5.0 Objectives
5.1 The Problem of Defining Deconstruction
5.2 Background to Deconstruction
5.2.1 Derrida and Heidegger
Self-Check Questions for 5.2.1
5.2.2 Derrida and Ferdinand de Saussure
Self-Check Questions for 5.2.2
5.3 Difference
5.4 Structure, Sign and Play in the Discourse of the Human Sciences
5.5 The Yale School of Deconstruction
5.6 The Influence of Deconstruction
5.8 Reading List
5.9 Glossary
As against the Yale School’s obsession with figurative language and the close reading of the texts, many New Historicist, Cultural Materialists, feminists, and postcolonial theorists have used deconstruction as a political weapon to expose the political, historical and the ideological biases built into the text. While feminists and gender theorists find deconstruction useful in subverting the gender binaries in literary texts, the postcolonial theorists find it a powerful tool to undermine and explode the colonizer’s master narratives from within. Cultural materialists have found Derrida’s emphasis on the materiality of language and its social and institutional context very useful to critique the idealistic modes of reading literature. New Historicists like Louis Montrose have used Derrida to formulate a new way of reading relationship between literature and history by focusing on ‘reciprocal concern about historicity of texts and textuality of history’. Thus, deconstruction remains one of the most influential theories in literary studies till today.