Deconstruction: Meaning and Key Concepts
Deconstruction is a form of textual analysis associated mainly with the French
philosopher Jacques Derrida, the American critic Paul de Man, and his fellow “Yale
deconstructionists”, Harold Bloom, Geoffrey Hartman, and J. Hillis Miller.
One of the principal strands in Poststructuralism, deconstruction has had an immense
influence on literary studies (though this is more marked in the English-speaking world
than in France) philosophy, and historiography. Thanks in part to Derrida’s translator,
Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, it has had a major impact upon Postcolonial Theory. It has
also become an important element in Queer theory.
Although the practitioners of deconstruction insist that it is not a “theory” or
“philosophy” that can be applied, or even one that can be defined in a set of
propositions, a number of general principles can be identified. All forms of
deconstruction rely upon extremely close readings of the texts under analysis and tend
to refrain from introducing external evaluative criteria. To this extent, deconstruction
can be seen as an extreme form of immanent critique. Indeed, De Man argues, in terms
reminiscent of the New Criticism’s veneration of the autonomy of the “verbal icon”, that
deconstruction is not something that is added to the text. A literary text deconstructs
itself because it simultaneously asserts and denies the authority of its own rhetoric.
Little or no distinction is made between genres: philosophical texts are to be analysed in
the same terms as literary texts, and one of the sated goals of deconstruction is to
undermine philosophy’s prestige by showing that it too is a rhetorical construct.
In strictly philosophical terms, deconstruction’s ancestry can be traced to Friedrich
Nietzsche and his contention that there are no facts, only interpretations, and to Martin
Heidegger’s critique of the priority that is traditionally given to the present tense in
attempts to discuss the nature of being. One of Derrida’s constant concerns is with the
“metaphysics of presence”, which he regards as central to the history of Western
philosophy, or the thesis that the “subject” can be self-understanding and can express
itself fully in speech. In his earliest work, he makes a far-reaching critique of what he
calls Logocentrism or phonocentrism, which assumes that speech exists prior to writing
and which is typified by the biblical “In the beginning was the Word.”
By claiming that speech is the primal and full form of expression, logocentrism inevitably
ignores or conceals the fact that, if writing is a supplement to speech (a theme that can
be easily traced from Plato to Ferdinand Saussure), something must be absent in the
speech that has to be supplemented. Speech then does not have a point of origin, but
Deconstruction is a form of textual analysis associated mainly with the French
philosopher Jacques Derrida, the American critic Paul de Man, and his fellow “Yale
deconstructionists”, Harold Bloom, Geoffrey Hartman, and J. Hillis Miller.
One of the principal strands in Poststructuralism, deconstruction has had an immense
influence on literary studies (though this is more marked in the English-speaking world
than in France) philosophy, and historiography. Thanks in part to Derrida’s translator,
Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, it has had a major impact upon Postcolonial Theory. It has
also become an important element in Queer theory.
Although the practitioners of deconstruction insist that it is not a “theory” or
“philosophy” that can be applied, or even one that can be defined in a set of
propositions, a number of general principles can be identified. All forms of
deconstruction rely upon extremely close readings of the texts under analysis and tend
to refrain from introducing external evaluative criteria. To this extent, deconstruction
can be seen as an extreme form of immanent critique. Indeed, De Man argues, in terms
reminiscent of the New Criticism’s veneration of the autonomy of the “verbal icon”, that
deconstruction is not something that is added to the text. A literary text deconstructs
itself because it simultaneously asserts and denies the authority of its own rhetoric.
Little or no distinction is made between genres: philosophical texts are to be analysed in
the same terms as literary texts, and one of the sated goals of deconstruction is to
undermine philosophy’s prestige by showing that it too is a rhetorical construct.
In strictly philosophical terms, deconstruction’s ancestry can be traced to Friedrich
Nietzsche and his contention that there are no facts, only interpretations, and to Martin
Heidegger’s critique of the priority that is traditionally given to the present tense in
attempts to discuss the nature of being. One of Derrida’s constant concerns is with the
“metaphysics of presence”, which he regards as central to the history of Western
philosophy, or the thesis that the “subject” can be self-understanding and can express
itself fully in speech. In his earliest work, he makes a far-reaching critique of what he
calls Logocentrism or phonocentrism, which assumes that speech exists prior to writing
and which is typified by the biblical “In the beginning was the Word.”
By claiming that speech is the primal and full form of expression, logocentrism inevitably
ignores or conceals the fact that, if writing is a supplement to speech (a theme that can
be easily traced from Plato to Ferdinand Saussure), something must be absent in the
speech that has to be supplemented. Speech then does not have a point of origin, but
