Of Grammatology is essentially an expansion of the fundamental ideas of deconstructionism which Jacques Derrida introduced five years earlier as part of his introduction to his translation of Edmund Husserl’s Origin of Geometry. What Derrida barely hints at by way of comparison in that text erupts into a volcanic lava flow of often difficult and abstruse language in Of Grammatology.
The fundamentals of Derrida’s revolutionary takedown of essential elements of Western culture’s approach to linguistics are relatively simple to explain and make up the bulk of what the author expends a voluminous amount of words contemplating and analyzing. Essentially, the text is a full-bodied analysis of Western civilization’s reliance upon logocentrism and binary opposition. Logocentrism is the term for placing spoken language in a position of primacy over writing. Binary oppositions, of course, mandate the everything inherently and naturally produces a contradiction. As a perfect example that fuses these two concepts together, the logical outcome of an argument against situating spoken speech at a level of importance above writing would, according to western standards, conclude with an assertion of just the opposite in which writing is placed above speaking. Since this would run counter to Derrida’s thesis, however, the book does not proceed to argue in favor of that outcome, but simply calls for writing to lifted to a status equitable with speech.
Those are two overarching themes of the book and the narrative proceeds through a series of confrontation with established social theorist working from a framework based upon existing concepts. Thus, Derrida makes his arguments against logocentrism through critiques of the writings and theoretical concepts of leading figures like Ferdinand de Saussure, Claude Levi-Strauss and Jean-Jacques Rousseau. It is in these critiques that the basic simplicity of his dominant themes undergo a sort of reverse filtering process in which the result is far more complicated and often distressingly complex.
Of Grammatology may be considered a foundational document of deconstructionist theory, but that hardly equates with making it a book for beginners. The bulk of the second half of the book is devoted to analysis of several essays by Rousseau and the language becomes increasingly abstract and difficult to parse. What must be kept in mind at all times, however, is that no matter how arcane, esoteric, or even impenetrable the specificities of the literary analysis that Derrida is positing may be, everything always eventually comes back to being a critique of either logocentrism or binary opposition as necessities for understanding and interpreting a text.
