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{{Short description|Approach to understanding the relationship between text and meaning}}
{{other uses}}
{{Use dmy dates|date=July 2022}}

In philosophy, '''deconstruction''' is a loosely defined set of approaches to understanding the relationship between [[Text (literary theory)|text]] and [[Meaning (linguistics)|meaning]]. The concept of deconstruction was introduced by the philosopher [[Jacques Derrida]], who described it as a turn away from [[Platonism]]'s ideas of "true" [[Platonic forms|forms]] and [[essence]]s which are valued above appearances.{{additional citation needed|date=December 2022}}<ref>{{Citation|last=Lawlor|first=Leonard|title=Jacques Derrida|date=2019|url=https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/fall2019/entries/derrida/|encyclopedia=The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy|editor-last=Zalta|editor-first=Edward N.|edition=Fall 2019|publisher=Metaphysics Research Lab, Stanford University|access-date=2020-04-11}}</ref> <!-- Deconstruction involves embracing the complexity and volatility in the function of language, with an emphasis on the mere appearance of language in both speech and writing, and considering the possibility that "essence" is to be found in that appearance, rather than empirically and objectively evaluated.

Deconstruction argues that language, especially in idealist concepts such as truth and justice, is irreducibly complex, unstable and difficult to determine, making fluid and comprehensive ideas of language more adequate in deconstructive criticism. -->

Since the 1980s, these proposals of language's fluidity instead of being ideally static and discernible have inspired a range of studies in the [[humanities]],<ref>{{cite web|title=Deconstruction|url=https://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/155306/deconstruction|website=Encyclopedia Britannica|access-date=8 September 2017|language=en}}</ref> including the disciplines of [[law]],<ref name="Allison">{{cite book|last1=Allison|first1=David B.|last2=Garver|first2=Newton|author-link2=Newton Garver |title=Speech and Phenomena and Other Essays on Husserl's Theory of Signs|date=1973|publisher=Northwestern University Press|location=Evanston|isbn=978-0810103979|edition=5th|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=2qdBeWFUmJQC&pg=PA3|access-date=8 September 2017|quote=A decision that did not go through the ordeal of the undecidable would not be a free decision, it would only be the programmable application or unfolding of a calculable process...[which] deconstructs from the inside every assurance of presence, and thus every criteriology that would assure us of the justice of the decision.}}</ref>{{rp|3–76}}<ref name="Bridge">{{cite web|title=Critical Legal Studies Movement|url=http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/bridge/CriticalTheory/critical2.htm|website=The Bridge|access-date=8 September 2017}}</ref><ref>{{cite web|title=German Law Journal - Past Special Issues|url=http://www.germanlawjournal.com/index.php?pageID=13&vol=6&no=1|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20130516144840/http://www.germanlawjournal.com/index.php?pageID=13&vol=6&no=1|url-status=dead|archive-date=16 May 2013|access-date=8 September 2017|date=16 May 2013}}</ref> [[anthropology]],<ref>{{cite journal|last1=Morris|first1=Rosalind C.|title=Legacies of Derrida: Anthropology|journal=Annual Review of Anthropology|date=September 2007|volume=36|issue=1|pages=355–389|doi=10.1146/annurev.anthro.36.081406.094357}}</ref> [[historiography]],<ref name="Munslow">{{cite web|last1=Munslow|first1=Alan|title=Deconstructing History|url=http://sas-space.sas.ac.uk/4397/1/Deconstructing_History_by_Alun_Munslow___Institute_of_Historical_Research.pdf |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20120916090324/http://sas-space.sas.ac.uk/4397/1/Deconstructing_History_by_Alun_Munslow___Institute_of_Historical_Research.pdf |archive-date=2012-09-16 |url-status=live|publisher=Institute of Historical Research|access-date=8 September 2017|date=1997}}</ref> [[linguistics]],<ref>{{cite journal|last1=Busch|first1=Brigitta|title=The Linguistic Repertoire Revisited|issue=5|journal=Applied Linguistics|volume=33|pages=503–523|doi=10.1093/applin/ams056|date=1 December 2012}}</ref> [[sociolinguistics]],<ref>{{cite book|editor1-last=Esch|editor1-first=Edith|editor2-last=Solly|editor2-first=Martin|title=The Sociolinguistics of Language Education in International Contexts|date=2012|publisher=Peter Lang|location=Bern|isbn=9783034310093|pages=31–46}}</ref> [[psychoanalysis]], [[LGBT studies]], and [[feminism]]. Deconstruction also inspired [[deconstructivism]] in [[architecture]] and remains important within [[art]],<ref>{{cite web|title=Deconstruction – Art Term|url=http://www.tate.org.uk/art/art-terms/d/deconstruction|website=Tate|access-date=16 September 2017|quote=Since Derrida's assertions in the 1970s, the notion of deconstruction has been a dominating influence on many writers and conceptual artists.}}</ref> [[music]],<ref>{{cite web|last1=Cobussen|first1=Marcel|title=Deconstruction in Music. The Jacques Derrida – Gerd Zacher Encounter|url=https://cobussenma.files.wordpress.com/2011/10/derrida_zacher_encounter.pdf |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170909010422/https://cobussenma.files.wordpress.com/2011/10/derrida_zacher_encounter.pdf |archive-date=2017-09-09 |url-status=live|website=Thinking Sounds|access-date=8 September 2017|date=2002}}</ref> and [[literary criticism]].<ref>{{cite web|last1=Douglas|first1=Christopher|title=Glossary of Literary Theory|url=http://www.library.utoronto.ca/utel/glossary/Deconstruction.html|publisher=University of Toronto English Library|access-date=16 September 2017|date=31 March 1997|archive-date=8 November 2017|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20171108222608/http://www.library.utoronto.ca/utel/glossary/Deconstruction.html|url-status=dead}}</ref><ref>{{cite web|last1=Kandell|first1=Jonathan|title=Jacques Derrida, Abstruse Theorist, Dies at 74|url=https://www.nytimes.com/2004/10/10/obituaries/jacques-derrida-abstruse-theorist-dies-at-74.html?_r=1|website=The New York Times|access-date=1 June 2017|date=10 October 2004}}</ref>

==Overview==
{{Further|Epistemological break}}

[[Jacques Derrida|Jacques Derrida's]] 1967 book ''[[Of Grammatology]]'' introduced the majority of ideas influential within deconstruction.<ref name="Derrida">{{cite book |last=Derrida |first=Jacques |translator=Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak |translator-link=Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak|title=Of Grammatology|date=1997|publisher=Johns Hopkins University Press|location=Baltimore|isbn=978-0801858307|title-link=Of Grammatology}}</ref>{{rp|25}} Derrida published a number of other works directly relevant to the concept of deconstruction, such as ''[[Différance]]'', ''[[Speech and Phenomena]]'', and ''[[Writing and Difference]]''.

To Derrida,
{{Blockquote|That is what deconstruction is made of: not the mixture but the tension between memory, [[fidelity]], the preservation of something that has been given to us, and, at the same time, heterogeneity, something absolutely new, and a break.<ref>{{citation |last=Derrida |first=Jacques |editor-last=Caputo |editor-first=John D. |title=Deconstruction in a Nutshell: A Conversation with Jacques Derrida |publisher=Fordham University Press |date=2021 |orig-date=1997 |isbn= 9780823290680}}</ref>{{rp|6}}{{dubious|date=January 2023}}}}

