Antedatings of "Deconstruction" and Related Terms

[Fred Shapiro]

deconstruct (OED 1973)

1969 Jacques Derrida in _Philosophy and Phenomenological Research_ XXX. 53
But the thought of this presence only metaphorizes, by a profound
necessity which cannot be escaped by a simple decision, the language it
deconstructs.


deconstruction (OED, b., 1973)

1969 Jacques Derrida in _Philosophy and Phenomenological Research_ XXX. 56
It also goes without saying that the choice between these two forms of
deconstruction cannot be a simple and unique one.


deconstructionism (OED 1980)

1975 _Diacritics_ Summer 23  But structuralism (in literature) has led to
de-constructionism and to a vigorous critique of positivism and Western
metaphysics.


deconstructive (OED 1977)

1972 _Boundary 2_ I. 84  Heidegger is Derrida's primary example of the
deconstructive philosopher (along with Nietzsche and Freud).


deconstructionist (OED 1982)

1976 _PMLA_ XCI. (adv't)  One of the most exciting of these [issues]
centered on the kind of deconstructionist criticism practiced brilliantly
in America by J. Hillis Miller.

1977 _Boundary 2_ V. 364  In literary interpretation, one finds efforts to
move beyond formalism and merely rhetorical criticism -- speech act theory
as the basis for a new criticism, new literary history, and more recently
"deconstructionist" theories of language and text.


Fred Shapiro


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Fred R. Shapiro                             Editor
Associate Librarian for Public Services     YALE DICTIONARY OF QUOTATIONS
  and Lecturer in Legal Research            Yale University Press,
Yale Law School                             forthcoming
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