Deconstruction

After reading what Derrida had to say about Deconstruction I believe there are two ways to look at and define deconstruction. It can be viewed as simply studying a piece thoroughly to see where problems might surface, or it can be merely the opposite by looking at a piece done in a logical way and switching it up to make it not as structured or politically correct in a way.

Derrida focuses on speech and writing and how speech can be natural and original where as writing is artificial and a copy. “If writing is but a copy of spoken language, typography is a mode of representation even farther removed from the primal source of meaning.” Derrida shows an example of how writing and copy can be deconstructed on page 6 where the text is reversed as the spaces between lines and words expand and the footnotes are moved into the area that normally central text is located. This is one way of looking at deconstruction, not necessarily the act of taking something apart but rather placing it in a new way to pull out a different meaning or show a second way of looking at it.

Viewing deconstruction from an architectural perspective it seems that it is not really de-construction at all. “A deconstructive architect is… not one who dismantles buildings, but who locates the inherit dilemmas within buildings.” (page 9) The way Derrida explains it sounds more like therapy in a way when stating its like the architect is putting the pure forms on a couch and identifying the symptoms of a repressed impurity that is drawn to the surface by gentle coaxing. This to me makes sense because when we study apiece whether it is art, writing, or architecture we always ask the question of what is the author really trying to convey? And sometimes the act of “deconstructing”; the piece helps the viewer interpret the work in a whole new light.