According to Derrida, and taking inspiration from the work of [[Ferdinand de Saussure]],<ref name="Saussure">{{cite web|last1=Saussure|first1=Ferdinand de|author-link=Ferdinand de Saussure|title=Course in General Linguistics|url=http://faculty.smu.edu/dfoster/cf3324/saussure.htm|publisher=Southern Methodist University |access-date=8 September 2017|location=New York|pages=121–122|date=1959|quote=In language there are only differences. Even more important: a difference generally implies positive terms between which the difference is set up; but in language there are only differences without positive terms. Whether we take the signified or the signifier, language has neither ideas nor sounds that existed before the linguistic system, but only conceptual and phonic differences that have issued from the system.|archive-date=31 July 2019|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20190731010622/http://faculty.smu.edu/dfoster/cf3324/saussure.htm|url-status=dead}}</ref> language as a system of signs and words only have meaning because of the contrast between these signs.<ref name="Theory">{{cite web|title=Deconstructionist Theory|url=http://prelectur.stanford.edu/lecturers/derrida/rorty.html|website=Stanford Presidential Lectures and Symposia in the Humanities and Arts|access-date=8 September 2017|date=1995}}</ref><ref name="Derrida"/>{{rp|7, 12}} As [[Richard Rorty]] contends, "words have meaning only because of contrast-effects with other words&nbsp;... no word can acquire meaning in the way in which philosophers from [[Aristotle]] to [[Bertrand Russell]] have hoped it might—by being the unmediated expression of something non-linguistic (e.g., an emotion, a sensed observation, a physical object, an idea, a [[Platonic Form]])".<ref name="Theory"/> As a consequence, meaning is never present, but rather is deferred to other signs. Derrida refers to the—in his view, mistaken—belief that there is a self-sufficient, non-deferred meaning as [[metaphysics of presence]]. Rather, according to Derrida, a concept must be understood in the context of its opposite: for example, the word ''being'' does not have meaning without contrast with the word ''nothing''.<ref name="Writing">{{cite book|last=Derrida|first=Jacques|translator=Alan Bass |title=Writing and Difference |date=2001 |publisher=University of Chicago Press |isbn= 9780226816074 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=6yAZEAAAQBAJ |access-date=2 August 2024 |orig-date=1967 |quote=The model of hieroglyphic writing assembles more strikingly—though we find it in every form of writing—the diversity of the modes and functions of signs in dreams. Every sign—verbal or otherwise—may be used at different levels, in configurations and functions which are never prescribed by its "essence," but emerge from a play of differences.}}</ref>{{rp|220}}<ref name="Derrida2">{{cite book|last1=Derrida|first1=Jacques|title=Positions|date=1982|publisher=University of Chicago Press|isbn=9780226143316|language=en}}</ref>{{rp|26}}

Further, Derrida contends that "in a classical philosophical opposition we are not dealing with the peaceful coexistence of a [[wikt:vis-à-vis|vis-a-vis]], but rather with a violent hierarchy. One of the two terms governs the other ([[Axiology|axiologically]], logically, etc.), or has the upper hand": [[Signified and signifier|signified]] over [[Signified and signifier|signifier]]; intelligible over sensible; speech over writing; activity over passivity, etc.{{explain|this list of examples is pointless without any explanation of *how* one of the words has the upper hand, or even an explanation of what "having the upper hand" means.|date=October 2020}} The first task of deconstruction is, according to Derrida, to find and overturn these oppositions inside a text or texts; but the final objective of deconstruction is not to surpass all oppositions, because it is assumed they are structurally necessary to produce sense: the oppositions simply cannot be suspended once and for all, as the hierarchy of dual oppositions always reestablishes itself (because it is necessary for meaning). Deconstruction, Derrida says, only points to the necessity of an unending analysis that can make explicit the decisions and hierarchies intrinsic to all texts.<ref name="Derrida2"/>{{rp|41}}{{contradictory inline|reason=If deconstruction only points to the necessity of unending analysis, next paragraph should not be included in the article, because it is a separate position of Derrida's, not one instrinsic to deconstruction|date=October 2020}}

Derrida further argues that it is not enough to expose and deconstruct the way oppositions work and then stop there in a nihilistic or cynical position, "thereby preventing any means of intervening in the field effectively".<ref name="Derrida2"/>{{rp|42}} 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 from the necessity of analysis. Derrida called these undecidables—that is, unities of simulacrum—"false" verbal properties (nominal or semantic) that can no longer be included within philosophical (binary) opposition. Instead, they inhabit philosophical oppositions{{explain|they inhabit without being included within? Are they supposed to have no meaning? If so, how do they have analytical value? If not, how do they have meaning without engaging in the violence necessary to meaning?|date=October 2020}}—resisting and organizing them—without ever constituting a third term or leaving room for a solution in the form of a [[Hegelian dialectic]] (e.g., {{Lang|fr|[[différance]]}}, [[archi-writing]], [[Pharmakon (philosophy)|pharmakon]], supplement, hymen, gram, spacing).<ref name="Derrida2"/>{{rp|19}}{{technical inline|e.g. a bunch of stuff nobody except someone already familiar with the topic would already know about, these examples have very little explanatory value to someone reading this article by itself|date=October 2020}}{{explain|once again these are not proper examples without an explanation relating them to the subject matter|date=October 2020}}

==Influences==
Derrida's theories on deconstruction were themselves influenced by the work of linguists such as Ferdinand de Saussure (whose writings on [[semiotics]] also became a cornerstone of [[structuralism]] in the mid-20th century) and literary theorists such as [[Roland Barthes]] (whose works were an investigation of the logical ends of structuralist thought). Derrida's views on deconstruction stood in opposition to the theories of structuralists such as [[Psychoanalytic theory|psychoanalytic theorist]] [[Jacques Lacan]], and anthropologist [[Claude Lévi-Strauss]]. However, Derrida [[#Not post-structuralist|resisted attempts]] to label his work as "[[Post-structuralism|post-structuralist]]".<!--See below for the whole paragraph which has its own references{{Citation needed|reason=Correct but this entire paragraph needs references.|date=December 2013}}-->

===Influence of Nietzsche===
[[File:Nietzsche187a.jpg|thumb|Friedrich Nietzsche]]
Derrida's motivation for developing deconstructive criticism, suggesting the fluidity of language over static forms, was largely inspired by [[Friedrich Nietzsche]]'s philosophy, beginning with his interpretation of [[Trophonius]]. In ''Daybreak'', Nietzsche announces that "All things that live long are gradually so saturated with reason that their origin in unreason thereby becomes improbable. Does not almost every precise history of an origination impress our feelings as paradoxical and wantonly offensive? Does the good historian not, at bottom, constantly contradict?".<ref>{{cite book|title=Daybreak: Thoughts on the Prejudices of Morality|last1=Nietzsche|first1=Friedrich|last2=Clark|first2=Maudemarie|last3=Leiter|first3=Brian|last4=Hollingdale|first4=R.J.|date=1997|publisher=Cambridge University Press|isbn=978-0521599634|location=Cambridge, U.K.|pages=8–9}}</ref>

Nietzsche's point in ''Daybreak'' is that standing at the end of modern history, modern thinkers know too much to continue to be deceived by an illusory grasp of satisfactorily complete reason. Mere proposals of heightened reasoning, logic, philosophizing and science are no longer solely sufficient as the royal roads to truth. Nietzsche disregards Platonism to revisualize the history of the West as the self-perpetuating history of a series of political moves, that is, a manifestation of the [[will to power]], that at bottom have no greater or lesser claim to truth in any noumenal (absolute) sense. By calling attention to the fact that he has assumed the role of a subterranean Trophonius, in dialectical opposition to Plato, Nietzsche hopes to sensitize readers to the political and cultural context, and the political influences that impact authorship.

Where Nietzsche did not achieve deconstruction, as Derrida sees it, is that he missed the opportunity to further explore the will to power as more than a manifestation of the sociopolitically effective operation of writing that Plato characterized, stepping beyond Nietzsche's penultimate revaluation of all Western values, to the ultimate, which is the emphasis on "the role of writing in the production of knowledge".<ref name="Zuckert"/>

===Influence of Saussure===
Derrida approaches all texts as constructed around elemental oppositions which all [[discourse]] has to articulate if it intends to make any sense whatsoever. This is so because identity is viewed in [[Non-essentialism|non-essentialist]] terms as a construct, and because constructs only produce meaning through the interplay of [[difference (philosophy)|difference]] inside a "system of distinct signs". This approach to text is influenced by the [[semiology]] of [[Ferdinand de Saussure]].<ref>{{cite book|last1=Royle|first1=Nick|title=Jacques Derrida|date=2003|publisher=Routledge|location=London|isbn=9780415229319|pages=6–623|edition=Reprint|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=nNaSdb9VMTwC&pg=PA62|access-date=8 September 2017|language=en}}</ref><ref>{{cite book|last1=Derrida|first1=Jacques|last2=Ferraris|first2=Maurizio|title=A Taste for the Secret|date=2001|publisher=Wiley|isbn=9780745623344|page=76|quote=I take great interest in questions of language and rhetoric, and I think they deserve enormous consideration; but there is a point where the authority of final jurisdiction is neither rhetorical nor linguistic, nor even discursive. The notion of trace or of text is introduced to mark the limits of the linguistic turn. This is one more reason why I prefer to speak of 'mark' rather than of language. In the first place the mark is not anthropological; it is prelinguistic; it is the possibility of language, and it is every where there is a relation to another thing or relation to an other. For such relations, the mark has no need of language.}}</ref>

