Deconstruction

Deconstruction is a way of understanding how something was created, usually things like art, books, poems and other writing. Deconstruction is breaking something down into smaller parts. Deconstruction looks at the smaller parts that were used to create an object. The smaller parts are usually ideas.

Sometimes deconstruction looks at how an author can imply things he does not mean. It says that because words are not precise, we can never know what an author meant.

Sometimes deconstruction looks at the things the author did not say because he made assumptions.

One thing it pays attention to is how opposites work. (It calls them "binary oppositions.") It says that two opposites like "good" and "bad" are not really different things. "Good" only makes sense when someone compares it to "bad," and "bad" only makes sense when someone compares it to "good." And so even when someone talks about "good," they are still talking about "bad." But this is just one thing it does.

Because of things like this, deconstruction argues that books and poems never just mean what we think they mean at first. Other meanings are always there too, and the book or poem works because all of those meanings work together. The closer we look at the writing, the more we find about how it works, and how meaning works for all things. If we deconstructed everything, we might never be able to talk or write at all. But that does not mean deconstruction is useless. If we deconstruct some things, we can learn more about them and about how talking and writing work.