Deconstruction

Deconstruction is a method of textual analysis that examines how writing unsettles its apparent meanings and the hierarchies on which they depend.

Binary opposition: A pair of concepts treated as opposites, often with one given greater value or authority. Deconstruction examines how textual meanings depend on oppositions such as speech and writing.
Structuralism: An approach that explains cultural meanings through relations within underlying systems of signs. Deconstruction grew through engagement with structuralist accounts of language and signification.
Jacques Derrida: A French philosopher whose work developed deconstruction as a mode of reading and philosophical inquiry. His writings established the practice and its vocabulary.
Deconstructive criticism: A form of literary criticism that examines how a text’s language destabilizes its apparent meanings. It applies deconstructive principles directly to literary works.
Hermeneutics: The theory and practice of interpreting texts, especially in relation to meaning and understanding. Its traditions often seek accounts of understanding that deconstructive readings leave unsettled.
Différance: Jacques Derrida’s term for the production of meaning through difference and indefinite deferral. It names the intertwined processes that prevent a text’s meaning from becoming fully present.
Ferdinand de Saussure: A Swiss linguist whose work helped establish modern structural linguistics. His account of signs as differences within a system shaped Derrida’s early questions about meaning.
Of Grammatology: Jacques Derrida’s 1967 book examining writing, language, and the history of Western thought. This work gives a sustained account of the speech–writing hierarchy and its instability.
Paul de Man: A Belgian-born literary critic known for influential readings of rhetoric and language. His criticism made rhetorical contradiction central to deconstructive literary analysis.
New Criticism: A literary movement that treats the text as an autonomous object for close analysis. Deconstruction also scrutinizes textual detail but disputes the possibility of a unified, self-contained work.

Linked from 18 pages