Saussure is considered one of the fathers of [[structuralism]] when he explained that terms get their meaning in reciprocal determination with other terms inside language:

<blockquote>In language there are only differences. Even more important: a difference generally implies positive terms between which the difference is set up; but in language there are only differences without positive terms. Whether we take the signified or the signifier, language has neither ideas nor sounds that existed before the linguistic system, but only conceptual and phonic differences that have issued from the system. The idea or phonic substance that a sign contains is of less importance than the other signs that surround it. [...] A linguistic system is a series of differences of sound combined with a series of differences of ideas; but the pairing of a certain number of acoustical signs with as many cuts made from the mass thought engenders a system of values.<ref name="Saussure"/></blockquote>

Saussure explicitly suggested that linguistics was only a branch of a more general semiology, a science of signs in general, human codes being only one part. Nevertheless, in the end, as Derrida pointed out, Saussure made linguistics "the regulatory model", and "for essential, and essentially metaphysical, reasons had to privilege speech, and everything that links the sign to phone".<ref name="Derrida2"/>{{rp|21, 46, 101, 156, 164}}

==Deconstruction according to Derrida==
===Etymology===
Derrida's original use of the word ''deconstruction'' was a translation of the German ''[[Destruktion]]'', a concept from the work of [[Martin Heidegger]] that Derrida sought to apply to textual reading. Heidegger's term referred to a process of exploring the categories and concepts that tradition has imposed on a word, and the history behind them.<ref name="Heidegger">{{cite book|last1=Heidegger|first1=Martin|last2=Macquarrie|first2=John|last3=Robinson|first3=Edward|title=Being and Time|date=2006|publisher=Blackwell|location=Oxford|isbn=9780631197706|pages=21–23|edition=1st|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=S57m5gW0L-MC|access-date=8 September 2017|language=en}}</ref>

===Basic philosophical concerns===
Derrida's concerns flow from a consideration of several issues:

* A desire to contribute to the re-evaluation of all Western values, a re-evaluation built on the 18th-century [[Immanuel Kant|Kantian]] [[Critique of Pure Reason|critique of pure reason]], and carried forward to the 19th century, in its more radical implications, by [[Søren Kierkegaard|Kierkegaard]] and [[Friedrich Nietzsche|Nietzsche]].
* An assertion that texts outlive their authors, and become part of a set of cultural habits equal to, if not surpassing, the importance of authorial intent.
* A re-valuation of certain classic western dialectics: poetry vs. philosophy, reason vs. revelation, structure vs. creativity, [[episteme]] vs. [[techne]], etc.

To this end, Derrida follows a long line of modern philosophers, who look backwards to Plato and his influence on the Western metaphysical tradition.<ref name="Zuckert">{{cite book|last1=Zuckert|first1=Catherine H.|title=Postmodern Platos: Nietzsche, Heidegger, Gadamer, Strauss, Derrida|date=1996|publisher=University of Chicago Press|location=Chicago|isbn=978-0226993317|chapter=7}}</ref>{{Page needed|date=September 2017}} Like Nietzsche, Derrida suspects Plato of dissimulation in the service of a political project, namely the education, through critical reflections, of a class of citizens more strategically positioned to influence the polis. However, unlike Nietzsche, Derrida is not satisfied with such a merely political interpretation of Plato, because of the particular dilemma in which modern humans find themselves. His Platonic reflections are inseparably part of his critique of [[modernity]], hence his attempt to be something beyond the modern, because of his Nietzschean sense that the modern has lost its way and become mired in [[nihilism]].

=== {{Lang|fr|Différance}} ===
{{Main|Différance}}
{{Lang|fr|Différance}} is the observation that the meanings of words come from their [[Synchrony and diachrony|synchrony]] with other words within the language and their [[Synchrony and diachrony|diachrony]] between contemporary and historical definitions of a word. Understanding language, according to Derrida, requires an understanding of both viewpoints of linguistic analysis. The focus on diachrony has led to accusations against Derrida of engaging in the [[etymological fallacy]].<ref>{{cite book|last1=Soskice|first1=Janet Martin|title=Metaphor and Religious Language|date=1987|publisher=Clarendon|location=Oxford|isbn=9780198249825|pages=[https://archive.org/details/metaphorreligiou0000sosk/page/80 80–82]|edition=Paperback|url=https://archive.org/details/metaphorreligiou0000sosk/page/80}}</ref>

There is one statement by Derrida—in an essay on [[Jean-Jacques Rousseau|Rousseau]] in ''[[Of Grammatology]]''—which has been of great interest to his opponents.<ref name="Derrida"/>{{rp|158}} It is the assertion that "there is no outside-text" ({{Lang|fr|il n'y a pas de hors-texte}}),<ref name="Derrida"/>{{rp|158–59, 163}} which is often mistranslated as "there is nothing outside of the text". The mistranslation is often used to suggest Derrida believes that nothing exists but words. [[Michel Foucault]], for instance, famously misattributed to Derrida the very different phrase {{Lang|fr|Il n'y a rien en dehors du texte}} for this purpose.<ref>{{cite book|last1=Foucault|first1=Michel|last2=Howard|first2=Richard|last3=Cooper|first3=David|title=Madness and Civilization: A History of Insanity in the Age of Reason|date=2001|publisher=Routledge|location=London|isbn=978-0415253857|page=602|edition=Reprint}}</ref> According to Derrida, his statement simply refers to the unavoidability of context that is at the heart of {{Lang|fr|différance}}.<ref name="Limited">{{cite book|last1=Derrida|first1=Jacques|title=Limited Inc|date=1995|publisher=Northwestern University Press|location=Evanston|isbn=978-0810107885|edition=4th|title-link=Limited Inc}}</ref>{{rp|133}}

For example, the word ''house'' derives its meaning more as a function of how it differs from ''shed'', ''mansion'', ''hotel'', ''building'', etc. (form of content, which [[Louis Hjelmslev]] distinguished from form of expression) than how the word ''house'' may be tied to a certain image of a traditional house (i.e., the relationship between [[signified and signifier]]), with each term being established in reciprocal determination with the other terms than by an ostensive description or definition: when can one talk about a ''house'' or a ''mansion'' or a ''shed''? The same can be said about verbs in all languages: when should one stop saying ''walk'' and start saying ''run''? The same happens, of course, with adjectives: when must one stop saying ''yellow'' and start saying ''orange'', or exchange ''past'' for ''present''? Not only are the topological differences between the words relevant here, but the differentials between what is signified is also covered by {{Lang|fr|différance}}.

Thus, complete meaning is always "differential" and ''postponed'' in language; there is never a moment when meaning is complete and total. A simple example would consist of looking up a given word in a dictionary, then proceeding to look up the words found in that word's definition, etc., also comparing with older dictionaries. Such a process would never end.

===Metaphysics of presence===
{{Main|Metaphysics of presence}}
Derrida describes the task of deconstruction as the identification of metaphysics of presence, or ''[[logocentrism]]'' in western philosophy. Metaphysics of presence is the desire for immediate access to meaning, the privileging of presence over absence. This means that there is an assumed bias in certain binary oppositions where one side is placed in a position over another, such as good over bad, speech over the written word, male over female. Derrida writes,
{{blockquote|Without a doubt, Aristotle thinks of time on the basis of ''[[ousia]]'' as ''[[parousia]]'', on the basis of the now, the point, etc. And yet an entire reading could be organized that would repeat in Aristotle's text both this limitation and its opposite.<ref name="Heidegger"/>{{rp|29–67}}}}
To Derrida, the central bias of logocentrism was the now being placed as more important than the future or past. This argument is largely based on the earlier work of Heidegger, who, in ''[[Being and Time]]'', claimed that the theoretical attitude of pure presence is parasitical upon a more [[wikt:originary|originary]] involvement with the world in concepts such as [[ready-to-hand]] and [[being-with]].<ref>{{Cite book |last=Heidegger |first=Martin |title=Being and time |date=22 July 2008 |publisher=HarperPerennial/Modern Thought |others=John Macquarrie, Edward S. Robinson |orig-date=1962 |isbn=978-0-06-157559-4 |edition=Reprint |location=New York |oclc=243467373}}</ref>

===Deconstruction and dialectics===
In the deconstruction procedure, one of the main concerns of Derrida is to not collapse into Hegel's dialectic, where these oppositions would be reduced to contradictions in a dialectic that has the purpose of resolving it into a synthesis.<ref name="Derrida2"/>{{rp|43}} The presence of Hegelian dialectics was enormous in the intellectual life of France during the second half of the 20th century, with the influence of [[Alexandre Kojève|Kojève]] and [[Jean Hyppolite|Hyppolite]], but also with the impact of dialectics based on contradiction developed by [[Marxism|Marxists]], and including the [[existentialism]] of [[Jean-Paul Sartre|Sartre]], etc. This explains Derrida's concern to always distinguish his procedure from Hegel's,<ref name="Derrida2"/>{{rp|43}} since Hegelianism believes binary oppositions would produce a synthesis, while Derrida saw binary oppositions as incapable of collapsing into a synthesis free from the original contradiction.

