Derrida suggests that language is an unstable medium which cannot in any sense carry meaning or TRUTH directly He has drawn attention to the ways in which Western philosophies have been dependent on METAPHOR and figurative rhetoric to construct ‘origin’,‘essence’, or binary conceptual systems (e.g. nature/culture, masculine/feminine, rationalism/irrationalism) in which one term is constituted as the privileged norm setting up hierarchies of meaning which are then socially institutionalized. The project of deconstruction is to reveal the ambivalence of all TEXTS, which can only be understood in relation to other texts (intertextuality) and not in relation to any ‘literal meaning’ or normative truth.
By denying that we have any direct access to reality, unmediated by language, Derrida offers a critique of both POSITIVISM and phenomenology He also traces the extent to which Western linguistics and philosophy have been permeated by phonocentrism - the privileged notion of speech as the voice or ‘presence’ of consciousness – and by logocentrism – the belief that the Word of the transcendental signifier (e.g. God, the World Spirit) may provide a foundation for a whole system of thought. Clearly, for Derrida, any such transcendental origin or essence of meaning is sheer fiction. Further, he argues that social ideologies elevate particular terms (e.g. Freedom, Justice, Authority) to the status of the source from which all other meanings are derived. But the problem here is how any such term pre-exists other meanings through which its meaning is in practice constituted. Thus, any thought system which is dependent upon a first principle is, for Derrida, ‘metaphysical’.
In Derrida's view, then, LÉVI-STRAUSS consistently privileges a particular ethnocentric view of nature over culture; structuralism, generally, is dependent upon the project of constructing general laws based upon binary oppositions; LACAN (productively) sees the unconscious in terms of a language, but then falls into the trap of constituting the unconscious as the origin of‘truth’. Further, the relationship between deconstruction and MARXISM is a complex one. On the one hand Derrida has pointed to the extent to which Marxist theory has been dependent upon metaphor (e.g. base/superstructure) to erect a totalizing account of the world. On the other, he has, on occasion, declared himself to be a Marxist arguing that deconstruction is a political practice committed to uncovering false logics upon which social institutions maintain their power. While Derrida has continued to stress this progressive, radical critique, his work has been taken up by literary critics in the US in particular (the Yale School of Deconstructionists), stripped of its political force, and turned in a direction which focuses upon the ‘undecidability’ of meaning. Derrida himself has indicated the ways in which, ironically such strategies of deconstruction can ultimately operate in the service of dominant political and economic institutions.