Deconstruction

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The term deconstruction is used by Derrida et al. a. developed using an analysis of the nature of signs .

The term deconstruction (. Cf French . Déconstruction , disassembling, dismantling ', a portmanteau of "destruction" and "construction") refers to a number of trends in philosophy , philology and work interpretation since the 1960s. Deconstructivists strive to prove that - and above all: how - a text questions its meaning itself, thwarted it and, precisely with such paradoxes, creates meaning. B. through contradictions between the content and the linguistic form. The method of deconstruction is a critical questioning and dissolving of a text in the broader sense.

It is often referred to as deconstructivism . This is a distancing term used by outside authors. Jacques Derrida made a critical distinction between deconstruction and “deconstructivism or deconstructivism” as dogmatic manifestations.

The term was coined by Derrida as a term for a method of reading and analyzing texts, which is differentiated from hermeneutic theories and their practice of interpretation. A similar approach can be found in the Yale Critics by Harold Bloom , Geoffrey Hartman , Paul de Man and J. Hillis Miller , who strive to destroy the “delusion of interpretation”.

The difference between hermeneutic and deconstructive (antihermeneutic) "text interrogations" is that hermeneutics is based on a quasi- dialogical relationship between text and interpreter, which aims at an increasingly better understanding of a message contained in the text. A reconstructable unit of meaning, a context of meaning, is assumed.

Concept of deconstruction and influences

Historically, the term deconstruction is linked, among other things, to Martin Heidegger's use of the terms “construction” and “destruction” and their methodological entanglement.

Further influences lie in structuralism and, among other things, theories about the nature and use of signs ( semiotics ) that emerged from it . For the philosophical foundations of deconstruction see the main article Jacques Derrida . Derrida developed deconstruction in the context of his concept of différance (the article is very illuminating in terms of explaining deconstruction).

Deconstruction is about the analysis of language or texts, more precisely of signs , meaning and meaning . Even these concepts are called into question, as is the ontological status of the subject .

“What I call deconstruction can of course open up rules, procedures or techniques, but basically it is neither a method nor a scientific criticism, because a method is a technique of questioning or reading that does not take into account the idiomatic features of the subject should be repeatable in other contexts. Deconstruction, on the other hand, deals with texts, with special situations, with the entirety of the history of philosophy within which the concept of method was constituted. So if deconstruction questions the history of metaphysics or that of the concept of method, then it cannot simply represent a method itself. Deconstruction presupposes the transformation of the very concept of text and writing . […] I call an institution as well as a political situation, a body or a dance 'text', which has obviously led to a lot of misunderstandings because I was accused of putting the whole world in a book. That is obviously absurd. "

- Derrida : Falter interview 1987

Deconstruction in Practice

  1. Identification of the conceptual construction of a given theoretical field or text. Most of the time, deconstruction encounters opposites ( dichotomies ).
  2. Investigation of the opposites in terms of their hierarchical relationships to one another. (Which element occurs more often, which less often, which not at all? Which element is rated higher in the text than the other?)
  3. Reversal and weakening of the pairs of opposites found and their repression by what has not been said.
  4. Development of a further, “third” (with two-part opposites), “fourth” (with three-part opposites), etc. A term for every contrast found that sets the historically established conflict in motion or makes its inherent movement understandable. (E.g .: construction vs. destruction ➔ deconstruction, life versus death ➔ ghost , or: past versus present versus future ➔ anticipated future)
  5. The hierarchical order is broken, rearranged and the textual constructions are presented as historically conditioned . The most important thing is that the thus deconstructed opposites are understood as “remaining in flux”, i.e. before and after the deconstructive intervention as conditional, since a new, different definition of an opposition would reject the historical process of the world becoming. Deconstruction, on the other hand, wants to show this infinite process of becoming and practically moves within it.
  6. After a contradiction has been deconstructed, new ways of dealing with or in the world open up. For example, Derrida does not understand life and death as unchangeable or as clear and once and for all separable stages of becoming, but the conditions of life and death are constantly changing: new medical, genetic, economic, media, epistemological, etc. Change techniques e.g. B. the length of a life or the possibilities of birth and rebirth of someone or something. The legacy of Marx, which was declared dead, also experienced a kind of rebirth after the outbreak of the global economic crisis in 2007 and can also die again. In any case, it haunts around as a ghost - like everything else.
  7. Since nothing is ever irreversible for deconstruction, the deconstruction of the antithesis of life and death results in the ghost as a new model of the becoming of the world. As explained, for Derrida something is never completely dead or alive, rather it occupies various forms of ghostliness. Derrida's own death (which is temporary, so in flux as there are currently no possibilities for partial or complete rebirth) is a form of the ghostly of it. Therefore, just like life itself, death is ghostly.
  8. The text is read again from the newly acquired or discovered, previously excluded element (in our example: ghost), but differently. (What does a text or other text tell us when the contrast between life and death is transformed into ghost as something that does not exist in itself? How does it work with ghost instead of life and / or death?)
  9. Preventing the restoration of strengths of any kind through all fields or texts with the help of further deconstructive practice.

