Deconstruction

Deconstruction involves the close reading of texts with the aim of demonstrating any text is bound to have contradictory meanings, rather than being a unified medium. It was created and has been profoundly influenced by Jacques Derrida. As one of the most influential philosophers of the 20th century, he is associated with the term and criticizes the Structuralist approach of Saussure, arguing that it has its flaws. As a Poststructuralist theory, Deconstruction is mainly based on the works of Derrida but not exclusively, and has been influential in various fields of research, including psychology, linguistics, sociology, literary theory, and cultural studies.

Despite having the ultimate aim of criticizing Western philosophical tradition, deconstruction emerged as a reaction to formalism and structuralism, whose advocates argued that all elements of human culture, including literature, may be regarded as parts of a system. According to Derrida, people in Western culture are prone to express their thoughts through binary oppositions such as white-black, masculine-feminine, and so on. Through deconstruction, he aims to subvert the boundaries between those binary oppositions and revert the dichotomies, corrupting them in the end. In this sense, there are "undecidable", which conform to neither side.

Deconstruction has two major aspects, which are called literary and philosophical. The literary aspect is concerned with textual interpretation, the art of correctly comprehending a discourse. On the other hand, the philosophical aspect is concerned with metaphysics, the main target of deconstruction. Metaphysics is the reason why dualistic oppositions are created, and a term in a dichotomy is placed in a higher place, establishing a hierarchic structure.

Similar to Postmodernism and Poststructuralism, Derrida recognizes that a coherent center cannot exist. As the center becomes powerless, one could argue that there was actually no center, or there could be multiple ones. Derrida calls the position of this center as “différance”. Another term he refers to is “text and writing”. The boundaries between categories, whether linguistic or not, emerge with a system. Since every identity is singular and general, this singularity in each language and culture hinders impeccable translatability. The other is Iterability, derived from the Latin word “Iterum”, meaning “again”. Derrida’s work provides insights into the relationship between the singularity and generality of texts. Meanings rely on their repeated usage, and without stability, interpretation would not be possible.

As a Poststructuralist approach, it is closely related to postmodernism, and according to postmodern thought, there are no absolutes, including notions of true ethics, and even the meaning of a text. From this postulation, meaning does not reside in the text itself, therefore it cannot be extracted or uncovered but is attributed to the text instead. Deconstructive reading involves a thorough analysis of linguistic operations. Thus, one can say that Derrida’s critique focuses on the issues of language and translation.

Notes:

https://literariness.org/2016/03/22/deconstruction/

https://iep.utm.edu/jacques-derrida/

Routledge Encyclopedia Of Translation Studies 3rd Edition