Derrida’s Ideas on Postmodernism and Its Implications for Postmodern Philosophy of Education

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Derrida’s Ideas on Postmodernism and Its Implications for Postmodern Philosophy of Education

Ide Derrida tentang Postmodernisme dan Implikasinya terhadap Filsafat Pendidikan PostmodernFrancis Samuel Aloysius Ekanem

Department of Philosophy, University of Calabar, Cross River State, Nigeria

*Penulis Koresponden: [email protected]

ABSTRAK

Masyarakat manusia menghadapi berbagai macam tantangan di era transformasi sosial yang drastis ini. Sejak munculnya peradaban manusia, dunia telah menyaksikan tantangan dan peluang baru. Komunitas internasional memulai usahanya pada tahun 1990-an untuk mencari filosofi pendidikan yang dapat menjawab tantangan abad ke-21. Inisiatif serupa dilakukan oleh berbagai pemangku kepentingan dalam pendidikan di Nigeria. Modernisme dan postmodernisme sebenarnya mengacu pada transformasi sosial semacam ini yang menjadi ciri perkembangan baru dalam masyarakat hampir di semua bidang. Sulit untuk mengklasifikasikan masyarakat atau budaya mana pun sebagai murni modern atau postmodern karena, dalam banyak kasus, ada percampuran kedua ideologi ini. Dalam penelitian ini, peneliti telah mempelajari keadaan filsafat pendidikan dalam konteks modernisme dan postmodernisme. Saya secara khusus mengeksplorasi ide-ide Jacques Derrida. Dekonstruksi adalah metode untuk memahami bagaimana beberapa pandangan dunia bersifat menindas, mendukung beberapa sementara meminggirkan yang lain. Dekonstruksi Derrida mungkin tidak dianggap sebagai teori filosofis tentang bahasa dan realitas, tetapi hanya sebagai metode baru untuk membaca teks. Derrida termasuk dalam sisi kritik postmodern, meskipun ia tidak pernah secara implisit merujuk pada istilah postmodern. Setidaknya ada banyak program penelitian yang memiliki landasan filosofis dalam dekonstruksi. Praanggapan Derrida memang penting karena mencoba menemukan kembali gagasan pendidikan sebagai sains dan praktik.

Kata Kunci: Modernisme; postmodernisme; filsafat pendidikan; Jacques Derrida.

ABSTRACT

Human society is facing different kinds of challenges in this era of drastic social transformation. Since the advent of human civilizations, the world has witnessed new challenges and opportunities. The international community began its efforts in the 1990s to search for an educational philosophy that could meet the challenges of the 21st century. Similar initiatives were undertaken by various stakeholders in education in Nigeria. Modernism and postmodernism actually refer to this kind of social transformation that characterizes the new developments in society almost in all spheres. It is hard to classify any society or culture as purely modern or postmodern because, in most cases, there is a blending of both these ideologies. In this study, the researcher has studied the state of the philosophy of education in the context of modernism and postmodernism. I specifically explore the ideas of Jacques Derrida. Deconstruction is a method for understanding how some worldviews are oppressive in nature, favoring some while marginalizing others. Derrida’s deconstruction may not be regarded as a philosophical theory about language and reality but only as a new method for reading text. Derrida belongs to the side of post-modern critique, although he never makes implicit reference to the term postmodern. There are at least as many research programs which have their philosophical foundation in deconstruction.

Derrida’s presupposition is indeed important as it tries to re-invent the idea of education as science and practice.

Keywords: Modernism; postmodernism; philosophy of education; Jacques Derrida.

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ISSN 2747-2671 (online)

Vol. 1 No. 6, 2021

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7 1. INTRODUCTION

Philosophy is the pursuit of a broad understanding of values and reality through speculative rather than observational means (Kmuníček, 2021;

Nnajiofor 2021). It symbolizes a natural and necessary urge in human beings to know themselves and the world in which they live, move, and have their being.

African philosophy is deeply spiritual, emphasizing the importance of the practical realization of truth (Chigangaidze 2021). Philosophy is a comprehensive system of ideas about human nature and the nature of the reality we live in (Patrick 2021). It is a guide for living, because the issues it addresses are basic and pervasive, determining the course we take in life and how we treat other people. Hence, we can say that all the aspects of human life are influenced and governed by philosophical considerations. As a field of study, philosophy is one of the oldest disciplines. It is considered the mother of all the sciences. In fact, it is at the root of all knowledge. Education has also drawn its material from different philosophical bases.

Education, like philosophy is also closely related to human life. Therefore, being an important life activity education is also greatly influenced by philosophy.

