deconstruction

Deconstruction is a critical outlook concerned with the relationship between text and meaning. <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jacques_Derrida" title="Jacques Derrida">Jacques Derrida's</a> 1967 work <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Of_Grammatology" title="Of Grammatology">Of Grammatology</a> introduced the majority of ideas influential within deconstruction.<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deconstruction#cite_note-1">[1]</a> According to Derrida and taking inspiration from the work of <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ferdinand_de_Saussure" title="Ferdinand de Saussure">Ferdinand de Saussure</a>,<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deconstruction#cite_note-Saussure_1916_trans.1959_121.E2.80.9322-2">[2]</a> language as a system of signs and words only has meaning because of the contrast between these signs.<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deconstruction#cite_note-Rorty_et_al_1995-2-3">[3]</a><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deconstruction#cite_note-Derrida_1997p12-4">[4]</a><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deconstruction#cite_note-Derrida_1997p7-5">[5]</a> As <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Rorty" title="Richard Rorty">Rorty</a> contends "words have meaning only because of contrast-effects with other words...no word can acquire meaning in the way in which philosophers from <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aristotle" title="Aristotle">Aristotle</a> to <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bertrand_Russell" title="Bertrand Russell">Bertrand Russell</a> have hoped it might—by being the unmediated expression of something non-linguistic (e.g., an emotion, a sense-datum, a physical object, an idea, a <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Platonic_Form" class="mw-redirect" title="Platonic Form">Platonic Form</a>)".<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deconstruction#cite_note-Rorty_et_al_1995-6">[6]</a> As a consequence meaning is never present, but rather is deferred to other signs. Derrida refers to the - in this view, mistaken - belief that there is a self-sufficient, non-deferred meaning as metaphysics of presence. A concept then must be understood in the context of its opposite, such as being/nothingness, normal/abnormal, speech/writing, etc.<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deconstruction#cite_note-Derrida_2005p276-7">[7]</a><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deconstruction#cite_note-Derrida_1981p133-8">[8]</a>

Further, Derrida contends that "in a classical philosophical opposition we are not dealing with the peaceful coexistence of a vis-a-vis, but rather with a violent hierarchy. One of the two terms governs the other (axiologically, logically, etc.), or has the upper hand": signified over signifier; intelligible over sensible; speech over writing; activity over passivity, etc.The first task of deconstruction would be to find and overturn these oppositions inside a text or a corpus of texts. But the final objective of deconstruction is not to surpass all oppositions, because it is assumed they are structurally necessary to produce sense. They simply cannot be suspended once and for all. The hierarchy of dual oppositions always reestablishes itself. Deconstruction only points to the necessity of an unending analysis that can make explicit the decisions and arbitrary violence intrinsic to all texts.<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deconstruction#cite_note-Derrida_1981p42-9">[9]</a>

Finally, Derrida 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".<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deconstruction#cite_note-Derrida_1981p42-9">[9]</a> 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 Hegelian dialectics (e.g. <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diff%C3%A9rance" title="Différance">différance</a>, <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Archi-writing" title="Archi-writing">archi-writing</a>, <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pharmakon_%28philosophy%29" title="Pharmakon (philosophy)">pharmakon</a>, supplement, hymen, gram, spacing).<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deconstruction#cite_note-Derrida_1981_p43-10">[10]</a>

In the 1980s, the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Postmodernism" title="Postmodernism">Postmodernism</a> era, deconstruction was being put to use in a range of theoretical enterprises in the humanities and social sciences,<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deconstruction#cite_note-11">[11]</a> including law<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deconstruction#cite_note-Derrida_1992pp3-67-12">[12]</a><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deconstruction#cite_note-13">[13]</a><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deconstruction#cite_note-14">[14]</a> anthropology,<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deconstruction#cite_note-15">[15]</a> historiography,<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deconstruction#cite_note-16">[16]</a> linguistics,<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deconstruction#cite_note-Busch_2012-17">[17]</a> sociolinguistics,<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deconstruction#cite_note-18">[18]</a> psychoanalysis, feminism, and LGBT studies. In the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Continental_philosophy" title="Continental philosophy">continental philosophy</a> tradition, debates surrounding <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ontology" title="Ontology">ontology</a>, <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epistemology" title="Epistemology">epistemology</a>, ethics, <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aesthetics" title="Aesthetics">aesthetics</a>, <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hermeneutics" title="Hermeneutics">hermeneutics</a>, and philosophy of language still refer to it today. Within architecture it has inspired <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deconstructivism" title="Deconstructivism">deconstructivism</a>, and it remains important in general within art,<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deconstruction#cite_note-19">[19]</a> music,<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deconstruction#cite_note-20">[20]</a> and <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Literary_criticism" title="Literary criticism">literary criticism</a>.<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deconstruction#cite_note-21">[21]</a>

deconstruction

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