A Little Derrida and Deconstructionism

Jacques Derrida (1930-2004) was the founder of “deconstruction,” a way of criticizing not only both literary and philosophical texts but also political institutions.

Derrida insists that the distinction between signifier and the signified cannot legitimately be made; for him, the means of expression is inseparably bound with its content. How something is expressed is just as important as its conventional meaning in determining those ideas to which it is connected and those from which it should be distinguished, as devices such as poetry, rhetoric and irony make clear. Consequently, there is, Derrida claims, no fixes conceptual order amongst signifiers.

Meaning is something that can only be distilled or interpreted from any particular situation: there is no objective structure as the structuralist had supposed. Indeed, Derrida goes further, for in his view a sign always signifies things other than which the author might supposed. There is an indeterminable network of associations stretching through time and use in which any given sign circulates. What meaning it has for any given person at any given time can only be interpreted by that person at that time, but they cannot claim any authority or objectivity for their interpretation.

(100 Essential Thinkers)