Deconstructionism
Although not a book for beginners by any means, Derrida’s text is often considered an elemental foundational text for the school of literary analysis known as deconstructionism. This form of analysis strategically differs from what had long been the conventionally accepted notion—seemingly natural and self-defining—that the author and the author alone determines the meaning of his own narrative. This basic assumption is revealed in the extensive history of written criticism which includes something along the lines of “the author’s intent here.” This is the point at which deconstructionism departs with its insistence that valid criticism not only assumes the writer is the sole architect of the meaning of his work but even that—and here is where things get controversial—that the author is even fully qualified to determine his meaning. Deconstructionist analysis commences from the point of origin that there is no such thing as one inarguable and stable meaning to any text and works outward from there to pursue a host of other variables far off the path of authorial intent as holding the key to a meaning in the absence of discovering the meaning.
Binary Opposition
A major underlying thematic stimulus driving the move toward deconstructionism is the reaction against binary opposition as a fundamental component of language analysis. This is primarily a rejection of Hegelian theory in which the establishment of an opposition between a thesis and its antithesis naturally results in synthesis of the two. The argument here is that there is no such natural process of synthesis because at some point in the end result will always be found a kernel of that original binary structure of duality. In other words, good and evil need not, do not, and should not be assumed as a matter of fact. The rejection of such binary opposites as inherent attributes considerably frees up the process of analysis and interpretation.
Logocentrism
Logocentrism is the doctrine of thought which favors the spoken word over the written word. This preferential status is really at the thematic heart of Derrida’s text. It is not that he argues for placement of the written word overs speech, but that he rejects the fundamental component of logocentrism which suggests that the written word is little more than the transcription of the spoken. Where this rejection logically proceeds is to the argument that interpreting a written text is the same as interpreting what someone says. Just as speech is reliant on interpreting meaning, so is a text equally subject to interpretative responses. The ultimate endgame of this rejection of either the spoken word or the written word as having primacy over the other is actually quite simple: the meaning one reads into a text can potentially be completely different from what its author seems to be “saying.”