In addition, it must be noted that the deconstruction, depending on the structure and constitution of opposites and their balance of power, has to do with its "new terms" either

  1. re-formed by neologism, for example circumfession from the words "circumcision" and "denomination", différance from "différence" and the ending "-ance" or the word deconstruction itself, formed from "destruction" and "construction" .
  2. the devalued element is valued and generalized (e.g. writing versus the spoken word or the gift versus the goods)
  3. implements a term that already exists but (in the respective text) does not appear or hardly occurs or has been buried in history (e.g. ghost) or
  4. represents a mixture of the three aforementioned versions (e.g. grammatology , which represents both a partial neologism related to the Greek word gramma, which not only intends to enhance and generalize the writing, since gramma was the written letter in antiquity of the alphabet, but also relocated and displaced them from their historical burial).

Deconstructive work interpretations

Attempts at dialectical systems had assumed that fundamentally opposites and counter-theses could be combined to form a synthesis . Deconstruction, on the other hand, is skeptical, for example insofar as it emphasizes that one of the two preceding opposites is always preferred in such a synthesis. In addition, a text does not consist of a thesis and an antithesis , but of a multitude of other perspectives that are present at the same time and often conflict with one another. However, this conflict is not directly recognizable, but can only be disclosed by means of deconstructive analyzes.

The deconstruction basically assumes that the thematization of certain objects (be it in scientific theory formation, be it in other knowledge systems, forms of representation or genres) simultaneously excludes others. Instead of only concentrating on explicitly communicated information, deconstructive analyzes therefore also and especially focus on those factors that have been excluded. Systematically fundamental for this is a meaning-critical bracketing of the meaning and reference relationships, for example the elements of a text. This then enables questions to be asked, such as: which mechanisms of exclusion and establishment, which strategies of making credible, which hierarchical structures of a signifier structure allow the corresponding material structure to be understood as meaningful bearers of meaning and to reduce it to a certain meaning or "statement intention"? To which constitutional conditions are the corresponding meaning and validity claims bound? In particular, this can also make conflictuality, aggressiveness, hidden contents and intentions visible.

Among other things, due to the connection to contingent extrinsic factors of the generation of meaning, the delimitation of a text as a manageable object becomes problematic. In particular, texts should not only be recorded in their internal structure, but also in relation to other texts. This combines deconstruction with theories of intertextuality such as those developed by Mikhail Bakhtin or Julia Kristeva . In addition, the deconstruction relates terms back to their history and ways of establishing them. It differs from the method of conceptual history , however, in that deconstruction considers an intrinsically stable conceptual meaning to be an uncovered assumption.

