Originally Posted by jadis

As you have such a devastatingly low opinion of deconstruction, I expect you can tell us what it is, beyond how bad it is. We all know and agree that it arose from the so-called “linguistic turn” in philosophy and the social sciences, specifically from the preeminence of Saussurian linguistics in the 1960s as the general theoretical model for the study of social phenomena. Why don’t you explain to us in general terms what was the big thing about Saussure and what were Derrida’s points of departure from that model, what were his major critiques of Saussure and Levi-Strauss.