deconstruction

grammar

writing

ology (the study of)

philosophy

light bulb joke

is a birdshot critical technique which aims at a variety of targets and bags whatever it happens to hit accidentally.

in itself, I think, a birdshot critical technique: it aims at a variety of targets and bags whatever it happens to hit accidentally.

is a reading that produces rather than protects. The task is to dismantle, not in order to reject or discard, but to reinscribe them in another way.

A reading that produces rather than protects. That description of deconstruction we have already entertained. Here is another: '. . . the task is .. . to dismantle [de construire] the metaphysical and rhetorical structures which are at work in [the text], not in order to reject or discard them, but to reinscribe them in another way.' (Derrida, on grammatologyMP 256, WM 13) (75)

is a technqiue of reading texts that makes use of the fact that meaning is inexhaustible, always hinting at other contexts and other meanings. It sets out to expose metaphysical assumptions (such as hidden hierarchies or values) at work in texts.

It is at base a theory of language and meaning that makes great play of the ambiguities and slippage that discourse inevitably contains. Derrida argued that meaning was never wholly present in the sense that it always hinted at other contexts, permanently carrying traces of other words at any one point of utterance (including writing).' (Sim p38)

is a wrongheaded a-political critique whose outcomes are known in advance or a series of finger-exercises is to effect equally parasitic violations, reversals, disruption, or whatever, of existing practices.

Deconstructionist may well adopt a political position, they may choose to turn their techniques on reactionary or exploitative discources, but their practice itself is apolitical. . . There are only two possible strategies whihin a deconstructionist problematic: first, a series of increasingly monotonous and mechanical critiques of the discourse of others, critiques whose outcomes are known in advance... second, a series of virtuosic finger exercises whose raison d'etre is an equally parasitic violation, reversal, disruption, or whatever, of existing practices.' (Resch 1989:517)

is an event that takes place. It does not await the deliberation, consciousness, or organization of a subject, or even of modernity. It deconstructs itself.

Deconstruction takes place, it is an event that does not await the deliberation, consciousness, or organization of a subject, or even of modernity. It deconstructs itself. It can be deconstructed. [Ca se diconstruit.] The 'it' [ca] is not here an impersonal thing that is opposed to some egological subjectivity. It is in deconstruction (the Littre says, 'to deconstruct itself [se deconstruirel . . . to lose its construction'). And the 'se' of 'se dconstruire', which is not the reflexivity of an ego or of a consciousness, bears the whole enigma. I recognize, my dear friend, that in trying to make a word clearer so as to assist its translation, I am only thereby increasing the difficulties: 'the impossible task of the translator' (Benjamin). This too is what is meant by 'deconstructs'. (derrida 'letter to a japanese' : 285)

is at home in an ambiguity between a structuralist and anti-structuralist gesture. Structures are not to be destroyed altogether but to be undone, decomposed, desedimented.

To deconstruct was also a structuralist gesture or in any case a gesture that assumed a certain need for the structuralist problematic. But it was also an antistructuralist gesture, and its fortune rests in part on this ambiguity. Structures were to be undone, decomposed, desedimented (all types of structures, linguistic, 'logocentric', 'phonocentric' structuralism being especially at that time dominated by linguistic models and by a so-called structural linguistics that was also called Saussurian socio-institutional, political, cultural, and above all and from the start philosophical). (derrida 'letter to a japanese' : 284) . . . This is why, especially in the United States, the motif of deconstruction has been associated with 'post-structuralism' (a word unknown in France until its 'return' from the United States). But the undoing, decomposing, and desedimenting of structures, in a certain sense more historical than the structuralist movement it called into question, was not a negative operation. Rather than destroying, it was also necessary to understand how an 'ensemble' was constituted and to reconstruct it to this end. (derrida 'letter to a japanese' : 284)

is concerned with pointing to distances within concepts in order to capture proximities.

is concerned with recognizing underlying, implicit assumptions : Gaps, contradictions, elisions, revealing metaphors.

involves discovering, recognizing, and understanding the underlying and unspoken and implicit assumptions, ideas, and frameworks that form the basis for thought and belief (wikipedia). looking for contradictions, gaps, ellisions, revealing metaphors. . .

deconstruction, n.Definitions

deconstruction