Objects and uses of deconstruction

According to Derrida, every potential carrier of meaning is a deconstructable text:

“What I call text is everything, is practically everything. It's everything, that is, there is a text as soon as there is a track, a differential reference from one track to the other. And these references never stop. There are no limits to the differential referencing of one track to another. A trace is neither a presence nor an absence. Hence, this new concept of the text that is without limits [...] presupposes that at no moment can one find anything outside the realm of differential reference that is real, presence or absence [...] I believed that it would be necessary to carry out this expansion, this strategic generalization of the concept of text, in order to give deconstruction its possibility [...] "

- Derrida

Derrida himself has spoken out against establishing his philosophy as a literary method and, for example, developing it into a set of rules. He himself, as well as artists close to him, like to speak instead of an attitude of deconstruction. Nevertheless, his ideas were taken up within literary and cultural studies, initially mainly in the Anglo-Saxon context, especially within the so-called Yale School, which u. a. Paul de Man belonged to.

With her work Gender Trouble (1990), in which, by means of the distinction between sex and gender, and a socio - culturally shaped gender role, she criticizes the identity category woman (“... gender as the compelling constant repetition of cultural conventions on the body that one has never chosen”) is true Judith Butler as the main theoretician of discourse analytical deconstruction . This serves as a theoretical basis for doing gender and gender studies .

The queer theory and the feminist theory of Judith Butler represent parts of social science theories that deal with identities or identifications and power relations. According to Butler, the aim is to uncover existing relationships of domination and power that established “forced heterosexuality” and forms of nuclear families based on the woman's childbearing ability. The renunciation of the body, bisexuality and heterosexuality as natural facts does not coincide with negation, but serves to expose the consolidation and concealment of authorities.

In deconstructive cultural theories , the emergence of supposed entities and identities is examined from a power-critical perspective and political alternatives are proposed. So were z. For example, long before the corruption scandals, the international sports organizations were characterized as business enterprises from which democratic structures were to be expected naive.

Deconstruction can be applied as a method to texts or philosophical theories or as an artistic practice in the fine arts, fashion, music, architecture or in film. The architecture was particularly influenced by the approach of deconstruction, which resulted in the style of deconstructivism .

literature

  • Jonathan Culler : Deconstruction. Derrida and the post-structuralist literary theory. (Rowohlt's Encyclopedia. Vol. 55635). Reinbek 1999.
  • Heinz Kimmerle : Derrida as an introduction. 6th supplemented edition. Junius, Hamburg 2004, ISBN 3-88506-324-7 .
  • Nikolaus Wegmann : Deconstruction. In: Klaus Weimar (Ed.): Reallexikon der Deutschen Literaturwissenschaft. Revision of the real dictionary of German literary history. Volume I, de Gruyter, Berlin / New York 1997, pp. 334-337.
  • Robert Feustel: The Art of Moving. Deconstruction for beginners. Wilhelm Fink, Munich 2015, ISBN 978-3-7705-5857-5

Philosophically fundamental works

  • Jacques Derrida: The Voice and the Phenomenon. An essay on the problem of the sign in Husserl's philosophy . Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt 1979, ISBN 3-518-10945-6 .
  • Peter Engelmann (ed.): Jacques Derrida: The différance. Selected texts . Reclam, Stuttgart 2004, ISBN 3-15-018338-3 .
  • Jacques Derrida: The margins of philosophy . Passagen Verlag, Vienna 1988, ISBN 3-85165-290-8 .
  • Jacques Derrida: Grammatology . Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt am Main 1983 (Paris 1967), ISBN 3-518-28017-1 .
  • Jacques Derrida: The writing and the difference . Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt am Main 1972, ISBN 3-518-57341-1 . (2nd edition. Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt am Main 2003)

