HISTORY

Derrida first uses the term deconstruction in Of Grammatology in 1967 to describe the implications of understanding language as writing and how this leads to the impossibility of a straightforward theory of intentional meaning. Derrida states that when he first used the term deconstruction he "wished to translate and adapt to my own ends the Heidggerian word Destruktion or Abbau". Heidegger's philosophy developed in relation to Husserl's and Derrida's use of the term deconstruction is closely linked to Derrida's own appropriation of Husserl's understanding of the necessity and problems associated with structural description. Deconstruction has links to the tradition of immanent critique in which the problems already operating within a discourse are demonstrated. As deconstruction is based in the conclusion of Derrida's arguments against intentional meaning in Of Grammatology and Speech and Phenomena there is some crossover with hermeneutics in that a given example of deconstruction may appeal to older historical meanings of terminology in order to demonstrate a real layer of meaning that is present in the text but runs contrary to what the author wants to use that terminology to mean