==Difficulty of definition==
There have been problems defining deconstruction. Derrida claimed that all of his essays were attempts to define what deconstruction is,<ref name="Wood"/>{{rp|4}} and that deconstruction is necessarily complicated and difficult to explain since it actively criticises the very language needed to explain it.

===Derrida's "negative" descriptions===
Derrida has been more forthcoming with negative ([[wikt:apophatic|apophatic]]) than with positive descriptions of deconstruction. When asked by [[Toshihiko Izutsu]] some preliminary considerations on how to translate ''deconstruction'' in Japanese, in order to at least prevent using a Japanese term contrary to ''deconstruction''<nowiki/>'s actual meaning, Derrida began his response by saying that such a question amounts to "what deconstruction is not, or rather ''ought'' not to be".<ref name="Wood">{{cite book|last1=Wood|first1=David|last2=Bernasconi|first2=Robert|title=Derrida and Différance|date=1988|publisher=Northwestern University Press|location=Evanston, Illinois|isbn=9780810107861|edition=Reprinted}}</ref>{{rp|1}}

Derrida states that deconstruction is not an analysis, a critique, or a method<ref name="Wood"/>{{rp|3}} in the traditional sense that philosophy understands these terms. In these negative descriptions of deconstruction, Derrida is seeking to "multiply the cautionary indicators and put aside all the traditional philosophical concepts".<ref name="Wood"/>{{rp|3}} This does not mean that deconstruction has absolutely nothing in common with an analysis, a critique, or a method, because while Derrida distances deconstruction from these terms, he reaffirms "the necessity of returning to them, at least under erasure".<ref name="Wood"/>{{rp|3}} Derrida's necessity of returning to a term [[sous rature|under erasure]] means that even though these terms are problematic, they must be used until they can be effectively reformulated or replaced. The relevance of the tradition of negative theology to Derrida's preference for negative descriptions of deconstruction is the notion that a positive description of deconstruction would over-determine the idea of deconstruction and would close off the openness that Derrida wishes to preserve for deconstruction. If Derrida were to positively define deconstruction—as, for example, a critique—then this would make the concept of critique immune to itself being deconstructed.{{citation needed|date=February 2020}} Some new philosophy beyond deconstruction would then be required in order to encompass the notion of critique.

====Not a method====
Derrida states that "Deconstruction is not a method, and cannot be transformed into one".<ref name="Wood"/>{{rp|3}} This is because deconstruction is not a mechanical operation. Derrida warns against considering deconstruction as a mechanical operation, when he states that "It is true that in certain circles (university or cultural, especially in the United States) the technical and methodological "metaphor" that seems necessarily attached to the very word 'deconstruction' has been able to seduce or lead astray".<ref name="Wood"/>{{rp|3}} Commentator Richard Beardsworth explains that:

<blockquote>Derrida is careful to avoid this term [method] because it carries connotations of a procedural form of judgement. A thinker with a method has already decided ''how'' to proceed, is unable to give him or herself up to the matter of thought in hand, is a functionary of the criteria which structure his or her conceptual gestures. For Derrida [...] this is irresponsibility itself. Thus, to talk of a method in relation to deconstruction, especially regarding its ethico-political implications, would appear to go directly against the current of Derrida's philosophical adventure.<ref>{{cite book|last1=Beardsworth|first1=Richard|title=Derrida & The Political|date=1996|publisher=Routledge|location=London|isbn=978-1134837380|page=4}}</ref></blockquote>

Beardsworth here explains that it would be irresponsible to undertake a deconstruction with a complete set of rules that need only be applied as a method to the object of deconstruction, because this understanding would reduce deconstruction to a thesis of the reader that the text is then made to fit. This would be an irresponsible act of reading, because it becomes a prejudicial procedure that only finds what it sets out to find.

====Not a critique====
Derrida states that deconstruction is not a [[critique]] in the [[Kantianism|Kantian]] sense.<ref name="Wood"/>{{rp|3}} This is because [[Immanuel Kant|Kant]] defines the term ''critique'' as the opposite of [[dogmatism]]. For Derrida, it is not possible to escape the dogmatic baggage of the language used in order to perform a pure critique in the Kantian sense. Language is dogmatic because it is inescapably [[Metaphysics|metaphysical]]. Derrida argues that language is inescapably metaphysical because it is made up of [[Sign (linguistics)|signifiers]] that only refer to that which transcends them—the signified.{{Citation needed|date=April 2015}} In addition, Derrida asks rhetorically "Is not the idea of knowledge and of the acquisition of knowledge in itself metaphysical?"<ref name="Allison"/>{{rp|5}} By this, Derrida means that all claims to know something necessarily involve an assertion of the metaphysical type that something ''is'' the case somewhere. For Derrida the concept of neutrality is suspect and dogmatism is therefore involved in everything to a certain degree. Deconstruction can challenge a particular dogmatism and hence de-sediment dogmatism in general, but it cannot escape all dogmatism all at once.

====Not an analysis====
Derrida states that deconstruction is not an [[analysis]] in the traditional sense.<ref name="Wood"/>{{rp|3}} This is because the possibility of analysis is predicated on the possibility of breaking up the text being analysed into elemental component parts. Derrida argues that there are no self-sufficient units of meaning in a text, because individual words or sentences in a text can only be properly understood in terms of how they fit into the larger structure of the text and language itself. For more on Derrida's theory of meaning see the article on {{Lang|fr|[[différance]]}}.

====Not post-structuralist====
Derrida states that his use of the word deconstruction first took place in a context in which "[[structuralism]] was dominant" and deconstruction's meaning is within this context. Derrida states that deconstruction is an "antistructuralist gesture" because "[s]tructures were to be undone, decomposed, desedimented". At the same time, deconstruction is also a "structuralist gesture" because it is concerned with the structure of texts. So, deconstruction involves "a certain attention to structures"<ref name="Wood"/>{{rp|2}} and tries to "understand how an 'ensemble' was constituted".<ref name="Wood"/>{{rp|3}} As both a structuralist and an antistructuralist gesture, deconstruction is tied up with what Derrida calls the "structural problematic".<ref name="Wood"/>{{rp|2}} The structural problematic for Derrida is the tension between genesis, that which is "in the essential mode of creation or movement", and structure: "systems, or complexes, or static configurations".<ref name="Writing"/>{{rp|194}} An example of genesis would be the [[sense|sensory]] [[idea]]s from which knowledge is then derived in the [[empirical]] [[epistemology]]. An example of structure would be a [[binary opposition]] such as [[good and evil]] where the meaning of each element is established, at least partly, through its relationship to the other element.

