Deconstruction
Deconstructionists question language and meaning. Some people who were very close to Derrida are usually called deconstructionists. These people include Helene Cixous and Jean-Luc Nancy. If someone really deconstructed everything, he or she could not talk or think! Instead there are people who deconstruct things (books, poems, writing, words - in short, texts). Jacques Derrida began deconstructing things in the 1960s, but he was not the first. Martin Heidegger had talked about deconstruction in 1927 with Being and Time but he used the word "destruktion". Heidegger might even say that he got the idea from Ancient Greek philosophers such as Plato and Aristotle. Other important people who talked about it include Paul de Man and Judith Butler.