Relevance of their philosophical literature

  • Jacques Derrida: The writing and the difference. [L'écriture et la différence. Paris 1967] (Suhrkamp Taschenbuch Wissenschaft. Vol. 177). Frankfurt Main 1976 [About Emmanuel Lévinas and others]
  • Jacques Derrida: Grammatology. [De la grammatology. Paris 1967] (Suhrkamp Taschenbuch Wissenschaft. Vol. 417). Frankfurt Main 1983 [About Jean-Jacques Rousseau's Essai sur l'origine des langues (posthumus 1781)]
  • Jacques Derrida: The Voice and the Phenomenon. [La voix et le phenomène. Introduction to the problem in the phenomenology of Husserl. Paris 1967] An essay on the problem of the sign in Husserl's philosophy. From d. French transl. by a preface vers. v. Jochen Hörisch. (Edition Suhrkamp. Vol. 945). Frankfurt Main 1979.
  • Jacques Derrida: Force of Law. The "mystical ground of authority". (Edition Suhrkamp. Vol. 1645). Frankfurt Main 1991 [About Walter Benjamin's On the Critique of Violence (1921)]
  • Peter Völkner: Derrida and Husserl. To deconstruct a philosophy of presence. (Philosophy passages). Vienna 1993.
  • Peter Engelmann (ed.); Jacques Derrida: Like the sound of the sea at the bottom of a shell. Paul de Mans war. (Mémoires II). (Edition Passagen. Vol. 20). 2., revised. Edition. Passagen-Verlag, Vienna 2000.
  • Jacques Derrida: A Portrait of Geoffrey Bennington and Jacques Derrida. (Suhrkamp Taschenbuch Wissenschaft. Vol. 1550). Frankfurt Main 2001.
  • Manfred Frank: What is neo-structuralism? (Edition Suhrkamp. Vol. 1203). Frankfurt Main 2001.
  • Thomas Askani: The question of the other. In the exit of Emmanuel Lévinas and Jacques Derrida. (Philosophy passages). Passagen-Verlag, Vienna 2002.
  • Alwin Letzkus: Deconstruction and ethical passion. Thinking of the other after Jacques Derrida and Emmanuel Lévinas. (Phenomenological investigations. Vol. 15). Munich 2002.
  • Peter Engelmann (ed.); Jacques Derrida: Stay. Maurice Blanchot. (Passages Forum). Passagen-Verlag, Vienna 2003.
  • Rebekka Reinhard: Against philosophical fundamentalism. Post-analytical and deconstructivist perspectives. Munich 2003.
  • Michael Turnheim: The failure of the surface. Autism, psychosis, biopolitics. (Theses). Zurich 2005.
  • Jacques Derrida: The Voice and the Phenomenon. [La voix et le phenomène. Introduction to the problem in the phenomenology of Husserl. Paris 1967] Introduction to the problem of the sign in Husserl's phenomenology. From d. French transl. v. Hans-Dieter Gondek. (Edition Suhrkamp. Vol. 2440). Frankfurt Main 2005.
  • Peter Engelmann (ed.); Jacques Derrida: Gender (Heidegger). Sexual difference, ontological difference. Heidegger's hand. (Edition Passagen. Vol. 22). 2., through Edition. Passagen-Verlag, Vienna 2005.
  • Peter Engelmann (ed.); Jacques Derrida: Mémoires. For Paul de Man. (Edition Passagen. Vol. 18). 2., through Edition. Passagen-Verlag, Vienna 2005.
  • Peter Matter: God, the world's hidden future. (Passages in Philosophical Theology). Vienna 2004.
  • Peter Engelmann (ed.); Jacques Derrida: Shibboleth. For Paul Celan. (Passages Forum). 4th, through Edition. Passagen-Verlag, Vienna 2007.
  • Hans-Joachim Lenger, Georg Christoph Tholen (Eds.): Mnema. Derrida in memory. (Modern Postmodern Edition). Transcript-Verlag, Bielefeld 2007.
  • Andreas Niederberger, Markus Wolf (Ed.): Political Philosophy and Deconstruction. Contributions to political theory following Jacques Derrida. (Modern Postmodern Edition). Transcript-Verlag, Bielefeld 2007.
  • Alexander García Düttmann: Derrida and me. The problem of deconstruction. (Modern Postmodern Edition). Transcript-Verlag, Bielefeld 2008.
  • Eva Laquièze-Waniek u. Erik Michael Vogt (ed.): Derrida and Adorno. On the topicality of deconstruction and the Frankfurt School. Vienna 2008.
  • Peter Engelmann (ed.); Jacques Derrida: Apocalypse. (Passages Forum). 3rd, revised. Edition. Passagen-Verlag, Vienna 2009.
  • Peter Engelmann (ed.); Jacques Derrida: Préjugés. In law. (Passages Forum). 4th, through Edition. Passagen-Verlag, Vienna 2010.
  • Okka Hübner: The two faces of postmodernism. On the relationship between postmodernism and poststructuralism. Göttingen 2010.
  • Alan Sokal, Jean Bricmont: Elegant nonsense. How postmodern thinkers misuse science. Translated into German by Johannes Schwab and Dietmar Zimmer. Beck, Munich 1999, ISBN 3-406-45274-4 .

