deconstructionism

American  

[dee-kuhn-struhk-shuh-niz-uhm] / ˌdi kənˈstrʌk ʃəˌnɪz əm /

noun

1. the theory or principles of a philosophical and critical movement that questions all traditional assumptions about the ability of language to represent reality and emphasizes that a text has no stable reference or meaning.

2. the theory or principles of a critical movement that questions forms, hierarchies, and assumptions that are thought to be fixed because of the language traditionally used to describe those forms, hierarchies, and assumptions.

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Other Word Forms

• deconstructionist adjective

Etymology

Origin of deconstructionism

First recorded in 1975–80

Example Sentences

In 1966, he organized an academic conference that introduced Jacques Derrida and other French critics to the nation, along with the new academic concept of deconstructionism.

From Washington Post • Jul. 26, 2019

With other colleagues, he resisted diversifying the English department’s faculty and curriculum, according to the Columbia notice, and generally opposed emerging literary schools such as feminism, deconstructionism and post-colonialism.

From Washington Post • Mar. 10, 2019

"Yet this is an architecture as rich in ambiguities and multivalences as anything proposed by postmodernism or deconstructionism."

From Seattle Times • Jul. 6, 2011

Heather Mac Donald once studied literary deconstructionism and clerked for a left-wing judge.

From New York Times • Feb. 19, 2011

I, however, am the Michael Moore of deconstructionism.

From Time Magazine Archive