Various fields of philosophy, like political philosophy, social philosophy, and economic philosophy, have great influence on the various aspects of education, like educational procedures, processes, policies, planning, and implementation, from both the theoretical and practical aspects. It is here that the philosophy of education plays an important role in providing direction to education on the following issues, as well as providing a theory of knowledge for education to work upon. A philosophy of education is essentially a method of approaching educational experience rather than a body of conclusions. It is the specific method which makes it philosophical. Philosophical method is critical, comprehensive and synthetic.

The age of modernity is the epoch that began with the enlightenment (Assiter 2005). Philosophers such as Rene Descartes and Later Immanuel Kant shaped the age intellectually by their belief that through reason, they could establish a foundation for universal truth. The major movements and events of modernity are democracy capitalism, industrialization, science, urbanization. The relying flags of modernity are freedom and the individual. Postmodernism began as a reaction against modernism. By citing, the plight of the marginalized under capitalist industrialization, subjugation of women, and colonization of other lands by imperialists and the distraction of indigenous social system. Post modernists claim that modernity leads to social practices and institutions that legitimize domination and control by a powerful few over the many. Post modernists stress that facts are simply

interpretation that truth is not absolute but merely the constructs of individuals groups and that all knowledge is mediated by cultures and language (Fisken 2011;

Nwobu 2019).

Derrida’s philosophy is often described as

“deconstruction,” and his ideas may be considered an ideal representative of post-modern philosophy in general (Sweetman, 1999). Therefore, at the very outset, it can be assumed that the terms “deconstruction” and

“postmodernism” may be used synonymously for the purpose of simplification. According to Derrida, all identities, presences, and predictions rely on something outside of themselves for their existence, something that is absent and different from them. No identity, no reality exists at this level. Identity is simply a construct of the mind and essentially of language (Oben & Eyang 2015;

Bell 2020). Deconstruction is a method for understanding how some worldviews are oppressive in nature, favoring some while marginalizing others. Derrida’s deconstruction may not be regarded as a philosophical theory about language and reality but only as a new method for reading text. Derrida asserted that the politics of research and teaching can no longer be reduced to a problematic centered on the nation state but must take into account networks that are apparently multi or transnational in form. In this transformed context, the concept of information integrates the basic with the applied and the purely rational with the technical.

Derrida goes on to say that it is not just a matter of formulating questions while subjecting oneself to the principle of reason, but also of preparing oneself, thereby transforming modes of writing approaches to pedagogy, the procedure of academic exchange, the relation to other languages, other disciplines, institutions in general, to their inside and outside. Derrida argues that the new responsibility of thought cannot fail to be suspicious of a kind of professionalism of the university that regulates university life according to the supply and demand of the market place and not according to a purely technical ideal of competence.

2. BIOGRAPHY OF JACQUES DERRIDA (1930-2004) Jacques Derrida was one of the most well known twentieth-century philosophers. He was also one of the most prolific philosophers, distancing himself from the various philosophical movements and traditions that preceded him in the French intellectual sense (phenomenology, existentialism, and structuralism) (Trifonas, 2000). He developed a strategy called

“deconstruction” in the mid 1960s. Deconstruction is primarily concerned with something tantamount to a critique of the western philosophical tradition.

Deconstruction is generally presented via an analysis of specific texts. In 1930, Derrida was born into a Jewish family in Algiers. It was in 1967 that Derrida really

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8 arrived as a philosopher of world importance. He

published three momentous texts (of Grammatology, writing, and Difference and speech and phenomena).

All of these works have been influential for different reasons, but it is of Grammatology that remains his most famous work. Some other important writings by Derrida are The Margins of Philosophy (1981), Circumfession (1993), and Specters of Marx (1994). To understand, Derrida’s ideas on post-modernism, some of the key concepts that have been evolved by Derrida have to be analyzed.

3. LOGOCENTRICISM /METAPHYSICS OF PRESENCE

There are many different terms that Derrida employs to describe what he considers to be the fundamental ways of thinking of the western philosophical tradition (Garrison, 1999). These include logocentricism, phallogocentrism, and perhaps most famously, the metaphysics of presence. All these terms have slightly different meanings. Logocentricism emphasizes the privileged role of logos, or speech, in Western tradition, while phallogocentricism emphasizes the patriarchal significance of this privileging. Derrida’s enduring references to the metaphysics of presence borrow heavily from the work of Heidegger. Heidegger insists that western philosophy has consistently privileged that which is, or that which appears, instead of the condition for its appearance (Mickevičius 2017).

According to Derrida, metaphysics involves installing hierarchies and orders of subordination in the various dualisms that it encounters. Moreover Metaphysical thought prioritizes presence and purity at the expense of the contingent and the complicated. Thus, metaphysical thought always privileges one side of an opposition and ignores and marginalizes the alternative term of that opposition.

