Deconstruction

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Deconstruction

Deconstruction is best described as a ‘reading practice’ (Gibson-Graham, 2007, p. 97) which is designed by the French philosopher Jacques Derrida. Derrida tried to deconstruct the established truths by means of language.

The ‘truth’ was (and is) in Western society often constructed in binary terms (logocentrism): one positive and one negative (Gibson-Graham, 2007, p. 97). This creates a relation of opposition and exclusion between the two terms: we see ourselves as one of those things, which means that we oppose ourselves against the other and exclude the other term from ‘our group’. So those binary terms are a way to position ourselves and our relation to the rest of the world. A few examples:

man/woman

mind/body

reason/emotion

objectivity/subjectivity

economy/ society

A thing to notice is that those binary terms are highly gendered (poststructuralist feminists have even renaimed logocentrism “phallogocentrism”) (Gibson-Graham, 2007, p. 98). The first term (the ‘signifier’) could be seen as masculine and dominant. The second term (the ‘signified’) could be seen as feminine and less important as the first term.

What Derrida shows is that each of those binary terms are partial instead of universal; one term cannot exist without the other. ‘Derrida’s deconstructive strategy is interested in rethinking difference, outside a binary and hierarchical structure…’ (Gibson-Graham, 2007, p. 98). With his strategy of deconstruction, Derrida also shows that there are undecidables: things that cannot conform to either side of the opposition (Reynolds, 2010). So what he does is calling certain fundaments of Western thought into question (Gibson-Graham, 2007, p. 97), which include:

1. The law of identity and self-presence

2. The law of non-contradiciton that establishes identity in relation to its “other”

3. The law of the excluded middle

There are several ways to deconstruct. You could for instance reverse the terms, which means that the hierarchy of valuation is switched around. You could also ‘blur the boundaries between terms’ (Gibson-Graham, 2007, p. 98), which means that you show in what ways both terms are actually similar.

Sources:

- Gibson-Graham, J.K. (2007). Poststructural Interventions.

- Reynolds, J. (2010). Jacques Derrida (1930-2004). Vinddatum 21 september 2010, op Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy: A peer-reviewed academic resource: http://www.iep.utm.edu/derrida/