Deconstruction

Derrida, a dismantler in Nietzsche's line, gives us no system and not even Foucault's usable method, only an invitation to read and think differently, treating life as a text.

To deconstruct is to take apart, not merely to smash. The target is stability itself: any meaning that claims to be settled, decisive and self-anchoring, structuralism's binaries among them.

Put simply Derrida: to deconstruct means to take apart, not just to smash. What he takes apart is any meaning that claims to be settled and to hold itself in place, including structuralism's neat paired opposites.

Speech cannot guarantee presence, because the one speaking is not necessarily present even to himself; so presence versus absence, like speech versus writing, is a binary to be dismantled.

Put simply Derrida: speaking does not prove that someone is truly "present", because the speaker is not fully present even to himself. So presence versus absence, like speech versus writing, is a contrast to be taken apart.

Deconstruction is not confined to books: gestures, choreography, even a room of diners count as text, because Derrida has widened the notion of text to take in all of life.

Put simply Derrida: deconstruction is not only for books. Gestures, dance, even a restaurant full of diners can be read as a "text", because he stretches the word "text" to cover all of life.

Structuralism's central pairs, nature and culture, empirical and rational, sensible and intelligible, are in some measure ideological constructs: never as tidy as they look, and always open to being undone.

Put simply Derrida: the paired opposites structuralism relied on, such as nature versus culture, are partly ideological constructions. They are never as tidy as they look and can always be undone.

Eagleton's hostile illustration of deconstruction: man becomes himself only by endlessly shutting woman out as his opposite, so his identity hangs on, and is endangered by, what he excludes.

Put simply Eagleton, a hostile critic of deconstruction, illustrates how it unravels opposites: man defines himself by constantly shutting woman out as his opposite, so his identity depends on, and is endangered by, what he excludes.

Derrida's essay on de Man's war has been called deconstruction's bankruptcy and one of the finest texts on intellectual friendship ever written; Shore feels both are, in some sense, true.

Put simply Shore: Derrida's essay on his late friend Paul de Man's Nazi-era journalism has been called both the bankruptcy of deconstruction and one of the finest texts on friendship. Shore thinks both are partly true.

Yet "on the other hand," Derrida argues, the whole of de Man's antisemitic article is "organized as an indictment of vulgar antisemitism": its meaning undoes itself.

Put simply Derrida then argues the other side: read closely, his friend Paul de Man's antisemitic article is built as an attack on crude antisemitism. Its meaning, he claims, undoes itself.

Followed line by line, Derrida's brilliant unpicking of de Man's article convinces: meaning does seem to dissolve. Step away for five minutes and the verdict reverses: it does not work.

Put simply Shore: read slowly, line by line, Derrida's brilliant analysis of de Man's article seems to show its meaning unraveling. Walk away for five minutes and you think: no, it doesn't work.

Deconstruction is politics in the good sense, an antidote to the absolutist truth claims behind Nazism and Stalinism: "the at least necessary condition for identifying and combating the totalitarian risk."

Put simply Derrida: deconstruction is political in a good way. By taking apart claims to absolute truth, like those behind Nazism and Stalinism, it is at least a precondition for spotting and fighting totalitarianism.

Eagleton's jab: deconstruction's dogma, that we are locked inside our discourse, lets you wreck everyone else's beliefs while holding none; an invulnerable position, and emptiness is its price.

Put simply Eagleton mocks deconstruction: claiming we are trapped inside our own language lets you demolish everyone else's beliefs without holding any yourself. No one can attack that position, but the price is that it is empty.

Because language is unstable, meaning flickers; but for Derrida this produces too much meaning rather than too little, an excess rather than a deficit.

To critics who say a surplus of meaning amounts to none, Derrida would reply, on Shore's telling, that the infinite is not nothing.

Approached deconstructively, Marx and Hegel are plural: there is, and has to be, more than a single one of each; Marx especially leaves many unlike spirits whose legacy needs reclaiming.

Put simply Derrida: read his way, there is not one Marx or one Hegel but several, and there must be. Marx especially leaves behind many different "spirits" whose legacy needs reclaiming.