"Deconstruction" does not indicate "to take apart." It does not mean "to break up" or "to un-construct." This critical activity is indicated by another name, analysis. Analysis (fr. Gk. analyein) connotes "to break apart" or "to loosen up." Deconstruction may include something like an analytical moment, but it will be nothing more than a moment. Analysis does not exhaust "deconstruction." For this reason, deconstruction is always something more and less than what we understand by analysis.

What Characterizes Deconstruction?

On 17 June 1971, Jacques Derrida was interviewed by Jean-Louis Houdebine and Guy Scarpetta for the academic journal Promesse. In the course of this conversation, Derrida was asked to reflect upon his work. In doing so, he provided a brief characterization of deconstruction.

What interested me then, which I am attempting to pursue along other lines now, was...a kind of general strategy of deconstruction. The latter is to avoid both simply neutralizing the binary oppositions of metaphysics and simply residing within the closed field of these oppositions, thereby confirming it.

Therefore we must proceed using a double gesture, according to a unity that is both systematic and in and of itself divided, according to a double writing, that is, a writing that is in and of itself multiple, what I called, in "The Double Session" a double science. On the one hand, we must traverse a phase of overturning. To do justice to this necessity is to recognize that in a classical philosophical opposition we are not dealing with the peaceful coexistence of a vis-à-vis, but rather with a violent hierarchy. One of the two terms governs the other, or has the upper hand. To deconstruct the opposition, first of all, is to overturn the hierarchy at a given moment. To overlook this phase of overturning is to forget the conflictual and subordinating structure of opposition. Therefore one might proceed too quickly to a neutralization that in practice would leave the previous field untouched, leaving one no hold on the previous opposition, thereby preventing any means of intervening in the field effectively...

That being said--and on the other hand--to remain in this phase is still to operate on the terrain of and from the deconstructed system. By means of this double, and precisely stratified, dislodged and dislodging, writing, we must also mark the interval between inversion, which brings low what was high, and the irruptive emergence of a new "concept," a concept that can no longer be, and never could be, included in the previous regime. If this interval, this biface or biphase, can be inscribed only in a bifurcated writing (and this holds first of all for a new concept of writing, that simultaneously provokes the overturning of the hierarchy speech/writing, and the entire system attached to it, and releases the dissonance of a writing within speech, thereby disorganizing the entire inherited order and invading the entire field), then it can only be marked in what I would call a grouped textual field...

• By "traditional philosophical opposition," Derrida means the oppositions of mind/body, speech/writing, nature/culture, reality/appearance, etc. These oppositions do not just belong to philosophy, as if philosophy constituted a separate and segregated field. Rather, these oppositions are constitutive of the entire fabric of the western episteme.



• The first phase of deconstruction is inversion. In a traditional philosophical opposition the two terms are not equal. One is always given precedence over the other and therefore violently rules over the other. For example, within the western tradition, speech is not only opposed to but rules over writing. The inversion of this opposition would "bring low what was high." This revolutionary gesture, would invert the relative positions of speech and writing. This inversion, however, is not enough. Exchanging the positions of the ruler with the ruled does not alter the structure of the hierarchy. Rather, it maintains the very system that is said to be overturned. The mere overturning of an opposition, "still operates on the terrain of and from the deconstructed system." It remains a neutralization that changes nothing, that leaves the field untouched. For this reason, inversion alone does not constitute an intervention in the system or field. Inversion, by itself, would only neutralize the opposition and, as such, would continue to reside within the closed field of the binary system.



• Inversion is only a phase. Deconstruction entails not only the overturning of a binary opposition but also a displacement of the system that was overturned. This displacement takes the form of a new concept that exceeds the conceptual field of the deconstructed system. This newly emerging concept can no longer be, and never could be, included in the previous system.



• This double gesture, or double science, of inversion and displacement does not constitute a mere neutralization of a binary opposition that resides in and confirms the field on which and in which it operates. Rather, it constitutes a radical and fundamental intervention. Take for example, the Derridian deconstruction of logocentrism. The deconstruction of the binary opposition of speech and writing does not just install writing in the privileged position, which would amount to a mere revolutionary gesture, but it releases a new concept of writing that intervenes in the entire history of logocentrism. "There is a new concept of writing that simultaneously provokes the overturning of the hierarchy speech/writing, and the entire system attached to it, and releases the dissonance of writing within speech thereby disorganizing the entire inherited order and invading the entire field."

The "new concept" that emerges in the course of deconstruction is not invented ex nihilio or imported from another field. On the contrary, it is drawn from the resources of the old system even though it does not belong to or have a proper place within that system. Deconstruction, therefore, draws all its materials from the traditional hierarchies in which and on which it operates. It is a kind of parasite that resides and works within a specific context. This can be seen in the very fabric of the Derridian text. The deconstructive reading is always situated with respect to a text or texts and it draws all its resources from these texts.

Finally, deconstruction is never final. It is never finished. It is never simply over and done with the task of intervening such that one can move on to something else. Deconstruction is an "interminable analysis"...interminable, because the traditional hierarchy always reestablishes itself. For example, Derrida says the following about the deconstructive reading of Hegel: "We will never be finished with the reading of rereading of Hegel, and, in a certain way, I do nothing other than attempt to explain myself on this point." (77)

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