Deconstruction
Deconstruction is a form of philosophical and literary analysis derived principally from Jacques Derrida's 1967 work
Of Grammatology.[1] In the 1980s it designated more loosely a range of theoretical enterprises in diverse areas of the humanities and social sciences, including—in addition to philosophy and literature—law,[2][3][4] anthropology,[5] historiography,[6] linguistics,[7] sociolinguistics,[8] psychoanalysis, political theory, feminism, and gay and lesbian studies. Deconstruction still has a major influence in the academe of Continental Europe and South America where Continental philosophy is predominant, particularly in debates around ontology, epistemology, ethics, aesthetics, hermeneutics, and the philosophy of language. It also influenced architecture, music,[9] art,[10] and art criticism.[11] With his detailed readings of works from Plato to Rousseau to Heidegger, Derrida frequently argues that Western philosophy has uncritically allowed metaphorical "depth" models to govern its conception of language and consciousness. He sees these often unacknowledged assumptions as part of a "metaphysics of presence" to which philosophy has bound itself.