It is for this reason that Derrida distances his use of the term deconstruction from [[post-structuralism]], a term that would suggest that philosophy could simply go beyond structuralism. Derrida states that "the motif of deconstruction has been associated with 'post-structuralism{{' "}}, but that this term was "a word unknown in France until its 'return' from the United States".<ref name="Wood"/>{{rp|3}} In his deconstruction of [[Edmund Husserl]], Derrida actually argues {{em|for}} the contamination of pure origins by the structures of language and temporality. [[Manfred Frank]] has even referred to Derrida's work as "neostructuralism", identifying a "distaste for the metaphysical concepts of domination and system".<ref>{{cite book|last1=Frank|first1=Manfred|title=What is Neostructuralism?|date=1989|publisher=University of Minnesota Press|location=Minneapolis|isbn=978-0816616022}}</ref><ref>Buchanan, Ian. ''A dictionary of critical theory''. OUP Oxford, 2010. Entry: Neostructuralism.</ref>

===Alternative definitions===
The popularity of the term deconstruction, combined with the technical difficulty of Derrida's primary material on deconstruction and his reluctance to elaborate his understanding of the term, has meant that many secondary sources have attempted to give a more straightforward explanation than Derrida himself ever attempted. Secondary definitions are therefore an interpretation of deconstruction by the person offering them rather than a summary of Derrida's actual position.
* [[Paul de Man]] was a member of the [[Yale School]] and a prominent practitioner of deconstruction as he understood it. His definition of deconstruction is that, "[i]t's possible, within text, to frame a question or undo assertions made in the text, by means of elements which are in the text, which frequently would be precisely structures that play off the rhetorical against grammatical elements."<ref>{{cite book|last1=Moynihan|first1=Robert|title=A Recent imagining: interviews with Harold Bloom, Geoffrey Hartman, J. Hillis Miller, Paul De Man|date=1986|publisher=Archon Books|location=Hamden, Connecticut|isbn=9780208021205|page=156|edition=1st}}</ref>
* [[Richard Rorty]] was a prominent interpreter of Derrida's philosophy. His definition of deconstruction is that, "the term 'deconstruction' refers in the first instance to the way in which the 'accidental' features of a text can be seen as betraying, subverting, its purportedly 'essential' message."<ref>{{cite book|last1=Brooks|first1=Peter|title=The Cambridge History of Literary Criticism: From Formalism to Poststructuralism|date=1995|publisher=Cambridge University Press|location=Cambridge|isbn=9780521300131|page=171|edition=1st}}</ref>
* According to [[John D. Caputo]], the very meaning and mission of deconstruction is:<blockquote>"to show that things - texts, institutions, traditions, societies, beliefs, and practices of whatever size and sort you need - do not have definable meanings and determinable missions, that they are always more than any mission would impose, that they exceed the boundaries they currently occupy"<ref>{{cite book|last1=Caputo|first1=John D.|url=https://archive.org/details/isbn_9780823217557/page/32|title=Deconstruction in a Nutshell: A Conversation with Jacques Derrida|date=1997|publisher=Fordham University Press|isbn=9780823217557|edition=3rd|location=New York|page=[https://archive.org/details/isbn_9780823217557/page/31 31]}}</ref></blockquote>
* [[Niall Lucy]] points to the impossibility of defining the term at all, stating: <blockquote>"While in a sense it ''is'' impossibly difficult to define, the impossibility has less to do with the adoption of a position or the assertion of a choice on deconstruction's part than with the impossibility of every 'is' as such. Deconstruction begins, as it were, from a refusal of the authority or determining power of every 'is', or simply from a refusal of authority in general. While such refusal may indeed count as a position, it is not the case that deconstruction holds this as a sort of 'preference' ".<ref>{{cite book|last1=Lucy|first1=Niall|title=A Derrida Dictionary|date=2004|publisher=Blackwell Publishing|location=Malden, Massachusetts|isbn=978-1405137515}}</ref>{{Page needed|date=September 2017}}</blockquote>
* David B. Allison, an early translator of Derrida, states in the introduction to his translation of ''Speech and Phenomena'': <blockquote>[Deconstruction] signifies a project of critical thought whose task is to locate and 'take apart' those concepts which serve as the axioms or rules for a period of thought, those concepts which command the unfolding of an entire epoch of metaphysics. 'Deconstruction' is somewhat less negative than the Heideggerian or Nietzschean terms 'destruction' or 'reversal'; it suggests that certain foundational concepts of metaphysics will never be entirely eliminated...There is no simple 'overcoming' of metaphysics or the language of metaphysics.</blockquote>
* [[Paul Ricœur]] defines deconstruction as a way of uncovering the questions behind the answers of a text or tradition.<ref>{{cite book|last1=Klein|first1=Anne Carolyn|title=Meeting the Great Bliss Queen: Buddhists, Feminists, and the Art of the Self|date=1994|publisher=Beacon Press|location=Boston|isbn=9780807073063|url=https://archive.org/details/meetinggreatblis00kleirich}}</ref>{{Page needed|date=November 2013}}

===Popular definitions===
{{expand section|date=December 2022}}

A survey of the [[secondary literature]] reveals a wide range of heterogeneous arguments. Particularly problematic are the attempts to give neat introductions to deconstruction by people trained in literary criticism who sometimes have little or no expertise in the relevant areas of philosophy in which Derrida is working.{{Editorializing|date=September 2023}} These secondary works (e.g. ''Deconstruction for Beginners''<ref>{{cite book|last1=Powell|first1=Jim|title=Deconstruction for Beginners|date=2005|publisher=Writers and Readers Publishing|location=Danbury, Connecticut|isbn=978-0863169984}}</ref>{{Page needed|date=September 2017}} and ''Deconstructions: A User's Guide'')<ref>{{cite book|last1=Royle|first1=Nicholas|title=Deconstructions: A User's Guide|date=2000|publisher=Palgrave|location=New York|isbn=978-0333717615}}</ref>{{Page needed|date=September 2017}} have attempted to explain deconstruction while being academically criticized for being too far removed from the original texts and Derrida's actual position.{{Citation needed|date=April 2007}}

''Cambridge Dictionary'' states that ''deconstruction'' is "the act of breaking something down into its separate parts in order to understand its meaning, especially when this is different from how it was previously understood".<ref>{{Cite web |title=Cambridge English Dictionary: Meanings & Definitions |url=https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/deconstruction}}</ref> The [[Merriam-Webster]] dictionary states that ''deconstruction'' is "the analytic examination of something (such as a theory) often in order to reveal its inadequacy".<ref>{{Cite web |title=Definition of DECONSTRUCTION |url=https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/deconstruction |website=merriam-webster.com|date=10 June 2023 }}</ref>

==Application==
Derrida's observations have greatly influenced literary criticism and post-structuralism.

===Literary criticism===
Derrida's method consisted of demonstrating all the forms and varieties of the originary complexity of [[semiotics]], and their multiple consequences in many fields. His way of achieving this was by conducting readings of philosophical and literary texts, with the goal to understand what in those texts runs counter to their apparent systematicity (structural unity) or intended sense (authorial genesis). By demonstrating the [[aporia]]s and ellipses of thought, Derrida hoped to show the infinitely subtle ways that this originary complexity, which by definition cannot ever be completely known, works its structuring and destructuring effects.<ref>{{cite book|last1=Sallis|first1=John|author-link=John Sallis|title=Deconstruction and Philosophy: The Texts of Jacques Derrida|date=1988|publisher=University of Chicago Press|location=Chicago|isbn=978-0226734392|pages=3–4|edition=Paperback|quote=One of the more persistent misunderstandings that has thus far forestalled a productive debate with Derrida's philosophical thought is the assumption, shared by many philosophers as well as literary critics, that within that thought just anything is possible. Derrida's philosophy is more often than not construed as a license for arbitrary free play in flagrant disregard of all established rules of argumentation, traditional requirements of thought, and ethical standards binding upon the interpretative community. Undoubtedly, some of the works of Derrida may not have been entirely innocent in this respect, and may have contributed, however obliquely, to fostering to some extent that very misconception. But deconstruction which for many has come to designate the content and style of Derrida's thinking, reveals to even a superficial examination, a well-ordered procedure, a step-by-step type of argumentation based on an acute awareness of level-distinctions, a marked thoroughness and regularity. [...] Deconstruction must be understood, we contend, as the attempt to "account," in a certain manner, for a heterogeneous variety or manifold of nonlogical contradictions and discursive equalities of all sorts that continues to haunt and fissure even the ''successful'' development of philosophical arguments and their systematic exposition}}</ref>

Deconstruction denotes the [[Hermeneutics|pursuing of the meaning]] of a text to the point of exposing the supposed contradictions and internal oppositions upon which it is founded—supposedly showing that those foundations are irreducibly complex, unstable, or impossible. It is an approach that may be deployed in philosophy, in [[literary analysis]], and even in the analysis of scientific writings.<ref>{{cite book|last1=Hobson|first1=Marian|author-link=Marian Hobson|title=Jacques Derrida: Opening Lines|date=2012|publisher=Routledge|isbn=9781134774449|page=51|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=Kl146cNpzNQC&pg=PA51|access-date=8 September 2017|language=en}}</ref> Deconstruction generally tries to demonstrate that any text is not a discrete whole but contains several irreconcilable and contradictory meanings; that any text therefore has more than one interpretation; that the text itself links these interpretations inextricably; that the incompatibility of these interpretations is irreducible; and thus that an interpretative reading cannot go beyond a certain point. Derrida refers to this point as an "aporia" in the text; thus, deconstructive reading is termed "aporetic".<ref>{{cite book|last1=Currie|first1=M.|title=The Invention of Deconstruction|date=2013|publisher=Springer|isbn=9781137307033|page=80|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=i3ecdVgknGkC&pg=PA80|access-date=8 September 2017|language=en}}</ref> He insists that meaning is made possible by the relations of a word to other words within the network of structures that language is.<ref>{{cite web|last1=Mantzavinos|first1=C.|title=Hermeneutics|url=http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/hermeneutics/#Semiotics|website=The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy|publisher=Metaphysics Research Lab, Stanford University|access-date=8 September 2017|date=2016}}</ref>

Derrida initially resisted granting to his approach the overarching name ''deconstruction'', on the grounds that it was a precise technical term that could not be used to characterize his work generally. Nevertheless, he eventually accepted that the term had come into common use to refer to his textual approach, and Derrida himself increasingly began to use the term in this more general way.

