As French, Jewish intellectual born in Algeria at the time of French colonial power, Derrida (1930-2004) became a notable post-structuralist because of his work on deconstruction, auto-bio-graphy,, and hauntology, among other notable concepts. This article focuses on deconstruction.

Sign and Trace

When we think of the term deconstruction, we rarely think of it as a generative or enlightening
process, as the process of breaking apart or decomposing often leaves us without something. Jacques Derrida, however, subverts such expectations. Spivak (1976) tells us that to Derrida, deconstruction is a method of moving closer to understanding in its rawest form, whilst accepting that, after all, we are never truly able to find what we are looking for. With each layer removed as we deconstruct, the elusive “stable center” (p. xi)—the object of our search—shifts, and what was presumed to be known eludes knowability. What we thought was the centre is not where we sought it: simultaneously, not what we thought and not where we thought it to be. Our only aids as we search are signs (p. xiv) and traces (p. xv). Signs are the way we know what something is, yet only in the sense that a sign is different from every other sign. Traces are the “footprint” or evidence left over to guide us, whilst not actually being something in their own right.

Fluidity of Meaning: Deconstruction and Reconstruction

Though structuralists argue that signs are comprised of a signified (image) and signifier (written
word) and that the relation between these terms is arbitrary (de Saussure, 2001), Derrida (1960/2007) contends that there is no signified, only signifiers. Meaning is thus contextual and intertextual, not built on an impenetrable foundation of universal truths. For Derrida (1985), there is no objective correlate or stable signified for the term “deconstruction,” and this lack makes both full and singular translation and definition impossible. When tasked, for example, with providing an accurate definition that would enable the term to be translated, Derrida finds that there is not only no definite origin that would lead us toward a sufficient definition but also that deconstruction eludes pre-existing definitions. The elusiveness of the term is significant because it refers to a process or orientation that resists both a priori categorization and teleological closure.

As an open-ended process or orientation, deconstruction involves pulling apart the components
that support structural integrity. As such, the bias, assumptions, and presuppositions that are concealed within structural operations are made visible. Derrida uses the term “de-sedimented” to help describe the illusion of solid structural foundations: sediment is not one but a composition of elements deposited and compacted over time, proffering the appearance of permanence. Likewise, tradition exudes the illusion of unalterable origin and permanence but can, in fact, be de-sedimented for purposes that have yet to become. Rather than the destructive impulse suggested by the prefix “de,” Derrida attends to the sense of possibility through the verb remonter, which refers to the process of reconstruction.

Educational and Ethical Implications

In the context of education, open-ended processes of deconstruction and reconstruction
become significant in a variety of ways. As a philosopher of education, Derrida posits that students are not mere receptacles for a knowledge that is of itself stable and complete. Deconstruction reveals a tension between learning and pre-existing structures of knowledge affirmed concomitantly through a “pedagogy of mimesis” and the legitimacy of the “cultural archive,” which presupposes knowledge as hermetically sealed, a-temporal, and de-contextualized. The implication, then, is that to ignore living context is to perpetuate an “illusion of truth,” as it is a myth to imagine we come to educational situations devoid of context (Trifonis, 2000).

The “archive of cultural knowledge” operates through the logic of the sign in which there is an “inside” and “outside” whose edges are inscribed with definite demarcations and generates authority
through the assumption that what is on the inside is what is worth knowing. As such, the archive creates a centre that erases its own origin and so provides the stable foundations tradition uses to justify its claims to canonical knowledge. Otherness is thus concealed and repressed through the authority of what is legitimate knowledge. Deconstruction exposes the illusory quality of these boundaries and demonstrates how such archive madness, generated through canons of knowledge conceived of as closed systems, forecloses possibility. While status-quo thinking limits possibility, the critical consciousness deconstruction engages has the capacity to interfere and intervene in such status-quo models and operations of efficiency.

The idea of deconstruction can further be employed to explain Susan Dion’s theory of the “Perfect Stranger.” A perfect stranger is a white teacher who inherits white privileges and acquires Eurocentric ideas and knowledge. However, this perfect stranger struggles and faces obstacles in order to teach in an urban Indigenous education system because they are unfamiliar with indigenous culture (Higgins, et al., 2015). The perfect stranger wears the “colonial cloak” and brings white supremacy to the table. Nevertheless, it is ironic how being “perfect” (whiteness), they feel like a “stranger” who is not confident enough to teach in an Indigenous setting. This highlights their lack of knowledge, which is important for them to know, not only to teach Indigenous students but also to acknowledge themselves as cultural beings. Therefore, the expression “going against the grain” acts as a tool of deconstruction here to describe the scenario of a perfect stranger and as well explains the binaries of perfect/strange.

References

Derrida, J. (1985). Letter to a Japanese friend (D. Wood & A. Benjamin, Trans.). In D. Wood & R. Bernasconi (Eds.), Derrida and difference (pp. 1-5). Parousia.

Derrida, J. (2000). Hostipitality (B. Stocker & F. Morlock, Trans.). Angelaki, 5(30). 3-18. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/09697250020034706

Derrida, J. (1960/2007). Structure, sign, and play in the discourse of the human sciences. In R.
Macksey & E. Donato (Eds.), The structuralist controversy: The languages of criticism and the
sciences of man (pp. 247–272). Johns Hopkins University Press.

de Saussure, F. (2001). Course in general linguistics. In V. B. Leitch (Ed.), The Norton anthology of
theory and criticism (pp. 960-977). W. W. Norton & Company.

Higgins, M., Madden, B., & Korteweg, L. (2015). Witnessing (halted) deconstruction: white teachers’ ‘perfect stranger’ position within urban Indigenous education. Race Ethnicity and Education, 18(2), 251-276. https://doi.org/10.1080/13613324.2012.759932

Spivak, G. (1976). Translator’s preface. In J. Derrida, Of grammatology (pp. ix-xxxvii). John Hopkins University Press.

Trifonas, P. (2000). Jacques Derrida as a philosopher of education. Educational Philosophy and Theory, 32(3), 271-281. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1469-5812.2000.tb00451.x

Suggested Readings for Further Study

Dixon,-Román, E. (2017). Toward a hauntology on date: On the sociopolitical forces of data assemblages. Research in Education, 98(1), 44-58. https://doi.org/10.1177/0034523717723387

Kaomea, J. (2003). Reading erasures and making the familiar strange: Defamiliarizing methods for research in formerly colonized and historically oppressed communities. Educational Researcher, 32(2), 14-25. https://www.jstor.org/stable/3700052

Mazzei, L. (2007). Toward a problematic of silence in action research. Educational Action Research, 15(4) 631-642. https://doi.org/10.1080/09650790701664054

O’Byrne, A. (2005). Pedagogy without a project: Arendt and Derrida on teaching, responsibility and revolution. Studies in Philosophy and Education, 24, 389-409. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11217-005-0967-3

Pillow, W. (2003). Confession, catharsis, or cure? International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education, 16(2), 175-196. https://doi.org/10.1080/0951839032000060635

Tarc, A. M. (2005). Education as humanism of the other. Educational Philosophy and Theory, 37(6), 833-849. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1469-5812.2005.00161.x

Varga, B. A., & Monreal, T. (2021). (Re)Opening closed/ness: Hauntological engagements with historical markers in the threshold of mastery. Taboo: The Journal of Culture and Education, 20(3), 80-97. https://digitalscholarship.unlv.edu/taboo/vol20/iss3/6/

Zembylas, M. (2013). Pedagogies of hauntology in history education: Learning to live with the ghosts of disappeared victims of war and dictatorship. Educational Theory, 63(1), 69-86. https://doi.org/10.1111/edth.12010