The French philosopher Jacques Derrida was born in 1930 in Algeria. Derrida has gainmed a reputation, even outside the academy, for his theories of deconstructionist analysis, and of his other contributions to post-structuralist thought. Derrida's body of work begins with his early publications in 1962 and continue to the present day, and his work continues to be debated amongst critics and theorists. His first breakthrough publication was a 1966 paper entitled “Structure, Sign, and play in the Discourse of the Human Sciences”, and with this paper began a new movement that attacked structuralist theory and became what we now know as post-structuralism. Post-structuralist criticism tends to concentrate on philosophical argument and speculation around language and textuality. Deconstruction is a feature of this kind of philosophical inquiry.
“Deconstruction” is a form of textual analysis that deconstructs the language of the text and focuses on the self-referential aspects of language. Drawing on semiotics (theory of sign systems in language), Derrida invented the term différance to convey the divided nature of the sign, and how meaning is both a matter of difference and deferring. In other words, meaning is the result of difference between sign and signifier, but it is also deferred, there is always an element of undecidability in the unstable sign.
Derrida both critiques and extends structuralism and the Saussurean theory of language. In Of Grammatology (1976) Derrida criticises Saussure on the grounds that he privileges speech over writing. Derrida shows how speech can be seen as a form of writing (rather than vice versa), and how both exist in a mutually reciprocal dependence marked différance.
Another key term when reading Derrida is “logocentrism”, which is a form of rationalism that presupposes a “presence” behind language and text. That presence can take the form of an idea, an intention, a truth, a meaning or a reference for which language acts as a subservient vehicle of expression. For Derrida, logocentrism is the foundation of Western philosophical thought. Through deconstruction, he argues that the search for this fixed presence behind language and text is misguided.
Derrida shows that any text can be read as saying something quite different from what it appears to be saying, and that it may be read as saying many different things which may well be contradictory. Therefore, there is no single or stable meaning inherent in a text, as it can possess many different meanings. Speech also has these same instabilities as writing. Deconstruction therefore has had a profound effect on literary criticism, as literary studies have traditionally been concerned with revealing the “meaning” behind the text. If the method of deconstruction is applied then no ultimate and final meaning can ever be arrived at.
Derrida remains relevant in literary studies. Interesting work has been produced that examines how Derrida intersects with theories of race, and feminist critiques and applications of Derrida have also provided useful insights. These approaches have taken on Derrida's work because of its focus on “the silences, the absences, the unspoken, the encoded” in traditional philosophical and literary texts.