What is
Deconstruction?
The term denotes a particular kind of practice in reading and, thereby, a method of criticism and mode of analytical inquiry. J.A. Cuddon, A Dictionary of Literary Terms and Literary Theory, third ed. (London: Blackwell, 1991).
Deconstruction is not
analysis, nor
methodology, nor
context, perhaps not even
strategy, certainly not
critique.
The beginning point will be: "
Letter to a Japanese Friend by Jacques Derrida", in which Derrida explicitly states that deconstruction is not "analysis", nor "critique", contrary to a popular reading, at least in the
United States. The trail of deconstruction is not one on which we are lead, by rules, by formalizations, even by concepts, or histories, certainly not by
structures. In the
Letter, it was written that deconstruction "was also an
antistructuralist gesture". There is, we might be tempted to write, a rejection of the
decision implicit in
structuralism. To say that deconstruction occurs,
most importantly, against the backdrop of
structuralism (see Benway above), is to write that deconstruction is at once structuralism and antistructuralism, that it is at once structuralist in being antistructuralist, but antistructuralist in being both: this is what it would be like to
deconstruct an
opposition, to ride around on the
margins of a
philosophy. "Its fortune rests in part on this ambiguity" (
Letter).
When he wrote that, "What deconstruction is not? everything of course! What is deconstruction? nothing of course!", this too was from the
Letter, which is where I will
start. It is the very
beginning that is in question in deconstruction, just as it was in
hermeneutics. When you take only one
concept to task, you will forget everything, even your own
language.