Editing Deconstruction (section)

==Overview==
{{Further|Epistemological break}}

[[Jacques Derrida|Jacques Derrida's]] 1967 book ''[[Of Grammatology]]'' introduced the majority of ideas influential within deconstruction.<ref name="Derrida">{{cite book |last=Derrida |first=Jacques |translator=Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak |translator-link=Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak|title=Of Grammatology|date=1997|publisher=Johns Hopkins University Press|location=Baltimore|isbn=978-0801858307|title-link=Of Grammatology}}</ref>{{rp|25}} Derrida published a number of other works directly relevant to the concept of deconstruction, such as ''[[Différance]]'', ''[[Speech and Phenomena]]'', and ''[[Writing and Difference]]''.

To Derrida,
{{Blockquote|That is what deconstruction is made of: not the mixture but the tension between memory, [[fidelity]], the preservation of something that has been given to us, and, at the same time, heterogeneity, something absolutely new, and a break.<ref>{{citation |last=Derrida |first=Jacques |editor-last=Caputo |editor-first=John D. |title=Deconstruction in a Nutshell: A Conversation with Jacques Derrida |publisher=Fordham University Press |date=2021 |orig-date=1997 |isbn= 9780823290680}}</ref>{{rp|6}}{{dubious|date=January 2023}}}}

According to Derrida, and taking inspiration from the work of [[Ferdinand de Saussure]],<ref name="Saussure">{{cite web|last1=Saussure|first1=Ferdinand de|author-link=Ferdinand de Saussure|title=Course in General Linguistics|url=http://faculty.smu.edu/dfoster/cf3324/saussure.htm|website=Southern Methodist University|publisher=New York Philosophical Library|access-date=8 September 2017|location=New York|pages=121–122|date=1959|quote=In language there are only differences. Even more important: a difference generally implies positive terms between which the difference is set up; but in language there are only differences without positive terms. Whether we take the signified or the signifier, language has neither ideas nor sounds that existed before the linguistic system, but only conceptual and phonic differences that have issued from the system.|archive-date=31 July 2019|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20190731010622/http://faculty.smu.edu/dfoster/cf3324/saussure.htm|url-status=dead}}</ref> language as a system of signs and words only has meaning because of the contrast between these signs.<ref name="Theory">{{cite web|title=Deconstructionist Theory|url=http://prelectur.stanford.edu/lecturers/derrida/rorty.html|website=Stanford Presidential Lectures and Symposia in the Humanities and Arts|access-date=8 September 2017|date=1995}}</ref><ref name="Derrida"/>{{rp|7, 12}} As [[Richard Rorty]] contends, "words have meaning only because of contrast-effects with other words&nbsp;... no word can acquire meaning in the way in which philosophers from [[Aristotle]] to [[Bertrand Russell]] have hoped it might—by being the unmediated expression of something non-linguistic (e.g., an emotion, a sensed observation, a physical object, an idea, a [[Platonic Form]])".<ref name="Theory"/> As a consequence, meaning is never present, but rather is deferred to other signs. Derrida refers to the—in his view, mistaken—belief that there is a self-sufficient, non-deferred meaning as [[metaphysics of presence]]. Rather, according to Derrida, a concept must be understood in the context of its opposite: for example, the word ''being'' does not have meaning without contrast with the word ''nothing''.<ref name="Writing">{{cite book|last=Derrida|first=Jacques|translator=Alan Bass |title=Writing and Difference |date=2001 |publisher=University of Chicago Press |isbn= 9780226816074 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=6yAZEAAAQBAJ |access-date=2 August 2024 |orig-date=1967 |quote=The model of hieroglyphic writing assembles more strikingly—though we find it in every form of writing—the diversity of the modes and functions of signs in dreams. Every sign—verbal or otherwise—may be used at different levels, in configurations and functions which are never prescribed by its "essence," but emerge from a play of differences.}}</ref>{{rp|220}}<ref name="Derrida2">{{cite book|last1=Derrida|first1=Jacques|title=Positions|date=1982|publisher=University of Chicago Press|isbn=9780226143316|language=en}}</ref>{{rp|26}}

Further, Derrida contends that "in a classical philosophical opposition we are not dealing with the peaceful coexistence of a [[wikt:vis-à-vis|vis-a-vis]], but rather with a violent hierarchy. One of the two terms governs the other ([[Axiology|axiologically]], logically, etc.), or has the upper hand": [[Signified and signifier|signified]] over [[Signified and signifier|signifier]]; intelligible over sensible; speech over writing; activity over passivity, etc.{{explain|this list of examples is pointless without any explanation of *how* one of the words has the upper hand, or even an explanation of what "having the upper hand" means.|date=October 2020}} The first task of deconstruction is, according to Derrida, to find and overturn these oppositions inside a text or texts; but the final objective of deconstruction is not to surpass all oppositions, because it is assumed they are structurally necessary to produce sense: the oppositions simply cannot be suspended once and for all, as the hierarchy of dual oppositions always reestablishes itself (because it is necessary for meaning). Deconstruction, Derrida says, only points to the necessity of an unending analysis that can make explicit the decisions and hierarchies intrinsic to all texts.<ref name="Derrida2"/>{{rp|41}}{{contradictory inline|reason=If deconstruction only points to the necessity of unending analysis, next paragraph should not be included in the article, because it is a separate position of Derrida's, not one instrinsic to deconstruction|date=October 2020}}

Derrida further argues that it is not enough to expose and deconstruct the way oppositions work and then stop there in a nihilistic or cynical position, "thereby preventing any means of intervening in the field effectively".<ref name="Derrida2"/>{{rp|42}} To be effective, deconstruction needs to create new terms, not to synthesize the concepts in opposition, but to mark their difference and eternal interplay. This explains why Derrida always proposes new terms in his deconstruction, not as a free play but from the necessity of analysis. Derrida called these undecidables—that is, unities of simulacrum—"false" verbal properties (nominal or semantic) that can no longer be included within philosophical (binary) opposition. Instead, they inhabit philosophical oppositions{{explain|they inhabit without being included within? Are they supposed to have no meaning? If so, how do they have analytical value? If not, how do they have meaning without engaging in the violence necessary to meaning?|date=October 2020}}—resisting and organizing them—without ever constituting a third term or leaving room for a solution in the form of a [[Hegelian dialectic]] (e.g., {{Lang|fr|[[différance]]}}, [[archi-writing]], [[Pharmakon (philosophy)|pharmakon]], supplement, hymen, gram, spacing).<ref name="Derrida2"/>{{rp|19}}{{technical inline|e.g. a bunch of stuff nobody except someone already familiar with the topic would already know about, these examples have very little explanatory value to someone reading this article by itself|date=October 2020}}{{explain|once again these are not proper examples without an explanation relating them to the subject matter|date=October 2020}}