Literary theoretical works

  • Jonathan Arac, Wlad Godzich, Wallace Martin (Eds.): The Yale Critics: Deconstruction in America. University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis 1983.
  • Georg W. Bertram: Hermeneutics and Deconstruction. Contours of a discussion of contemporary philosophy. Wilhelm Fink Verlag, Munich 2002, ISBN 3-7705-3643-6 .
  • Harold Bloom , Paul de Man , Jacques Derrida , Geoffrey H. Hartman , J. Hillis Miller (Eds.): Deconstruction and Criticism. Continuum, New York 1979. Classical anthology.
  • Cathy Caruth, Deborash Esch (Ed.): Critical Encounters. Reference and Responsibility in Deconstructive Writing. Rutgers University Press, New Brunswick, NJ 1995.
  • Cynthia Chase: Decomposing Figures . Johns Hopkins UP, Baltimore 1986.
  • Jonathan Culler : Deconstruction . Derrida and the post-structuralist literary theory. Rowohlt, Reinbek 1999, ISBN 3-499-55635-9 .
  • Ph. Forget (Ed.): Text and Interpretation . German-French debate with contributions by J. Derrida and others. a. Fink, Munich 1984.
  • Anselm Haverkamp (ed.): The paradoxical metaphor. Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt am Main 1998. (contains not exclusively, but some important deconstructive contributions)
  • Barbara Johnson : The Critical Difference. Essays in the Contemporary Rhetoric of Reading. Johns Hopkins UP, Baltimore / London 1980.
  • Barbara Johnson: A World of Difference. Johns Hopkins UP, Baltimore / London 1987.
  • Barbara Johnson: The Wake of Deconstruction. Blackwell, Oxford, UK and Cambridge, Mass. 1994. (contains a bibliography of BJ's writings from 1973 to 1993)
  • Paul de Man : The Rhetoric of Romanticism. Columbia UP, New York 1984.
  • Paul de Man: The Resistance to Theory. Univ. of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis 1986.
  • Paul de Man: Aesthetic Ideology. Univ. of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis / London 1997.
  • Paul de Man: Allegories of Reading. Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt am Main 1988.
  • Paul de Man: The Ideology of the Aesthetic. Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt am Main 1993.
  • Paul de Man et al. a .: Deconstruction and Criticism, Continuum, New York 1979.
  • Harro Müller: Hermeneutics or Deconstruction? In: Karl Heinz Bohrer (Ed.): Aesthetics and Rhetoric. Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt am Main 1993, pp. 98ff.
  • Eckhard Schumacher: The irony of incomprehensibility. Johann Georg Hamann, Friedrich Schlegel, Jacques Derrida, Paul de Man. Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt am Main 2000.
  • Raman Selden (Ed.): The Cambridge History of Literary Criticism. Vol. 8: From Formalism to Poststructuralism. Cambridge University Press, 1995, ISBN 0-521-30013-4 . With essays by Richard Rorty et al. a.
  • Hugh J. Silverman: Textualities. Between Hermeneutics and Deconstruction. Routledge, London 1994, ISBN 0-415-90818-3 .
  • Toni Tholen: Experience and Interpretation. The dispute between hermeneutics and deconstruction. C. Winter Universitätsverlag, Heidelberg 1999, ISBN 3-8253-0883-9 .
  • Stefan Speck: From Sklovskij to de Man. On the topicality of formalistic literary theory. Wilhelm Fink, Munich 1997.
  • Jane P. Tompkins (Ed.): Reader-Response Criticism: From Formalism to Post-Structuralism. Johns Hopkins University Press, Baltimore / London 1980.
  • Julian Wolfreys et al. a. (Ed.): The Edinburgh Encyclopaedia of Modern Criticism and Theory. Edinburgh UP, Edinburgh 2002.
  • Peter Zima : The deconstruction. Introduction and criticism. UTB, Stuttgart 1994.

