Literary Research: Deconstruction and Poststructuralism

Literary Theory and Criticism

What are Deconstruction and Poststructuralism?

"Deconstruction posits that meaning, as accessed through language, is indeterminate because language itself is indeterminate. It is a system of signifiers that can never fully “mean”: a word can refer to an object but can never be that object. Derrida developed deconstruction as a response to certain strains of Western philosophy; in the United States, deconstruction was the focus of a group of literary theorists at Yale, including Paul de Man and Geoffrey Hartman. Used as a method of literary critique, deconstruction refocuses attention on a work as open-ended, endlessly available to interpretation, and far beyond the reach of authorial intention. Deconstruction traces how language generates meaning both within a text and across texts, while insisting that such meaning can only ever be provisional."

Brief Overviews:

Deconstruction (A Companion to Literary Theory)
Deconstruction and Post-Structuralism (Bloomsbury Handbook of Literary and Cultural Theory)
Deconstruction and Poststructuralism (Literary Theory Handbook)
Deconstruction (Oxford Research Encyclopedias)
Deconstruction and Poststructuralism (Routledge Companion to Critical and Cultural Theory)
Post-structuralism (The Oxford Dictionary of Literary Terms)

Notable Scholars:

Jacques Derrida

Derrida, Jacques., and John D. Caputo. Deconstruction in a Nutshell: A Conversation with Jacques Derrida. Fordham University Press, 1997.

Derrida, Jacques. Of Grammatology. Johns Hopkins University Press, 2016.

Derrida, Jacques. Speech and Phenomena and Other Essays on Husserl’s Theory of Signs. Northwestern University Press, 1973.

Derrida, Jacques. Writing and Difference. University of Chicago Press, 1978.

Hélène Cixous

Cixous, Hélène. Three Steps on the Ladder of Writing. Columbia University Press, 1993.

Cixous, Hélène, and Susan. Sellers. The Hélène Cixous Reader. Routledge, 1994.

J. Hillis Miller

Miller, J. Hillis. The Ethics of Reading: Kant, de Man, Eliot, Trollope, James, and Benjamin. Columbia University Press, 1987.

Miller, J. Hillis, and Julian Wolfreys. The J. Hillis Miller Reader. Edinburgh University Press, 2005.

Michel Foucault

The Foucault Reader (various editions)

The Essential Works of Michel Foucault, 1954-1984. Edited by Paul Rabinow and James D. Faubion, Translated by Robert Hurley, New Press, 1997.

In original French: Dits et écrits: 1954-1988, Gallimard, 1994.

Introductions & Anthologies

Deconstruction
This volume offers a clear and concise introduction to a topic often considered difficult and abstruse--deconstruction. David Gunkel sorts out the concept, terminology, and practices of deconstruction, not to defend academic orthodoxy, or to disseminate the thought of Jacques Derrida--the fabricator of the neologism and progenitor of the concept--but to provide readers with a powerful conceptual tool for the twenty-first century.
Deconstructions: A User's Guide
Deconstructions: A User's Guide is a new and unusual kind of book. At once a reference work and a series of inventive essays opening up new directions for deconstruction, it is intended as an authoritative and indispensable guide.
Derrida: A Very Short Introduction
Jacques Derrida, the French philosopher, developed his critical technique known as "deconstruction"... Simon Glendinning explores both the difficulty and significance of the work of Derrida. He presents Derrida's challenging ideas as making a significant contribution to, and providing a powerful reading of, our philosophical heritage.
Poststructuralism: A Very Short Introduction
Catherine Belsey traces the key arguments that have led poststructuralists to challenge traditional theories of language and culture. In this new edition, such well-known figures as Barthes, Foucault, and Derrida are joined by less famous theorists, and examples are drawn from both high art and popular culture.
Understanding Poststructuralism
This is the first introduction to poststructuralism through its major theorists - Derrida, Deleuze, Foucault, Lyotard, Kristeva - and their central texts. Each chapter takes the reader through a key text, providing detailed summaries of the main points of each and a critical and detailed analysis of their central arguments.
The Cambridge History of Literary Criticism, volume 8: From Formalism to Poststructuralism
The structuralism, poststructuralism, Russian formalism, semiotics, narratology, hermeneutics, phenomenology, reception theory, and speech act theory associated with European writers including Barthes, Todorov, Derrida, and Iser, are here described in the context of their original development, but with an eye also to their eventual influence.

Also see other recent eBooks discussing or using deconstruction in literature and scholar-recommended sources on deconstruction, post-structuralism, Jacques Derrida and J. Hillis-Miller via Oxford Bibliographies.

Definition from: "Deconstruction." Glossary of Poetic Terms. Poetry Foundation.(24 July 2023)