DECONSTRUCTION

            The theory of Deconstruction emerged by way of opposition to Structuralism mainly in France under the influence of Jacques Derrida, the renowned French philosopher.  Deconstruction also implies Post-structuralism. Besides Derrida, M.H.Abrams, J.Hillis Miller, Paul de Man and Gayatri Chakravorty Shivak also contributed to the theory of Deconstruction.  But all of them evince the influence of Derrida.

            The term deconstruction may be loosely applied to any rejection of the usual conventions of construction. The New Penguin Dictionary defines it as “ a critical technique which claims that there is no single correct interpretation of a text but that the task of a critic or reader is to dismantle the implied units of work of art to revel the variety of interpretations that are possible”.

            Derrida himself did not give a clear cut definition of deconstruction.  He simply said deconstruction had to be arrived at through a re-reading of texts. According to Derrida, the re-reading of a text shows the multiple meanings at work within language. It breaks the false assumptions that language is capable of expressing constant and unchanging ideas, that the author of the text is the only source of its meaning and that in the order of language writing is secondary to speech.

            Derrida did not define deconstruction as it has no set procedure and logical presentation of its main characteristics.  He only observed that deconstruction had to be arrived at through re-reading of texts.  The theory of deconstruction shows that language is constantly shifting and that a text may have multiple legitimate interpretations. Deconstruction is not dismantling of structure of a text but a demonstration that it has already dismantled itself. Literature is a verbal construction in which words have no fixed meaning. Language is not a stable object and therefore does not yield the same meaning in all conditions and circumstances.

            Derrida’s theory of deconstruction found wide acceptance particularly in USA. It was applied to a broad range of subjects including literary theory, linguistics, art, music, architecture, political science etc.  This led to the re-reading of the texts by Shakespeare and the Greek philosophers.