(See also the literature under Hermeneutics )

Religious-philosophical works

Web links

Wiktionary: Deconstruction  - explanations of meanings, word origins, synonyms, translations

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ https://www.uni-due.de/einladen/Vorlesungen/lösungen/deaufbau.htm
  2. ↑ Jacques Derrida: Some statements and truisms about neologisms, new-isms, post-isms, parasitisms and other small seisms. Translated by Susanne Lüdemann. Merve, Berlin 1997, ISBN 3-88396-134-5 , p. 43.
  3. ^ The Yale Critics - Deconstruction in America , ed. Jonathan Arac et al., Univ. of Minnesota Press 1983.
  4. ↑ https://www.uni-due.de/einladen/Vorlesungen/lösungen/deaufbau.htm
  5. ↑ See, for example, Sein und Zeit , 22f .: “Destruction has just as little negative meaning, a shaking off of the ontological tradition. Conversely, it should define these in their positive possibilities, and that always means, within their limits, which are actually given with the respective question and the delimitation of the possible field of investigation drawn from this ”. A “constructive” moment is already implied here.
  6. ↑ U. a. in Basic Problems of Phenomenology , GA 24, 31 and passim. In the paraphrase by R. Capurro, Art. "Die Grundprobleme der Phenomenologie", in: Lexikon philosophischer Werke , 322, this deals with the three moments: "The apprehension of beings on the understanding of their being (phenomenological reduction), the design of the given being for its being and its structures (phenomenological construction) and the critical dismantling of traditional concepts (destruction) ”.
  7. ↑ See Derrida's analysis of structuralism in grammatology and writing and difference .
  8. ↑ see the corresponding subsection in the article on Derrida
  9. ↑ Jacques Derrida: Deconstruction. In: Falter , Wiener Stadtzeitung, supplement to “Falter” No. 22a / 87, serial number 302, p. 11 u. 12; Florian Roetzer: Conversation with Jacques Derrida
  10. ↑ See U. Broich, M. Pfister (Ed.): Intertextualität. Forms, functions, English case studies , Tübingen 1985. HF Plett (Ed.): Intertextuality , Berlin u. a. 1991.
  11. ↑ quoted from Peter Engelmann: Postmoderne und Dekonstruktion: Texts of French philosophers of the present. Reclam, Stuttgart 2004, pp. 20f.
  12. ^ Peter Engelmann: Postmodernism and Deconstruction: Texts by French philosophers of the present . Reclam, Stuttgart 2004, p. 30.
  13. ↑ Andrea Moser: Feminist gender knowledge. In: Kampfzone Gender Knowledge: Critical Analysis of Popular Scientific Concepts of Masculinity and Femininity. Wiesbaden 2010, p. 48 ff.
  14. ↑ Nina Degele : Make yourself beautiful. On the sociology of gender and beauty practices. Wiesbaden 2004, p. 47 f.
  15. ↑ Arnd Krüger : Sport, Commercialization and Postmodernism, in: Hans Sarkowicz (Hrsg.): Faster, higher, further. A history of sport. Frankfurt / M .: Insel 1996, 390 - 406; http://www.olympischeerbildung.de/media/modul/m1_4_7.pdf