Question

Merits and demerits of historical deconstruction

Answer 1

HI there,
Demerits 

A deconstruction, then, cannot be said to deconstruct novels but certain readings of thosenovels. In fact, a deconstruction does not claim to deconstruct anything by itself, but toshow how a text contains the deconstructions of its own readings. That does not mean,however, that deconstruction negates the possibility of ‘standard readings’ –as M. H.Abrams seems to think–, but that questions that such ‘standard reading’ could be taken asthe truth of the text.27What a deconstruction then usually does is to follow certain textualthreads in order to deconstruct a reading that could be shown as a simplification or misreading.28In that sense, it goes without saying that a critic could also deconstruct previous deconstructions –as Paul de Man has shown through a deconstruction of one of Derrida’s deconstructions in relation to Rousseau’sConfessions.