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The Discipline of Deconstruction

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 October 2020

Jeffrey T. Nealon
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Abstract

This essay reexamines the institutional rise and fall of deconstruction as a reading method in American literary criticism. Deconstruction was, to put it bluntly, commodified for an American market, simplified and watered down for use in how-to books that gave (and continue to give) a generation of literature students an overview of what was supposedly Derrida's work without paying corresponding attention to his texts. The deconstructive criticism of de Man and Hillis Miller is too often conflated with Derrida's thought—especially surrounding the question of undecidability—and this confusion misses essential questions that Derrida poses to any critical enterprise. For rhetorical deconstructive criticism, undecidability is the end revealed by reading, whereas for Derrida undecidability is only the first movement in a necessarily double economy. The essay concludes with a discussion of Derrida's own inscription within the institutional debate over deconstruction.

Type
Research Article
Information
PMLA , Volume 107 , Issue 5 , October 1992 , pp. 1266 - 1279
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1992

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