Deconstruction

Deconstruction was first developed by French philosopher Jaques Derrida. The definition for deconstruction is not easy to understand, and Derrida and his interpreters actually intend it to be difficult. It was first meant to be a method of interpretation and analysis of a text or a speech. He introduced the concept of deconstruction as a text or speech. The entire idea was to draw out conflicting logics of sense and implications. the main objective was to show that text never exactly meant what it said. Though it had been applied not only to text but also to the visual arts and architecture.

The approach of deconstruction in architecture is to get architects, think of things in a new way, to view architecture in bits and pieces. Also to develop buildings which shows how differently from traditional buildings c, buildings can be built without losing their utility and still complying with the fundamental laws of physics. Especially, in 1988, when deconstruction was first promoted in architecture.

Derrida takes the word deconstruction from the work of Martin Heidegger. In the summer of 1927, Martin Heidegger delivered a lecture course now published under the title, Basic Problems of Phenomenology. Given the topic of his lectures, Heidegger appropriately begins them with a discussion of the nature of philosophy and, particularly of the philosophical movement called phenomenology. Borrowing creatively from his teacher, Edmund Husserl, Heidegger says that phenomenology is the name for a method of doing philosophy; he says that the method includes three steps -- reduction, construction, and destruction -- and he explains that these three are mutually pertinent to one another. Construction necessarily involves destruction, he says, and then he identifies destruction with deconstruction, Abbau (20-23). Heidegger explains what he means by philosophical destruction by using an ordinary German word that we can translate literally "unbuild."

Different architects of different places seemed to be placing buildings and bits of buildings at odd angles so that they clashed and even penetrated each other. The geometry in these architects had been set up, but has at least one overlaid and clashed with the other. Also, there is much different kind of clashes such as: clashes in history and....leaves construction without its form.

Ironically, given much of the current discussion of Heidegger's work and the work that derives from his, Heidegger's answer is, "No." We can use these concepts, horizons, and approaches against themselves to discover what produced them. We might, for example, think about Aristotle's discussion of form and matter, using those very terms to show their inadequacy. What, after all, is matter? Any answer I give is in terms of another form rather than in terms of matter. Questions: "What is that desk made of; what is its material?" Answer: "Wood." But the word wood gives us a form, not a matter. I can ask, "What is the wood made of?" and give a reasonable answer, though one still in terms of form.

As we use the terms matter and form against them, what starts out looking like a perfectly sensible question becomes problematic. By problematizing the distinction, we begin to get at least a glimpse of the problem to which Aristotle was responding. Perhaps we begin to wonder -- to think -- in the same way that he did. If we do, perhaps we begin to do philosophy with regards to Aristotle's questions rather than simply to repeat the scholarly exegesis of Aristotle's philosophy.

Deconstruction can be a matter of showing whom the text has omitted, overlooked, or forgotten. There are various others whom we may forget. Sometimes we fail to remember God, someone with whom, contrary to many expectations.