Logocentricism is the search for a universal system of thought. According to Derrida, it suppressed the whole of writing since Plato. Derrida’s deconstruction was an attempt to deconstruct logocentricism. It should be noted here that a major objective of post-modernism is to focus on epistemology. In this attempt, Derrida and other post- modernists have tried to find out the truth about the reality of society, and in this attempt they have rejected foundational theories like logocentricism. Epistemology is the core enquiry of postmodernism (Akwaji & Nchua, 2018). In his works, Derrida attempts to strike at the heart of knowledge in his own unique way.

4. IMPACT OF STRUCTURALISM

Derrida was a poststructuralist. He was heavily influenced by Ferdinand Saussure. Infact Saussure’s structuralism was improved upon and developed into

post structuralism by Derrida. The basic idea behind structuralism is that instead of looking at the root or history of words one should look at the interrelationship of words within language as a whole (Oben 2014). Derrida argues that meanings and truths are never absolute; they are determined by social and historical conditions.

4.1 Derridas’ Grammatolgy

“Of Grammatology” is a 1967 book by French philosopher Jacques Derrida that has been called a foundational text for deconstructivist criticism. In this book Derrida argues that the western philosophical tradition, writing has been as merely a derivative form of speech and thus as a ―fall from the ―full presence of speech in the course of the work he deconstructs this position as it appears in the work of the classical modern writers. Derrida calls for a ‘new science’ of

‘grammatology’ that would relate to such questions in a new way. Of Grammatology starts with a review of saussure’s linguistic structuralism as presented in the

‘course in general linguistics’. In particular Derrida analyzes the concept of ‘sign’ which for sausssure has the two separate components of sound and meaning.

These components are called signifier and signified.

Derrida quotes Saussure ‘Language and writing are two distinct systems of signs, the second exists for the sole purpose of representing the first’. According to Derrida writing is of two types.

1. Graphic notation on tangible material: It is the narrow meaning of writing, e.g. drafting of a paper, writing letters.

2. Living or natural writing: Derrida is concerned with the second type of writing. It is the natural writing where we erase the word already written by us.

This writing is a gesture that is effacing the presence of a thing and yet keeping it legible. This is exemplified by the use of a word that is crossed out in such a way that the word is still legible to the readers.

Both the original word and facts are important in writing. Gayetri Spivak who translated the work of Derrida in 1967 remarked that Derrida’s monumental work of Grammatology (1967) is his most representative work. Of Grammatology is an examination of the relation between speech and writing and it is an investigation of language. Derrida argues that writing has often been considered to be derived from speech and he says that this attitude has been reflected in much philosophic and scientific investigation. If the origin of the language of Grammatology is a fecund, liberating force that for the moment is bound in by traditional notions of metaphor, metaphysics and theology. It nonetheless, asserts itself in multiple and interdisciplinary ways, although it can never claim its own essentiality or toe unity of its project, given its basic distrust of all essentialisms and

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9 all easy claims of reconciling unities.

4.2 Derrida’s Concept Of Difference

Difference is an attempt to conjoin the differing and deferring aspects involved in writing that it plays upon the distinction between audible and the written.

The theory of difference has two basic relations. One relation is with writing. Second it is related to Derrida’s theory of deconstruction. Writing is never neutral; it does not give the truth. Derrida argues that writing is not transparent. It is always opaque. For example if a piece writing is taken from any newspaper it presents itself or we are used to reading it as it presents itself as an ordinary bit of reportage.

But sometimes, newspaper gets their facts wrong and is often selective about what is being flashed as news.

From the perspective of structuralism and post structuralism the analysis would go further. It would look not at how the article told the truth but the way language itself was being used. The use of different words can for instance create different meaning (e.g.

Mob over crowd, terrorist over freedom fighter). The idea that language is natural denies that writing always sets up particular construction of reality and that these constructions of reality are always tied in the history, society and politics. Derrida argues that in a language there is a presence of meaning best hidden behind it, there is also a meaning of absence. In difference there is a play of presence and absence. He says that there is always an alternative working behind the sign or language. Derrida has explained the concept of difference in the context of deconstruction as following. It is because of difference that the movement of signification is possible only if each so called ‘present element, a mark of past element and already letting itself be vitiated by the mark of its relation to the future element, this trace being related no less to what is called the future than to what is called the past and constituting what is called the present by means of this very relation to what it is not.

An internal must separate the present from what it is not order for the present from what it is not order for the present to be itself but this interval that constitutes it as present must by the same taken, divide the present in and of itself thereby also dividing along with the present, everything that is thought on the basis of the present, that is in metaphysical language ever being and singularly substances or the subject.

