Text is a term used today in a very broad sense, covering not only verbal but also other forms of communication.
One can find claims that a person or a city is a text. A distinctive feature of this new use of text comes from the fact that the derivatives of the word in Latin texere (weave) and textum (net; fabric) give us grounds for it. The text is something woven, readers join the authors as weavers of the text. This means that the emphasis is on the text as an open and even unfinished process.
For deconstructivists, the traditional acceptance of literary critique that the text should be considered as a whole is unacceptable. The text deconstructs itself. He is self-destructing. A good reader must be able to find those points from which the text unfolds. But to make these discoveries, the reader must read “out of the box” – to pay attention to seemingly marginal or peripheral problems in the text.
It is important to emphasize that deconstruction – the process of textual unraveling – does not result from the exercise of external tension or force, but from the innate features of the text itself.
“Acts of deconstruction do not destroy,” Derrida commented, “structures (such as texts) from the outside. They are not effective and would not be possible at all, they would not have a proper purpose if they did not inhabit these structures (or texts)” (24).
Deconstructivist critique is an immanent critique. This means that the deconstructionist reader is always an accomplice. No one is innocent: we are all champions of what we oppose. There is no neutral basis or innocent side. Even the most devoted critique of the patriarchal are always, to some extent, advocates of the patriarchy. Critique of the patriarch arises in his recognition. The central focus of deconstructivism is in part the emphasis on the need to recognize one’s complicity by opposing someone else’s in this other context.