Derrida's deconstruction strategy is also used by [[Postmodernism|postmodernists]] to locate meaning in a text rather than discover meaning due to the position that it has multiple readings. There is a focus on the deconstruction that denotes the tearing apart of a text to find arbitrary hierarchies and presuppositions for the purpose of tracing contradictions that shadow a text's coherence.<ref name=":1">{{Cite book|title=The Undermining of Beliefs in the Autonomy and Rationality of Consumers|last1=O'Shaughnessy|first1=John|last2=O'Shaughnessy|first2=Nicholas Jackson|publisher=Routledge|year=2008|isbn=978-0415773232|location=Oxon|pages=103}}</ref> Here, the meaning of a text does not reside with the author or the author's intentions because it is dependent on the interaction between reader and text.<ref name=":1" /> Even the process of [[translation]] is also seen as transformative since it "modifies the original even as it modifies the translating language".<ref>{{Cite book|title=Deconstruction and Translation|last=Davis|first=Kathleen|publisher=Routledge|year=2014|isbn=9781900650281|location=New York|pages=41}}</ref>

===Critique of structuralism===
Derrida's lecture at [[Johns Hopkins University]], "[[Structure, Sign, and Play in the Discourse of the Human Sciences|Structure, Sign, and Play in the Human Sciences]]", often appears in collections as a manifesto against structuralism. Derrida's essay was one of the earliest to propose some theoretical limitations to structuralism, and to attempt to theorize on terms that were clearly no longer structuralist. Structuralism viewed language as a number of signs, composed of a signified (the meaning) and a signifier (the word itself). Derrida proposed that signs always referred to other signs, existing only in relation to each other, and there was therefore no ultimate foundation or centre. This is the basis of {{Lang|fr|différance}}.<ref>Derrida, "Structure, Sign, and Play" (1966), as printed/translated by Macksey & Donato (1970)</ref>

==Development after Derrida==
===The Yale School===
{{Further|Yale school}}
Between the late 1960s and the early 1980s, many thinkers were influenced by deconstruction, including [[Paul de Man]], [[Geoffrey Hartman]], and [[J. Hillis Miller]]. This group came to be known as the [[Yale school (deconstruction)|Yale school]] and was especially influential in [[literary criticism]]. Derrida and Hillis Miller were subsequently affiliated with the [[University of California Irvine|University of California, Irvine]].<ref>{{cite web|last1=Tisch|first1=Maude|title=A critical distance|url=http://yaleherald.com/news-and-features/a-critical-distance/|website=The Yale Herald|access-date=2017-01-27}}</ref>

Miller has described deconstruction this way: "Deconstruction is not a dismantling of the structure of a text, but a demonstration that it has already dismantled itself. Its apparently solid ground is no rock, but thin air."<ref>{{cite journal|last1=Miller|first1=J. Hillis|title=STEVENS' ROCK AND CRITICISM AS CURE: In Memory of William K. Wimsatt (1907-1975)|journal=The Georgia Review|date=1976|volume=30|issue=1|pages=5–31|jstor=41399571|issn=0016-8386}}</ref>

===Critical legal studies movement===
{{Further|Critical legal studies}}{{See also|Postmodern criminology}}
Arguing that law and politics cannot be separated, the founders of the Critical Legal Studies movement found it necessary to criticize the absence of the recognition of this inseparability at the level of theory. To demonstrate the [[Indeterminacy (philosophy)|indeterminacy]] of [[legal doctrine]], these scholars often adopt a method, such as [[structuralism]] in [[linguistics]], or deconstruction in [[Continental philosophy]], to make explicit the deep structure of categories and tensions at work in legal texts and talk. The aim was to deconstruct the tensions and procedures by which they are constructed, expressed, and deployed.

For example, [[Duncan Kennedy (legal philosopher)|Duncan Kennedy]], in explicit reference to semiotics and deconstruction procedures, maintains that various legal doctrines are constructed around the binary pairs of opposed concepts, each of which has a claim upon intuitive and formal forms of reasoning that must be made explicit in their meaning and relative value, and criticized. Self and other, private and public, subjective and objective, freedom and control are examples of such pairs demonstrating the influence of opposing concepts on the development of legal doctrines throughout history.<ref name="Bridge"/>

===''Deconstructing History''===
Deconstructive readings of history and sources have changed the entire discipline of history. In ''Deconstructing History'', [[Alun Munslow]] examines history in what he argues is a postmodern age. He provides an introduction to the debates and issues of postmodernist history. He also surveys the latest research into the relationship between the past, history, and historical practice, as well as articulating his own theoretical challenges.<ref name="Munslow"/>

===''The Inoperative Community''===
[[Jean-Luc Nancy]] argues, in his 1982 book ''The Inoperative Community'', for an understanding of community and society that is undeconstructable because it is prior to conceptualisation. Nancy's work is an important development of deconstruction because it takes the challenge of deconstruction seriously and attempts to develop an understanding of political terms that is undeconstructable and therefore suitable for a philosophy after Derrida. Nancy's work produced a critique of deconstruction by making the possibility for a relation to the other. This relation to the other is called “anastasis” in Nancy's work.<ref>{{Cite journal |url=https://read.dukeupress.edu/qui-parle/article-abstract/31/2/339/320788/Deconstruction-and-Anastasis |access-date=2023-07-09 |journal=Qui Parle|doi=10.1215/10418385-10052375 |title=Deconstruction and Anastasis |date=2022 |last1=Mohan |first1=Shaj |volume=31 |issue=2 |pages=339–344 |url-access=subscription }}</ref>

===''The Ethics of Deconstruction''===
[[Simon Critchley]] argues, in his 1992 book ''The Ethics of Deconstruction'',<ref>{{cite book|last1=Critchley|first1=Simon|author-link=Simon Critchley|title=The Ethics of Deconstruction: Derrida and Levinas|date=2014|publisher=Edinburgh University Press|location=Edinburgh|isbn=9780748689323|page=352|edition=3rd|url=http://www.euppublishing.com/book/9780748689323 |access-date=8 September 2017}}</ref> that Derrida's deconstruction is an intrinsically ethical practice. Critchley argues that deconstruction involves an openness to the [[Other (philosophy)|Other]] that makes it ethical in the [[Emmanuel Levinas|Levinasian]] understanding of the term.

