Deconstructionism, an intellectual movement spearheaded by Jacques Derrida in the 1960s, emerged out of the structural and post-structural movements. It is notorious for undermining the notion that language has any capacity to represent truth or reality. Deconstructionists believe that language is inherently unstable, since words only have meaning in reference to other words. Our attempts to discern meaning are thus doomed, since it may only ever be derived from language that itself has no inherent meaning. So a climate is created in which traditional ideas and beliefs simply cease to exist. Instead the reader must actively redefine the meaning of a text themselves.
The deconstructed cheescake
A hugely controversial idea, deconstructionism has nonetheless pervaded many areas of society. Consider, for instance, the deconstructed strawberry cheesecake that your local aspirational restaurant serves you – the strawberry gel, freeze-dried strawberry powder, the aerated cheese foam and the little trail of crumb across your expansive plate that seems to bear little resemblance to the delightful sweet treat of your childhood memory. But maybe, just maybe, you can gather the various components into a satisfying spoonful that brings the cheesecake to life in new ways for you. So too, perhaps, the works of Shakespeare or the movies of Orson Welles as viewed through the deconstructionist prism.
Indian scholar and literary theorist Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, offered up this potential definition of deconstructionism in 1976: ‘To locate the promising marginal text, to disclose the undecidable moment, to pry it loose with the positive lever of the signifier; to reverse the resident hierarchy, only to displace it; to dismantle in order to reconstitute what is always already inscribed. Deconstruction in a nutshell.’
Others, however, are resolutely convinced that deconstructionism does not get us very far. Take, for instance, the words of Mark Goldblatt in a 2004 article for The American Spectator:
Derrida’s special significance lies not in the fact that he was subversive, but in the fact that he was an outright intellectual fraud – and that he managed to dupe a startling number of highly educated people into believing that he was onto something . . .