Editing Deconstruction (section)

==Application==
Derrida's observations have greatly influenced literary criticism and post-structuralism.

===Literary criticism===
Derrida's method consisted of demonstrating all the forms and varieties of the originary complexity of [[semiotics]], and their multiple consequences in many fields. His way of achieving this was by conducting readings of philosophical and literary texts, with the goal to understand what in those texts runs counter to their apparent systematicity (structural unity) or intended sense (authorial genesis). By demonstrating the [[aporia]]s and ellipses of thought, Derrida hoped to show the infinitely subtle ways that this originary complexity, which by definition cannot ever be completely known, works its structuring and destructuring effects.<ref>{{cite book|last1=Sallis|first1=John|author-link=John Sallis|title=Deconstruction and Philosophy: The Texts of Jacques Derrida|date=1988|publisher=University of Chicago Press|location=Chicago|isbn=978-0226734392|pages=3–4|edition=Paperback|quote=One of the more persistent misunderstandings that has thus far forestalled a productive debate with Derrida's philosophical thought is the assumption, shared by many philosophers as well as literary critics, that within that thought just anything is possible. Derrida's philosophy is more often than not construed as a license for arbitrary free play in flagrant disregard of all established rules of argumentation, traditional requirements of thought, and ethical standards binding upon the interpretative community. Undoubtedly, some of the works of Derrida may not have been entirely innocent in this respect, and may have contributed, however obliquely, to fostering to some extent that very misconception. But deconstruction which for many has come to designate the content and style of Derrida's thinking, reveals to even a superficial examination, a well-ordered procedure, a step-by-step type of argumentation based on an acute awareness of level-distinctions, a marked thoroughness and regularity. [...] Deconstruction must be understood, we contend, as the attempt to "account," in a certain manner, for a heterogeneous variety or manifold of nonlogical contradictions and discursive equalities of all sorts that continues to haunt and fissure even the ''successful'' development of philosophical arguments and their systematic exposition}}</ref>

Deconstruction denotes the [[Hermeneutics|pursuing of the meaning]] of a text to the point of exposing the supposed contradictions and internal oppositions upon which it is founded—supposedly showing that those foundations are irreducibly complex, unstable, or impossible. It is an approach that may be deployed in philosophy, in [[literary analysis]], and even in the analysis of scientific writings.<ref>{{cite book|last1=Hobson|first1=Marian|author-link=Marian Hobson|title=Jacques Derrida: Opening Lines|date=2012|publisher=Routledge|isbn=9781134774449|page=51|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=Kl146cNpzNQC&pg=PA51|access-date=8 September 2017|language=en}}</ref> Deconstruction generally tries to demonstrate that any text is not a discrete whole but contains several irreconcilable and contradictory meanings; that any text therefore has more than one interpretation; that the text itself links these interpretations inextricably; that the incompatibility of these interpretations is irreducible; and thus that an interpretative reading cannot go beyond a certain point. Derrida refers to this point as an "aporia" in the text; thus, deconstructive reading is termed "aporetic".<ref>{{cite book|last1=Currie|first1=M.|title=The Invention of Deconstruction|date=2013|publisher=Springer|isbn=9781137307033|page=80|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=i3ecdVgknGkC&pg=PA80|access-date=8 September 2017|language=en}}</ref> He insists that meaning is made possible by the relations of a word to other words within the network of structures that language is.<ref>{{cite web|last1=Mantzavinos|first1=C.|title=Hermeneutics|url=http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/hermeneutics/#Semiotics|website=The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy|publisher=Metaphysics Research Lab, Stanford University|access-date=8 September 2017|date=2016}}</ref>

Derrida initially resisted granting to his approach the overarching name ''deconstruction'', on the grounds that it was a precise technical term that could not be used to characterize his work generally. Nevertheless, he eventually accepted that the term had come into common use to refer to his textual approach, and Derrida himself increasingly began to use the term in this more general way.

Derrida's deconstruction strategy is also used by [[Postmodernism|postmodernists]] to locate meaning in a text rather than discover meaning due to the position that it has multiple readings. There is a focus on the deconstruction that denotes the tearing apart of a text to find arbitrary hierarchies and presuppositions for the purpose of tracing contradictions that shadow a text's coherence.<ref name=":1">{{Cite book|title=The Undermining of Beliefs in the Autonomy and Rationality of Consumers|last1=O'Shaughnessy|first1=John|last2=O'Shaughnessy|first2=Nicholas Jackson|publisher=Routledge|year=2008|isbn=978-0415773232|location=Oxon|pages=103}}</ref> Here, the meaning of a text does not reside with the author or the author's intentions because it is dependent on the interaction between reader and text.<ref name=":1" /> Even the process of [[translation]] is also seen as transformative since it "modifies the original even as it modifies the translating language".<ref>{{Cite book|title=Deconstruction and Translation|last=Davis|first=Kathleen|publisher=Routledge|year=2014|isbn=9781900650281|location=New York|pages=41}}</ref>

===Critique of structuralism===
Derrida's lecture at [[Johns Hopkins University]], "[[Structure, Sign, and Play in the Discourse of the Human Sciences|Structure, Sign, and Play in the Human Sciences]]", often appears in collections as a manifesto against structuralism. Derrida's essay was one of the earliest to propose some theoretical limitations to structuralism, and to attempt to theorize on terms that were clearly no longer structuralist. Structuralism viewed language as a number of signs, composed of a signified (the meaning) and a signifier (the word itself). Derrida proposed that signs always referred to other signs, existing only in relation to each other, and there was therefore no ultimate foundation or centre. This is the basis of {{Lang|fr|différance}}.<ref>Derrida, "Structure, Sign, and Play" (1966), as printed/translated by Macksey & Donato (1970)</ref>