Deconstructionism

Philosophy →Go uptown The JC looks deep into the well. Or abyss. Click ᐅ to expand: Philosophy Tell me more Sign up for our newsletter — or just get in touch: for ½ a weekly 🍺 you get to consult JC. Ask about it here.

A peculiarly French strand of post-modernism — leading lights numbering among them Jacques Derrida, Jacques Lacan, Bruno Latour, Jean-François Lyotard, Gilles Deleuze and Julia Kristeva — all pictured with amusing roll neck sweaters, Galois cigarettes and wavily bohemian hairdos — “deconstructionists” main industry was attacking existing power structures behind received knowledge, intending to wipe away the power structures and radically reinterpret the world. As such they were indeed historical, backwards-looking, and at the limit, faintly annoying: on their coat-tails came the current crop of grievance studies academics, firmly focussed on shit that has already happened and as such, can’t really be changed so much as just deconstructed and complained about.

See also

• Post-modernism
• Transgressing hermeneutical boundaries