Vocabulary List For Deconstructionism

Deconstructionism: Deconstructionism is a challenge to the attempt to establish any ultimate or secure meaning in a text. Basing itself in language analysis, it seeks to "deconstruct" the ideological biases (gender, racial, economic, political, cultural) and traditional assumptions that infect all histories, as well as philosophical and religious "truths."

Deconstruct : To break down texts in order to grasp their implicit meaning by exposing their underlying and hidden assumptions [Tony Bilton et al., Introductory Sociology, 3rd edition. London, Macmillan, 1996:657]

Human Autonomy: The condition or quality of being autonomous; independence. Self-government or the right of self-government; self-determination.

Openness: Valuing and cultivating openness to other, new modes of human experience and expression.

Subjectivity: Recognizing that subjective experience and human freedom are always parts of human reality.

Meaning: Recognizing that people are oriented to themselves and to the world in terms of meaningful relatedness.

Postmodernism: Genre of art and literature and especially architecture in reaction against principles and practices of established modernism.

Language Analysis: The separation of a whole into its constituent parts for individual study.

Structuralists: These individuals believe that all elements of human culture, including literature, may be understood as parts of a system of signs.

Close Reading: The thorough and nuanced analysis of a literary text, with particular emphasis on the interrelationships among its constituent elements.

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