===''Derrida and the Political''===
[[File:JudithButler2013.jpg|thumb|Judith Butler]]
Jacques Derrida has had a great influence on contemporary [[political theory]] and political philosophy. Derrida's thinking has inspired [[Slavoj Žižek|Slavoj Zizek]], [[Richard Rorty]], [[Ernesto Laclau]], [[Judith Butler]] and many more contemporary theorists who have developed a deconstructive approach to [[politics]]. Because deconstruction examines the internal logic of any given text or discourse it has helped many authors to analyse the contradictions inherent in all schools of thought; and, as such, it has proved revolutionary in political analysis, particularly ideology critiques.<ref>{{cite book|last1=McQuillan|first1=Martin|title=The Politics of Deconstruction: Jacques Derrida and the Other of Philosophy|date=2007|publisher=Pluto Press|location=London|isbn=978-0745326740|edition=1st}}</ref>{{Page needed|date=September 2017}}

Richard Beardsworth, developing from Critchley's ''Ethics of Deconstruction'', argues, in his 1996 ''Derrida and the Political'', that deconstruction is an intrinsically political practice. He further argues that the future of deconstruction faces a perhaps undecidable choice between a [[Theology|theological]] approach and a technological approach, represented first of all by the work of [[Bernard Stiegler]].<ref>{{Cite book |last=Beardsworth |first=Richard |title=Derrida & the political |date=1996 |publisher=Routledge |isbn=978-0-415-10966-6 |series=Thinking the political |location=London; New York}}</ref>

===Faith===
{{see also-text|[[Faith deconstruction]]|[[Positive deconstruction]]}}
The term "[[deconstructing faith]]" has been used to describe processes of critically examining one's religious beliefs with the possibility of rejecting them, taking individual responsibility for beliefs acquired from others, or reconstructing more nuanced or mature faith. This use of the term has been particularly prominent in American Evangelical Christianity in the 2020s. Author [[Nakedpastor|David Hayward]] said he "co-opted the term" ''deconstruction'' because he was reading the work of Derrida at the time his religious beliefs came into question.<ref>{{cite news |last1=Garrison |first1=Becky |date=9 September 2020 |title=Doubt, Marriage, and the NakedPastor |work=[[The Humanist]] |url=https://thehumanist.com/arts_entertainment/books/doubt-marriage-and-the-nakedpastor/ |access-date=23 August 2022}}</ref> Others had earlier used the term "faith deconstruction" to describe similar processes, and theologian [[James W. Fowler]] articulated a similar concept as part of his faith stages theory.<ref name="Jamieson">{{cite book |last1=Jamieson |first1=Alan |title=A Churchless Faith: Faith journeys beyond the churches |date=2002 |publisher=SPCK |location=London |isbn=0-281-05465-7 |pages=68–74, 77, 89, 108–25, 126, 147, 148, 166, 168, 170 |edition=First SPCK |url=https://archive.org/details/churchlessfaithf0000jami |access-date=8 January 2025}}</ref><ref name="Fowler">{{cite book |last1=Fowler |first1=James |title=Stages of Faith: The Psychology of Faith Development and the Quest for Meaning |date=1981 |publisher=Harper & Row Publishers |location=San Francisco |isbn=0-06-062840-5 |url=https://archive.org/details/stagesoffaith0000unse |access-date=8 January 2025}}</ref>

===Cuisine===
{{main|Deconstructed cuisine}}
Leading Spanish chef [[Ferran Adrià]] coined [[deconstructed cuisine|"deconstruction" as a style of cuisine]], which he described as drawing from the creative principles of Spanish modernists like [[Salvador Dalí]] and [[Antoni Gaudí]] to deconstruct conventional cooking techniques in the modern era. Deconstructed recipes typically preserve the core ingredients and techniques of an established dish, but prepare components of a dish separately while experimenting radically with its flavor, texture, ratios, and assembly to culminate in a stark, [[minimalist]] style of [[presentation (cuisine)|presentation]] with similarly minimal portion sizes.<ref name=AdriaClot>Rosell, Meritxell. [https://clotmag.com/key-artists/ferran-adria "FERRAN ADRIA, sublime food deconstruction"], ''Clot Magazine'', 17 May 2017. Retrieved 2 March 2024.</ref><ref name=FWFS>[[Roncero, Paco]]. [https://www.foodswinesfromspain.com/en/fws-academy/cooking-techniques/modern/deconstruction "Deconstruction"], ''Foods and Wines from Spain''. Retrieved 2 March 2024.</ref>

==Criticisms==
Derrida was involved in a number of high-profile disagreements with prominent philosophers, including [[Michel Foucault]], [[John Searle]], [[Willard Van Orman Quine]], [[Peter Kreeft]], and [[Jürgen Habermas]]. Most of the criticisms of deconstruction were first articulated by these philosophers and then repeated elsewhere.

===John Searle===
{{See also|Limited Inc.}}
In the early 1970s, Searle had a brief exchange with [[Jacques Derrida]] regarding [[Speech act theory|speech-act theory]]. The exchange was characterized by a degree of mutual hostility between the philosophers, each of whom accused the other of having misunderstood his basic points.<ref name="Limited"/>{{rp|29}}{{Citation needed|date=September 2012|reason=Footnote provided only sources half the claim.}} Searle was particularly hostile to Derrida's deconstructionist framework and much later refused to let his response to Derrida be printed along with Derrida's papers in the 1988 collection ''[[Limited Inc]]''. Searle did not consider Derrida's approach to be legitimate philosophy, or even intelligible writing, and argued that he did not want to legitimize the deconstructionist point of view by paying any attention to it. Consequently, some critics{{who|date=October 2020}}<ref>{{cite book|last1=Maclachlan|first1=Ian|title=Jacques Derrida: Critical Thought|date=2004|publisher=Ashgate|location=Aldershot|isbn=978-0754608066}}</ref> have considered the exchange to be a series of elaborate misunderstandings rather than a debate, while others{{who|date=October 2020}}<ref name="Alfino">{{cite journal|last1=Alfino|first1=Mark|title=Another Look at the Derrida-Searle Debate|journal=Philosophy & Rhetoric|date=1991|volume=24|issue=2|pages=143–152|jstor=40237667}}</ref> have seen either Derrida or Searle gaining the upper hand.

The debate began in 1972, when, in his paper "Signature Event Context", Derrida analyzed J. L. Austin's theory of the [[illocutionary act]]. While sympathetic to Austin's departure from a purely denotational account of language to one that includes "force", Derrida was sceptical of the framework of normativity employed by Austin. Derrida argued that Austin had missed the fact that any speech event is framed by a "structure of absence" (the words that are left unsaid due to contextual constraints) and by "iterability" (the constraints on what can be said, imposed by what has been said in the past). Derrida argued that the focus on [[intentionality]] in speech-act theory was misguided because intentionality is restricted to that which is already established as a possible intention. He also took issue with the way Austin had excluded the study of fiction, non-serious, or "parasitic" speech, wondering whether this exclusion was because Austin had considered these speech genres as governed by different structures of meaning, or had not considered them due to a lack of interest. In his brief reply to Derrida, "Reiterating the Differences: A Reply to Derrida", Searle argued that Derrida's critique was unwarranted because it assumed that Austin's theory attempted to give a full account of language and meaning when its aim was much narrower. Searle considered the omission of parasitic discourse forms to be justified by the narrow scope of Austin's inquiry.<ref>Gregor Campbell. 1993. "John R. Searle" in Irene Rima Makaryk (ed). Encyclopedia of contemporary literary theory: approaches, scholars, terms. University of Toronto Press, 1993</ref><ref>John Searle, "Reiterating the Différences: A Reply to Derrida", Glyph 2 (Baltimore MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1977).</ref> Searle agreed with Derrida's proposal that intentionality presupposes iterability, but did not apply the same concept of intentionality used by Derrida, being unable or unwilling to engage with the continental conceptual apparatus.<ref name="Alfino"/> This, in turn, caused Derrida to criticize Searle for not being sufficiently familiar with [[wikt:phenomenological|phenomenological]] perspectives on intentionality.<ref name="Hobson">{{cite book |last1=Hobson |first1=Marian |title=Jacques Derrida: opening lines |date=1998 |publisher=Routledge |location=London |isbn=9780415021975 |pages=95–97}}</ref> Some critics{{who|date=October 2020}}<ref name="Hobson"/> have suggested that Searle, by being so grounded in the analytical tradition that he was unable to engage with Derrida's continental phenomenological tradition, was at fault for the unsuccessful nature of the exchange, however Searle also argued that Derrida's disagreement with Austin turned on Derrida's having misunderstood Austin's [[type–token distinction]] and having failed to understand Austin's concept of failure in relation to [[performativity]].

