Deconstruction

Deconstruction

The author who first coined and popularized the term Deconstruction, Jacques Derrida, resists efforts to define the word. While Jacques Derrida developed the literary theory in his book Of Grammatology which sparked a new age of literary criticism, the belief was actually discussed prior to that by the Yale School in the late 1960's, before Derrida published his revolutionary book. Deconstruction, which purports that readers have the ability to have an infinite chain of thought through the analysis of binary codes, evolved from a form of structuralism. Unlike structuralism, which sought the meaning of a text through its structure and not through the details, deconstruction refers to the concept of multiple interpretations throughout a text by analyzing binary oppositions. Deconstruction thus can be classified as anti-structuralism, as it largely uses binary opposition and details of specific words to analyze text. Like many of his colleagues and peers who are considered knowledgeable on the matter, Jacques Derrida avoided an absolute definition of deconstructionism, ironically leaving the interpretation of deconstruction up to analysis itself. Derrida certainly did, however, inspire the new literary criticism.

Jacques Derrida, a French philosopher, achieved fame in America with his critical approach of deconstruction. When he was asked to define deconstruction, Derrida replied, "I have no simple and formalizable response to this question. All my essays are attempts to have it out with this formidable question." Derrida was a firm believer that deconstruction was easier to understand by asserting the negative of itself, that is, by understanding what deconstruction was not rather than what it was. To him, deconstruction is neither a critique, analysis, act, operation, nor a method. "Deconstruction is not an enclosure in nothingness, but openness to other. Attempting to discover the non-place or non-lieu which would be other philosophy." In other words, deconstruction does not limit one's thoughts but instead expands them. Specifically, Derrida claims that meaning can be expanded through a distinctive form of deconstructive reading, emphasizing binary opposition. The center of all deconstructive arguments is that one word is privileged over another. Derrida believed that the first term should be viewed as the opposite of what it truly is. One of Derrida's main arguments was that the second term of a pair of opposing words must not be viewed the same as the first and not surpass the meaning of the first word. Thus, in a text where both the sky and the ground would be discussed, the symbolism of the sky would be emphasized and better developed than that of the ground (or vice versa, as the author might wish). Derrida expresses that concepts with multiple words, not just the oppositions of words, must be developed. He summarized his thoughts when he said, "it has been necessary to analyze, to set work, within the text of the history of philosophy, as well as within the so-called text. Certain marks, that by analogy I have called undecidables . . . "false" verbal properties that can no longer be included within binary opposition, resisting and disorganizing it, without ever constituting a third term, without ever leaving room for a solution in the form of speculative dialectics." Naturally, one's mental grasp on the idea of deconstruction can become very strained under these explanations of its form and use.

Deconstruction's roots begin in the late 1960's with the "Yale School" group formed by Jacques Derrida, Paul de Man, Geoffrey Hartman, Martin Heidegger, and J. Hillis Miller, all of whom taught as professors at Yale University. At a faculty meeting one day, Derrida proposed his beliefs to his peers and they were intrigued by this thinking. De Man, Miller, and Hartman, mainly literary critics, began to use deconstruction to analyze texts. The ideas of deconstruction spread like wildfire when Derrida published his book, Of Grammatology. This ground-breaking publication sparked the change in view points from structuralism to deconstruction and introduced a new age of literary criticism, post-structuralism.

Prior to this revolution structuralism was the epitome of literary criticism. Structuralism was a method of sociological analysis. It was based on the concept that human society is a network of interrelations whose patterns and significance can be examined. Structuralism, as a form of literary criticism, focused on the basic, underlying meaning of any given piece of text. Stripped of details, features, or tendencies in the text, the structure of literature is the simplest form of the story, often viewed as a simple equation of the elements in literature. In this light, most stories are actually not original