Editing Postmodernism (section)

==== Jacques Derrida and deconstruction ====
[[Deconstruction]] is a practice in philosophy, literary criticism, and close reading developed by [[Jacques Derrida]]. It is based on the assumption, which it seeks to validate by textual analysis, that any text harbors inherent points of "undecidability" that undermine any stable meaning intended by the author. The process of writing inevitably, he aims to show, reveals suppressed elements, challenging the oppositions that are thought to sustain the text.{{sfn|Reynolds|loc=6=§2. Deconstructive Strategy}} Nevertheless, Derrida does not wish to do away with such concepts as "origin" or "truth". What he challenges is any claim to finality. Such metaphysical concepts are, as he puts it, "under erasure", and this, he says, makes deconstructive reading a kind of "double play".{{sfn|Brooker|2003|p=66}}

From this perspective, Derrida argues that the practice of metaphysics in the Western tradition depends upon hierarchies and orders of subordination within various dualisms that it does not acknowledge. It prioritizes presence and purity over the contingent and complicated, dismissing them as aberrations irrelevant to philosophical analysis. In essence, according to Derrida, metaphysical thought prioritizes one side of an opposition while ignoring or marginalizing the alternative.{{sfn|Reynolds|loc=6=§2.a Metaphysics of Presence/Logocentrism}} He uses the term [[metaphysics of presence]] to describe the foundationalist approach to knowledge, taking himself to have demonstrated that we do not have unmediated access to reality. This project of deconstructing and challenging the assumptions of modern philosophy was influential for many postmodern thinkers.{{sfn|Best|Kellner|1991|p=20}}