Derrida, in his response to Searle ({{nowrap|"a b c ..."}} in ''Limited Inc''), ridiculed Searle's positions. Claiming that a clear sender of Searle's message could not be established, Derrida suggested that Searle had formed with Austin a {{Lang|fr|société à responsabilité limitée}} (a "[[limited liability company]]") due to the ways in which the ambiguities of authorship within Searle's reply circumvented the very speech act of his reply. Searle did not reply. Later in 1988, Derrida tried to review his position and his critiques of Austin and Searle, reiterating that he found the constant appeal to "normality" in the analytical tradition to be problematic.<ref name="Limited"/>{{rp|133}}<ref name="Alfino"/><ref>{{cite journal|last1=Farrell|first1=Frank B.|title=Iterability and Meaning: The Searle-Derrida Debate|journal=Metaphilosophy|date=1 January 1988|volume=19|issue=1|pages=53–64|doi=10.1111/j.1467-9973.1988.tb00701.x|language=en|issn=1467-9973}}</ref><ref>{{cite journal|last1=Fish|first1=Stanley E.|title=With the Compliments of the Author: Reflections on Austin and Derrida|journal=Critical Inquiry|date=1982|volume=8|issue=4|pages=693–721|doi=10.1086/448177|jstor=1343193|s2cid=161086152}}</ref><ref>{{cite journal|last1=Wright|first1=Edmond|title=Derrida, Searle, Contexts, Games, Riddles|journal=[[New Literary History]]|date=1982|volume=13|issue=3|pages=463–477|doi=10.2307/468793|jstor=468793}}</ref><ref>{{cite journal|last1=Culler|first1=Jonathan|title=Convention and Meaning: Derrida and Austin|journal=New Literary History|date=1981|volume=13|issue=1|pages=15–30|doi=10.2307/468640|jstor=468640}}</ref><ref>{{cite journal|last1=Kenaan|first1=Hagi|title=Language, philosophy and the risk of failure: rereading the debate between Searle and Derrida|journal=Continental Philosophy Review|date=2002|volume=35|issue=2|pages=117–133|doi=10.1023/A:1016583115826|s2cid=140898191}}</ref><ref>{{cite journal|last1=Raffel|first1=Stanley|title=Understanding Each Other: The Case of the Derrida-Searle Debate|journal=Human Studies|date=28 July 2011|volume=34|issue=3|pages=277–292|doi=10.1007/s10746-011-9189-6|s2cid=145210811}}</ref>

===Jürgen Habermas===
In ''[[The Philosophical Discourse of Modernity]]'', [[Jürgen Habermas]] criticized what he considered Derrida's opposition to [[Rationality|rational discourse]].<ref name=":0">{{cite book|last1=Habermas|first1=Jürgen|last2=Lawrence|first2=Frederick|title=The Philosophical Discourse of Modernity: Twelve Lectures|date=2005|publisher=Polity Press|location=Cambridge|isbn=978-0745608303|pages=185–210|edition=Reprinted}}</ref> Further, in an essay on religion and religious language, Habermas criticized what he saw as Derrida's emphasis on [[etymology]] and [[philology]]<ref name=":0" /> (see ''[[Etymological fallacy]]'').

===Walter A. Davis===
The American philosopher [[Walter A. Davis]], in ''Inwardness and Existence: Subjectivity in/and Hegel, Heidegger, Marx and Freud'', argues that both deconstruction and structuralism are prematurely arrested moments of a dialectical movement that issues from Hegelian "unhappy consciousness".<ref>{{cite book|last1=Davis|first1=Walter A.|author-link=Walter A. Davis|title=Inwardness and Existence: Subjectivity In/and Hegel, Heidegger, Marx, and Freud|date=1989|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=reQovh-6gjYC&pg=PA57 |publisher=University of Wisconsin Press|location=Madison, Wisconsin|isbn=978-0299120146|edition=1st|page=57}}</ref>

===In popular media===
Popular criticism of deconstruction intensified following the [[Sokal affair]], which many people took as an indicator of the quality of deconstruction as a whole, despite the absence of Derrida from Sokal's follow-up book ''[[Impostures intellectuelles]]''.<ref>{{cite web|last1=Sokal|first1=Alan D.|title=A Physicist Experiments With Cultural Studies|url=http://www.physics.nyu.edu/faculty/sokal/lingua_franca_v4/lingua_franca_v4.html|website=physics.nyu.edu|access-date=3 April 2007|date=May 1996}}</ref>

[[Chip Morningstar]] holds a view critical of deconstruction, believing it to be "epistemologically challenged". He claims the humanities are subject to isolation and genetic drift due to their unaccountability to the world outside academia. During the Second International Conference on Cyberspace ([[Santa Cruz, California]], 1991), he reportedly [[Heckler|heckled]] deconstructionists off the stage.<ref>{{cite magazine|last1=Steinberg|first1=Steve|title=Hype List|url=https://www.wired.com/1993/01/hypelist-19/|magazine=WIRED|access-date=19 May 2017|date=1 January 1993}}</ref> He subsequently presented his views in the article "How to Deconstruct Almost Anything", where he stated, "Contrary to the report given in the 'Hype List' column of issue #1 of Wired ('Po-Mo Gets Tek-No', page 87), we did not shout down the [[Postmodernism|postmodernists]]. We made fun of them."<ref>{{Cite web |last1=Morningstar |first1=Chip |title=How To Deconstruct Almost Anything: My Postmodern Adventure |url=http://www.fudco.com/chip/deconstr.html |access-date=2025-06-01}}</ref>

==See also==
*{{annotated link|Reader-response criticism}}
*[[List of deconstructionists]]
*{{annotated link|Reconstructivism}}
* [[Deconstructivism (architecture)]]
* [[Deconstruction (fashion)]]

==References==
{{notelist|30em}}
{{Reflist|30em}}

==Further reading==
{{Further reading cleanup|date=October 2016}}
*Derrida, Jacques. ''Positions''. Trans. Alan Bass. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1981. {{ISBN|978-0-226-14331-6}}
*Derrida [1980], ''The time of a thesis: punctuations'', first published in: Derrida [1990], ''[[Eyes of the University: Right to Philosophy 2]]'', pp.&nbsp;113–128.
*Atkins, G. Douglas. ''Reading deconstruction: deconstructive reading''. Lexington, Ky: University Press of Kentucky, 1983.
*Bloom, Harold. ''A map of misreading''. NY: Oxford University Press, 1975.
*Breckman, Warren. "Times of Theory: On Writing the History of French Theory," ''Journal of the History of Ideas'', vol. 71, no. 3 (July 2010), 339–361 ([http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/jhi/ online]).
*Cantor, Norman F. ''Twentieth century culture: modernism to deconstruction''. NY: Peter Lang, 1988.
*[[Jonathan Culler|Culler, Jonathan]]. ''On Deconstruction: Theory and Criticism after Structuralism'', Cornell University Press, 1982. {{ISBN|978-0-8014-1322-3}}.
*[[Paul de Man|de Man, Paul]]. ''Blindness and insight: essays in the rhetoric of contemporary criticism''. NY: Oxford University Press, 1971.
*—. ''The rhetoric of Romanticism''. NY: Columbia University Press, 1984.
*[[Eagleton, Terry]]. ''[[Literary Theory: An Introduction]]'', University of Minnesota Press, 1996. {{ISBN|978-0-8166-1251-2}}
*Ellis, John M. ''Against Deconstruction'', Princeton: Princeton UP, 1989. {{ISBN|978-0-691-06754-4}}.
*Hartman, Geoffrey. ''Saving the text: literature/Derrida/philosophy''. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1981.
*[[Barbara Johnson|Johnson, Barbara]]. ''The Critical Difference: Essays in the Contemporary Rhetoric of Reading''. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1980. {{ISBN|978-0-801-82458-6}}
*Montefiore, Alan (ed., 1983), ''Philosophy in France Today'' Cambridge: Cambridge UP, pp.&nbsp;34–50
*Norris, Christopher. ''Deconstruction: theory and practice''. London: Methuen, 1982.
*—. ''The deconstructive turn: essays in the rhetoric of philosophy''. London: Methuen, 1983.
*Rajnath, A., ed. ''Deconstruction: a critique''. London: Macmillan, 1989.
*[[Simon Reynolds|Reynolds, Simon]]. ''Rip It Up and Start Again'', New York: Penguin, 2006, pp.&nbsp;316. {{ISBN|978-0-143-03672-2}}. <small>(Source for the information about Green Gartside, Scritti Politti, and deconstructionism.)</small>
*Stocker, Barry. ''Routledge Philosophy Guidebook to Derrida on Deconstruction'', Routledge, 2006. {{ISBN|978-1-134-34381-2}}
*Wortham, Simon Morgan. ''The Derrida Dictionary'', Continuum, 2010. {{ISBN|978-1-847-06526-1}}

==External links==
* Video of [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vgwOjjoYtco Jacques Derrida beginning a definition of Deconstruction]
* [http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/derrida/#Dec "Deconstruction" in Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy]


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