Deconstruction
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Deconstruction is a way to understand books, poems and other writing. It looks at the ways in which words always imply things the author doesn't mean.
One thing it pays attention to is how opposites work. (It calls them "binary oppositions.") It says that two opposites like "good" and "bad" aren't really different things. "Good" only makes sense when someone compares it to "bad," and "bad" only makes sense when someone compares it to "good." And so even when someone talks about "good," they're still talking about "bad."
Because of things like this, deconstruction argues that books and poems never just mean what they're supposed to.
[change] Origin
It was started by Jacques Derrida in the 1960s. Other important people who talked about it include Paul de Man.
