deconstruction

In literary theory, a radical form of structuralism, pioneered by the French philosopher Jacques Derrida, which views text as a ‘decentred’ play of structures, lacking any ultimately determinable meaning.

Through analysis of the internal structure of a text, particularly its contradictions, deconstructionists demonstrate the existence of subtext meanings - often not those that the author intended - and hence illustrate the impossibility of attributing fixed meaning to a work. The French critic Roland Barthes originated deconstruction in his book Mythologies 1957 in which he studied the inherent instability between sign and referent in a range of cultural phenomena, including not only literary works but also advertising, cookery, wrestling, and so on.