A reading strategy developed by French philosopher Derrida, Jacques whose essential gesture is to demonstrate that every philosophical position, irrespective of how coherent it seems on the surface, contains within it the means of its own self-undermining. Adapting the word from Heidegger, Martinâs terms âDestruktionâ (destruction) and âAbbauâ (unbuilding), Derrida himself describes it as a double gesture---the first move consists in reversing the hierarchy of a particular philosophical opposition, while the second move amounts to a displacement of the very system in which the hierarchy operates. Derridaâs work is often described as a critique of the philosophy of presence because he destabilizes the opposition between presence and absence, particularly with regard to the sign, which as Derrida explains in his account of diffĂ©rance is always the present mark of an absence. Thus, as Jonathon Culler explains in his seminal account of Derridaâs thought and its influence, On Deconstruction (1982), it undermines both the philosophy it asserts and the hierarchical oppositions upon which it relies. As a reading strategy, deconstruction is particularly interested in identifying those aspects of a concept or text whose peculiar state of being is to be undecided, neither this thing nor that thing and not nothing either. His main example of this is the sign: the sign as sign is a sign of something else, thus it is most fully itself when it is perceived as something else, but to remain a sign it must also continue to be perceived as different from the thing it represents. Further Reading: S. Critchley The Ethics of Deconstruction (1992). J. Culler On Deconstruction: Theory and Criticism after Structuralism (1982). C. Norris Deconstruction: Theory and Practice (1982).