sought to apply deconstruction to textual reading in place of Heidegger's “destruction”,
which was referring “to a process of exploring the categories and concepts that tradition has imposed
on a word, and the history behind them.”
❖ Derrida‟s view, Deconstruction is neither a philosophy, nor a doctrine, nor a method, nor a discipline,
but “only what happens if it happens”.(Sikirivwa#45)
❖ Deconstruction is a philosophical theoretical analysis, a critical outlook concerned with the
relationship between text and meaning. It is a mode of criticism and analytical inquiry that denotes
“the pursuing of the meaning of a text to the point of exposing the supposed contradictions and
internal oppositions upon which it is founded.” Deconstruction is a kind of philosophical framework
concerned with „”reading between the lines”.(Sikirivwa#47)

6. The difference between phonocentrism
and logocentrism
The difference between phonocentrism and logocentrism is that ,
❏ The phonocentrism is the word spoken.
❏ The logocentrism is the word written.
❏ According to Derrida , when speech fails to protect presence, writing
becomes necessary. In this case, writing then serves as a supplement
which takes the place of speech.(Güney #)

7. Postmodernism
❖ 19th and 20th century , a period that encompasses more than Literature.
❖ Postmodernism is the deconstruction of modernism, the perspective of reconstruction adopted
by Habermas shows instead an inversion of this pattern of evolution, a sort of Copernican
revolution.
❖ Reconstruction and deconstruction, Space is lacking to evaluate the choice between
reconstruction of modernism and deconstruction of modernism another way to define
postmodernism.
❖ In the same way, a philosophical discourse on the modernism/postmodernism alternative
should present itself as a deconstruction of the modernity of the Enlightenment and idealism.
❖ Hegel's: the reconstruction of the history of philosophy was leading to a completion that was
substantially an overcoming, at least of the perspective of the Enlightenment.
❖ Heidegger qualified as the absence of metaphysics postmodernism subjects modernism and
tradition to a micrologic revision. This task was undertaken by Derrida, in particular, and is not
too distant from Adorno's enlightenment dialectic.(Ferraris#)

8. Post-Structuralism
❖ The first half of the twentieth century in literary studies was interested by the form and structure of
literary texts.
❖ In general, Structuralism is a belief that reflects events which are explainable by structures, data, and other
phenomena below the surface. For the structuralist, reality is a system of individual parts which are
irreducible units where the parts are more ‘real’ than the whole matter.
❖ Post-structuralism which deviates from Structuralism became a reaction to it. While structuralists sought a
structure of the text, The Post-structuralist Derrida for example denies the possibility of such a structure.
❖ Derrida’s deconstruction, which is always called together with Poststructuralism, gives us new ways of
thinking. He has made great efforts in undermining the traditional understanding of truth. The
Post-structuralists are claiming that the real truth is impossible to know. The Post-Structuralist is
pessimistic concerning the reader’s ability to confirm belief and thereby say that he knows something.
❖ Post-structuralism is a philosophical mode of thought which believes that in the world there is no reality,
only “manufactured reality” constructed by words. In literary theory, structuralists analyze the narrative
material by examining the underlying invariant structure. Structuralist literary critics mention that the
“value of a literary text” can lie only in new structure. (Güney #221)

9. Conclusion
To the Conclude , Deconstruction emerged from the philosophy. arts and architecture
of the 1960s. In literary theory poses the opposite to hermeneutics, which seeks
justification of a literary interpretation in the wording of the text in question.
Deconstruction is focused on contradictions included in the text. Deconstruction is to
be located in the hybrid stream of poststructuralism that labels several tendencies
that defined themselves in opposition to structuralism; structuralism primarily being
concerned with the search for a scheme and its governing rules. (Harmon #)

10. References
● Britannica, The Editors of Encyclopaedia. "Jacques Derrida". Encyclopedia Britannica, 4 Oct. 2023,
https://www.britannica.com/biography/Jacques-Derrida . Accessed 20 October 2023.
● Ferraris, Maurizio, and Anna Taraboletti Segre. “Postmodernism and the Deconstruction of Modernism.” Design Issues, vol. 4,
no. 1/2, 1988, pp. 12–24. JSTOR, https://doi.org/10.2307/1511383 . Accessed 21 Oct. 2023.
● Güney, Ajda. “A BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF JACQUES DERRIDA’S DECONSTRUCTION AND HERMENEUTICS.” vol. 03, no.
02, 2008, https://dergipark.org.tr/tr/download/article-file/186848 . Accessed 20 October 2023.
● Harmon, Lucyna. “Towards the Reader and Interpreter: Deconstruction.” January 2014,
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/294087400_Towards_the_Reader_and_Interpreter_Deconstruction . Accessed 20
October 2023.
● Sikirivwa, Mawazo Kavula. “DECONSTRUCTION THEORY AND ITS BACKGROUND.” vol. 04, no. 04, 2020,
https://www.ajhssr.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/03/E20444472.pdf . Accessed 20 October 2023.

11. Thank You…