Questions: Deconstruction

Question 1

A student claims that deconstruction proves a novel can mean anything the reader wants, since 'the author's intention is irrelevant and meaning is always deferred.' Is this a correct application of deconstruction?

• A. Yes — deconstruction demonstrates that all readings are equally valid since meaning is never stable
• B. No — while deconstruction defers final, stable meaning and deprivileges authorial intent, its insights are constrained by what the text actually says; arbitrary readings are not deconstructive
• C. Yes — Derrida explicitly argued that readers should disregard textual evidence in favor of personal response
• D. No — deconstruction requires strict adherence to the author's documented intentions

Answer: (B)

Deconstruction is not a license for arbitrary interpretation — it is a rigorous reading practice constrained by the text. The claim that meaning is deferred does not mean all meanings are equal; it means no single reading exhausts the text's possibilities. A deconstructive argument must be grounded in textual evidence: the binary oppositions found, the aporias identified, and the traces traced are all located in the specific language and structure of the work. Option A is the most common misreading of Derrida, often used to dismiss deconstruction without engaging it.

Question 2

Socrates, in Plato's Phaedrus, argues that writing is an inferior substitute for living speech. A deconstructive reading of this text would proceed by:

• A. Refuting Plato's argument using modern linguistics and theories of written communication
• B. Situating the text in its historical context of Athenian oral culture
• C. Identifying the speech/writing binary, showing writing is necessary for defining speech, and noting that the condemnation of writing is itself conducted in writing — the text performs what it denounces
• D. Finding other passages where Plato praised writing to show the argument is inconsistent

Answer: (C)

This is precisely the deconstructive move Derrida performs in 'Plato's Pharmacy.' The first step is identifying the binary (speech privileged over writing). The second is showing that 'speech' requires 'writing' to define itself — the secondary term is necessary for the privileged one. The third and most pointed step is aporia: Plato's argument against writing is conducted in a written dialogue, using the rhetorical strategies he attributes to writing. The text cannot maintain the hierarchy it argues for. Options A and D are ordinary critical procedures, not deconstruction.

Question 3

Deconstruction reveals that texts contain contradictions and therefore have no valid meaning.

• T. True
• F. False

Answer: False

This is one of the most persistent misreadings. Deconstruction does identify contradictions, aporias, and internal tensions — but the point is not that texts are meaningless. Rather, it is that texts have more meaning than they can control: they produce a surplus, an excess, a trace of what they tried to exclude. The text is not emptied of meaning but shown to be richer and less settled than it appears. Deconstruction is a mode of attentive reading that multiplies rather than destroys meaning.

Question 4

The 'trace' in deconstructive analysis refers to the presence of the excluded or subordinated term within the text — the way what a text tries to suppress keeps returning to haunt the dominant term.

• T. True
• F. False

Answer: True

Yes. In every binary opposition, the privileged term defines itself by excluding the subordinate term — but the excluded term cannot be fully suppressed. It leaves a trace in the text: moments of contradiction, aporia, or rhetorical dependency that reveal the dominant term's reliance on what it claims to transcend. Derrida uses 'trace' to name this residual, inescapable presence of the supposedly absent term. Without this concept, deconstruction would have no mechanism — it is the textual mark left by suppression.

Question 5

What is Derrida's concept of 'différance,' and why does it prevent any text from arriving at a final, stable meaning?

Model answer: Différance is Derrida's neologism blending 'difference' (meaning in language depends on differences between signs, not direct connections to things) and 'deferral' (the meaning of any sign is always postponed — each definition requires other terms, which require other definitions, indefinitely). There is no foundational term where the chain of signification stops and a pure, immediate meaning is present. Every text reaches for closure — a final, authoritative meaning — but the structure of language ensures this closure is always deferred. The text keeps meaning more than it says, and differently than it intends.

The significance of différance for critical practice is that we should read for what escapes authorial control rather than hunting for a single correct meaning. A deconstructive reading looks for the excess — the moments where language does more than the argument intends, where the excluded term returns, where the binary breaks down. This is why deconstruction requires extraordinarily close attention to specific words, metaphors, and rhetorical strategies: the trace of différance is visible in the details, not the thesis.