on Deconstruction

Deconstruction is the specific development of a wider trend in the history of ideas known as post-structuralism: all you really need to know for the purpose of this inquiry is that the idea there is a certain system capable of adequately mapping more pervasive realities is known as structuralism. Post-structuralism, of which Deconstruction is a representative part, came as a response to or dissolution of that belief system (and this is speaking apart from most analytical philosophy — which is a separate dry essay). Post-structuralists, many of whom come from, studied on or worship the European continent, believe that no systematic form of knowledge could objectively encapsulate a given reality — all you can do is work off of what came before and, loosely speaking, re-focus or orient knowing to differing degrees of discourse. In other words, knowledge is based on its assumptions and those influence the outcome of what you think you know: So they, broadly, deny the validity of ‘universal’ truths of the human experience. That’s post-structuralism.

Deconstruction is the application, theory and practice of those ideas from within the sub-discipline of phenomenology in philosophy, with relevance for all manner of critical endeavor involving language, writing — philosophy as literature, and literature philosophically. (Phenomenology is the philosophy of perceptual reality in theory; they don’t, like, dissect eyeballs & shit.) Deconstructionists basically think that words have been used, around for so long, that all the ones which might actually mean anything are hopelessly impossible to agree on; except by a process of careful explication in context, usually with reference to their favorite book or mentor.

So to review — deconstruction is a literary and philosophical set of theoretical assumptions and practices of the text that hold not that reality isn’t ‘really real’, but that our understanding of it operates as though it were textual: made up of a series or sequence of signs, meaning in context, whose interpretation is contingent upon one’s position as subject and an observer. Basically: Truth exists, but it’s relative to one’s freedom to dec’de it as such, or refuse to (and that, to me, is pretty f-ing punk).

NB: One of the basic tenets of deconstructionism, if not postructuralism, is that truth or meaning can be so unstable things become their apparent opposite; for all you Sonny With A Chance fans out there reading this.