Deconstruction

As a first approximation, deconstruction might be conceived as a set of practices of reading, interpretation, and writing associated with the French philosopher Jacques Derrida (1930–2004). On various [Page 367]occasions, Derrida was asked for clear and straightforward answers to questions such as “What is deconstruction?” In such situations, for example, when interviewed for television, radio, newspapers, and the documentary films about him, he stressed the need for thinking to take time. At stake: in an era of generalized speeding up, can thinking itself be reduced to soundbites of prepackaged slogans and formulae? For those in a hurry, this can make deconstruction and Derrida rather complex and frustrating, insofar as deconstruction does not yield easy answers to complex questions. In one interview, Derrida remarks,

Today, readers in search of a speedy introduction to deconstruction or to a thinker such as Derrida find guidance on the Internet and in short introductory guides. One of the best known of such guides is the collection of cartoon books that include titles such as the Beginner's Guide to Derrida. On March 21, 1997, the Times Literary Supplement published a review of this Beginner's Guide to Derrida. The reviewer, Roy Harris, offered a catalogue of the standard objections to deconstruction and caricatures of Derrida, ultimately dismissing the cartoon book introduction on the basis that “The worst fate in store for beginners here would be that they might be tempted to venture beyond the beginning,” that is, they might actually then become inclined to read Derrida. In a vitriolic response to this review, Derrida exposed the fear of reading and the resort to stereotypes that characterizes so much of what is called thinking today, the exact presumption of understanding that deconstruction sets out to challenge. Against his reviewer's advice to not read, Derrida wrote, “In order to escape obscurantism, one must, on the contrary, I repeat my advice, always ‘venture beyond the beginning'” (Derrida, 2000: 108).

Deconstruction is perhaps then simply a matter of taking time and of reading carefully. It is this, but it is also much more than this. It involves reading so carefully that things emerge from a text that previous readings did not see, or that were seen but glossed over. Reading in this kind of way exposes that the presumed integrity of a text is often not there in the text at all, but is a presumption asserted by a particular way of reading. Deconstruction therefore involves not just reading, but reading differently, reading so carefully that previous understandings of what the text “meant to say” dissolve. In this sense, deconstruction can be applied to almost any object, and can be applied in a variety of different ways. It is not a thing and, as Geoffrey Bennington, one of the most important commentators on deconstruction and Derrida writes, “Deconstruction is not what you think.” Rather, on the contrary, as Bennington puts it, “that you think might already be Deconstruction (2000: 217).”

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