Microsoft Word Revised Syllabus Ver doc

Deconstruction 
The methods and principles of structuralism came under severe attack in the approach 
known as ‘deconstruction’, associated primarily with the writing of Jacques Derrida (1930). 
This approach aims to show inherent contradictions and paradoxes in the way that 
structuralism demonstrates the rules governing the structure of texts, especially its reliance on 
binary oppositions. 
The task of deconstruction begins by isolating a specific structural relationship (e.g. 
‘speech’ vs. ‘writing’) and identifying the priorities that give the structure its centre (in 
structuralist thinking, speech is held to be more fundamental, closer to thought, expressing 
the ‘presence’ of the author more directly; writing is a derived medium, with an independent 
existence on paper that makes it less able to maintain the author’s presence). In order to 
deconstruct the opposition, the critic reverses the expected priorities (showing that, in certain 
respects, writing might be closer to self – consciousness than speech, and speech less so). The 
result, however, is not to see the alternative term as in some way superior (to see writing as 
fundamental, and speech as derived). Rather, the whole basis of the opposition is called into 
question (both speech and writing can be shown to lack presence; both can be seen as 
derived). In his way, readers are forced to rethink the validity of the sets of oppositions they 
use to think about the world. 
Roland Barthes (1915-80) was a major influence on early structuralist thought, and he 
continued to play an important role in the post-structuralist period. In his later thinking, the 
focus on a text’s formal structure is replaced by an emphasis on the active, creative 
procession carried out by the reader (Chomsky’s emphasis). 
Several reader-oriented approaches to literature have been a part of controversial 
issues as to whether readers can be credited with a ‘literary competence’ capable of handling 
the special properties of literary language. But there is a common emphasis on the opinion 

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that meaning is not to be found in the language of the text; rather, it is the reader who 
constructs the text’s meaning, always reading in meaning which can not be found within the 
text itself. Texts, in this view, have no separate identity: they exist only when they are read.