Deconstructionism emerged in the late 20th century as a philosophical and literary movement that fundamentally questioned the nature of meaning, language, and interpretation. It is primarily associated with the work of French philosopher Jacques Derrida, who, in the 1960s and 1970s, began to develop ideas that would challenge long-held assumptions in philosophy, literary theory, and critical thought. The movement was a response to structuralism, which sought to uncover the underlying structures that govern language and society. In contrast, deconstruction aimed to show that meaning is inherently unstable and that texts and concepts can never be fully fixed or understood in a singular, unchanging way.
The foundational work of Jacques Derrida is central to deconstructionism. His concept of differance (a term he coined in 1968) highlighted the ways in which meaning is always deferred and never fully attainable. Derrida's analysis of language showed that words and concepts derive meaning not from a stable, inherent essence, but from their relationships with other words. In this sense, meaning is always in flux, and any attempt to pin it down is doomed to fail. Derrida's critique of binary oppositions—such as presence/absence, speech/writing, and truth/falsehood—argued that these pairs are not neutral but are hierarchically structured, with one term always subordinating the other. Through works like De la grammatologie (1967) and La Voie et le Voice (1967), Derrida redefined how we understand texts, insisting that they are always open to multiple interpretations.
