oh man, my mom just mailed me that article. How old school. Can't wait to check out Deconstruction Town. I hear they have a good football team.
well, it's not listed in my trusty webster's ninth new collegiate dictionary (yeah that's right, i rock the ninth), but dictionary.com defines the word thusly:
de·con·struct /ˌdikənˈstrʌkt/
–verb (used with object)
to break down into constituent parts; dissect; dismantle.
and the American Heritage Dictionary puts your fancy boy usage at #2:
de·con·struct (dē'kən-strŭkt')
1. To break down into components; dismantle.
2. To write about or analyze (a literary text, for example), following the tenets of deconstruction.
i had assumed that Derrida didn't actually invent the word, and was going to argue that his overspecialized definition got undue weight at fancy boy fancy schools, but Wikipedia (which is always right, 114% of the time) claims that he did coin the term. to which i can only say this: people that heavy into theory can't be all that surprised that a word's "author" (especially a dead one) at some point loses control of its meaning, can they?
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