ENGL 4800-Introduction to Literary Theory: Deconstruction

Jacques Derrida

Paul de Man

Geoffrey Hartman

J. Hillis Miller

Harold Bloom

Deconstructionists argue that every text contains within it some ingredient undermining its purported system of meaning.  The structure that seems to hold the text together is unstable because it depends on the conclusions of a particular ideology.  The practice of finding the point at which the text falls apart because of these internal inconsistencies is called deconstruction.