Deconstruction Texts

Written in Latin, this ancient autobiography recounts Augustine's early life and his conversion to Christianity. It also includes wide-ranging philosophical speculation. No wonder, then, that it at...

You may have heard of Cervantes' sad knight, that old bugger Don Quixote. You may know him as the Man of La Mancha. Or you may not know him at all—in which case you're in for a treat. This guy's...

Flaubert's proto-feminist tearjerker inspired Avital Ronell to write a whole book riffing on it: Crack Wars: Literature, Addiction, Mania. In this book, our favorite deconstructionist diva relates...

Paul de Man has a great reading of this poem's final rhetorical question. And what a question it is: "How can we know the dancer from the dance?" If you think Deconstruction has nothing to do with...

The Universe is a Library in this wild ride of a text. And from that one-line summary, we bet you can tell that Borges's story is a deconstructionist's dream come true. Here, again, there really is...

In this essay, de Man takes on Baudelaire and the stakes of "lyric reading." It's tough going, so far as essays go, but you're a Boot Camp survivor. So you'll be prepared. And we promise you'll be...

This kooky, co-authored text is quite something. It's interesting to see Derrida at work in dialogue with someone else. And writing in an autobiographical vein. Not that Derrida didn't delve into a...

Everyone knows that there are two sides to every story. We've seen Gossip Girl. But Glas literally has two sides. It's printed in two columns: one addresses Hegelian philosophy, the other is a clos...

We've told you before, but we'll tell you again: The Telephone Book is one wild ride. It's worth a reading for the laughs alone. Seriously, there are zingers on every page—and in different font s...

This Bible of postcolonial theory also includes lots of interesting engagements with Derrida's work. Spivak's writing isn't for the faint of heart, it's true. But if you want to see how Deconstruct...