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Derrida
& Deconstruction: Key Points
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1
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I think Deconstruction is best understood as
a textual strategy. Considering how to translate the term,
Jacques Derrida notes that "it is to ... use value
that I am now going to try to give some precision and not
some primitive meaning or etymology sheltered from or outside
of any contextual strategy" ("Letter to a Japanese
Friend," emphasis mine). |
2
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Although I'm hardly a Derridean, his work intrigues
me because of how it can account for the resilience of
literary and other texts--their ability to adapt to new readers
and contexts. As someone who did undergraduate work in creative
writing, I also appreciate the way his writing refuses to accept
a distinction between "literature" and "criticism." |
3
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Although Derrida is specific that deconstruction
is not reducible to a method, at least in literary studies, critics
influenced by Derrida's work tend to focus on recurring concerns: |
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- Exploring (and excavating) specific tensions and instabilities
within a text (including social and cultural "texts").
Deconstruction is not something critics do to a text, but a way
of highlighting things that texts do to themselves and each other.
- Questioning the priority of things which are set up as
original, natural, and/or self-evident.
- Charting how key terms, motifs, and characters are defined
by binary oppositions within a text, how the oppositions are
hierarchical (one term is prioritized and the other treated as
derivative or subordinate), and demonstrating that these oppositions
are unstable, reversible, and mutually dependent on one another.
(The verb "deconstruct" most often refers to this kind
of reading, as in "Frank Miller's work deconstructs the
opposition between hero and villain by treating Batman as a specific
type of villain --a vigilante.")
- Attending to how texts subvert, exceed, or even overturn
their author's stated purposes.
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4
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In current literary studies, deconstructive readings
are usually part of a larger interpretive strategy (feminist,
new historicist, queer theory, etc.), and often put in the service
of destabilizing hierarchical oppositions (between male and female,
elite and popular culture, straight and gay, etc.). |
6
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Deconstruction is not the centerpiece
of Derrida's work, and he has been somewhat dismayed by attempts
to formalize it into a system, movement, or school. (For example,
nobody I've ever met "in the know" refers to "deconstructionism.")
Furthermore, he is a living, evolving thinker, whose work does
not end with those texts which literary critics most often read
(Of Grammatology, Dissemination, and a couple of others).
Making blanket statements about his thought or influence is not
something I'm willing to venture. |
7
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I think it's a mistake to treat deconstruction
as synonymous with post-structuralism (and, while, I'm drawing
distinctions, to conflate post-structuralism with Postmodernism).
Post-Structuralism is a philosophical development which Derrida's
work is associated with, and deconstruction is a term within
his work |
8
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In the past, many debates about Derrida
have been intense, but also juvenile, with detractors not bothering
to read Derrida's (admittedly difficult and time-consuming) work,
and those influenced by Derrida (admittedly, often impatient
with responding to the same tired objections) snootily dismissing
questions as cloddishly naive. |
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