Jacques Derrida (1930—2004) Jacques Derrida was one of the most
well known twentieth century philosophers. He was also one of
the most prolific. Distancing himself from the various
philosophical movements and traditions that preceded him on the
French intellectual scene (phenomenology, existentialism, and
structuralism), he developed a strategy called “deconstruction”
in the mid 1960s. Although not purely negative, deconstruction
is primarily concerned with something tantamount to a critique
of the Western philosophical tradition. Deconstruction is
generally presented via an analysis of specific texts. It seeks
to expose, and then to subvert, the various binary oppositions
that undergird our dominant ways of thinking—presence/absence,
speech/writing, and so forth. Deconstruction has at least two
aspects: literary and philosophical. The literary aspect
concerns the textual interpretation, where invention is
essential to finding hidden alternative meanings in the text.
The philosophical aspect concerns the main