Jacques Derrida A 20th Century's Highly Infamous Philosopher

Jacques Derrida was 20th century’s highly influential and infamous philosopher who was heavily criticized. He himself acknowledged the fact that the notion behind deconstruction was to break down the strong nation-states’ functionings with powerful immigration policies, to deconstruct the rhetoric of nationalism, the politics of place, the epistemology of native land as well as the native tongue, the motive was to disarm the bombs of identity nation-states built to defend themselves against strangers, against Jews, Arabs and immigrants. Political systems, political parties, power structures, bureaucracies, institutions are on the surface made up of buildings, websites, telephone numbers, people, documents and network things, but what they are really made up of is a tradition in their way of doing things, a shared language, a system of words and sentences that bundled together become the theory, the foundation, the goal and the power of the institution. His works were written in a period that was very different from today. Today, institutions have multiplied, fractured, democratised to an extent and have become much more complicated due to mass media and internet, but in the 1960s, the second biggest institution in the world- the US Army- was fighting a largely unjust and illegal war in Vietnam against a proxy for the second biggest institution- the Soviet Union- which had just come out of one of the most systematic and frightening abuses of power in human history, a terror that killed millions and stained the appeal that millions of people saw in another institution- Marxism. Not to mention Mao’s great leap forward, the Khmer Rouge, imperial wars, colonialism and Neo-colonial’s power abuse under the disguise of neoliberalism. Almost all their ideas & institutions were held tight by theory and linguistics, as well as to the proponents a convincing speech that they believed revealed world’s reality. Systems are each respectively supported by the tradition of separate philosophies of politics that each inspired books, essays, articles and networks of commentators, university lectures, supporters and detractors. The American Constitution is based on John Locke’s political philosophy. Sovereign rights to rule around the world has been inspired by Hobbesian ideology going back to 1651 and theories about the Divine Rights of the King before that, and of course the politics of almost 300 million people in the Soviet Union throughout most of the 20th century was inspired by writings of just one man. Jacques Derrida argued that philosophical history is logo centric, i.e. it presumed that there is some absolute truth that could be found through linguistics.

Deconstruction is supporting the idea that meanings breaks apart. If you look closely at any text, it no longer holds meaning. It falls apart & it is interesting in that process.

The deconstructivists believe that language is actually uncentered. That means, one cannot perfectly communicate the things he/she has to say to another person using language.

Basically you are looking for evidence that everything is contrary to what it appears to be. It requires extremely close examination. Conclusion that is derived by criticism of Deconstruction theory will stay that there’s no meaning because the language within the piece fails.