Saussure suggests that writing is an almost unnecessary addition to speech. In response to such a claim Derrida simply point out that there is often and perhaps always this type of ambiguity in the spoken word. If the spoken word requires the written to function properly then the spoken is itself always at a distance from any supposed clarity of consciousness. It

is this originality breach that Derrida associates with the terms arch-writing and difference. For Derrida, writing or at least the process that characterize writing are ubiquitous. Just as a piece of writing has no self-present subject to explain what every particular word means;

this is equally typical of the spoken.

4.3 Speech /writing

The most prominent opposition with which Derrida’s earlier work is concerned is that between speech and writing. According to Derrida thinkers such as Plato, Rousseau, Saussure and Levi-strauss have all denigrated the written word and valorized speech by contrast some type of pure conduit of meaning.

Their argument is that while spoken words are the symbols of mental experience, written words are the symbols of that, already existing symbols. As representations of speech, they are derivative as well as far from a unity with one’s own thought. in of Grammatology Derrida hence attempts to illustrate that the structure of writing and grammatology are more important and ever older than the supposedly pure structure of presence to self that is characterized as typical of speech. For example in an entire chapter in General Linguistics Ferdinand de Saussure tries to restrict the science of linguistics to the phonetic and audible word only. In the course of his inquiry Saussure argues that―language and writing are two distinct systems of signs, the second exist for the sole purpose of representing the first. Language, Saussure argues has an oral tradition that is independent of writing. Derrida vehemently disagrees with these hierarchies and instead insists that all that can be claimed of writing is equally true of speech. Another important concept that has been highlighted in of Grammatology is arch writing. Arch writing refers to a more generalized notion of writing that insists that the breach that the written introduces between what is intended to be converged and what is actually conveyed is typical of an original breach that affects everything one might wish to keep sacrosanct including the notion of self-presence.

5. DECONSTRUCTION

One of the major forces contemporary literary criticism and theory is Jacques Derrida whose meticulous critique on structuralism and the tradition of western philosophy has inagurated a wide range of influential critical activities generally known as deconstruction. This critical approach is multifaceted it has been variously presented as a philosophical position, a political and intellectual strategy and a mode of reading. As for literature, it has overwhelmingly shaped the course of literary studies and has diverted the development of literary theory. Key terms and

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10 phrases of deconstruction such as ―logocentricism

difference, supplement, misinterpretation and

―reversal of hierarchies have enriched the vocabulary of literary discussion. According to Robert Con Davis and Roland Schleifer, deconstruction is a strategy of reading and deconstructive reading starts from ―a philosophical hierarchy in which two opposed terms are presented as the ―superior’ general case and the

‘inferior’ special case. These opposed terms are too numerous to list but the most common dichotomies will definitely include good/evil, day/night, male/female, active/passive and nature/culture.

Derrida and his followers discover that these pairs however ‘reasonable’ they may appear are not simply oppositions, they are hierarchies. In each pair, one term is viewed as being superior while the other is required as inferior.

Deconstructionists take great interest in the operation of binary oppositions and proceed to question the inherent logic on which these oppositions are based. By examining the interaction of the two opposites within each hierarchy, they can trace the distribution of power between these two extremes.

Derrida claims that in a traditional philosophical opposition we have not a peaceful co-existence rather a violent hierarchy. One of the two terms governs the other. To deconstruct the opposition first of all is to overturn the hierarchy at a given moment.

To overturn the violent hierarchy, Derrida first exposes how the privileged term depends upon the suppressed one in the process of accumulating its own meaning. He detects that truth, social norms as well as standards gain their identity and authority by gestures of inclusion via differentiation. In philosophy to define what is true, there should be second beginning paradoxically prior to the first. It is an act of opposition and differentiation that expels those which are conventionally considered inferior. Deconstruction is thus committed to the rigorous analysis of the literal meaning of a text and yet also to finding within the meaning perhaps in the neglected corner of the text.

Deconstruction contends that in any text there are inevitably points of equivocation and undecidability that betray any stable meaning that an as author might seek to impose upon his or her text.

The process of writing always reveals that which has been suppressed, covers over that which has been disclosed and more generally breaches the very oppositions that are thought to sustain it. This is why Derrida’s philosophy is so textually based and it is also why his key terms are always changing because depending upon who or what he is seeking to deconstruct that point of equivocation will always be located in a different place. The dictionary defines deconstruction as critical technique especially in literary criticism which claims that there is no single

innate meaning and thus no single correct interpretation of text. It is the task of the reader to find out implied unity of work and focus on the variety of interpretations that are possible. The crux of Derrida’s argument is that things donot have a single meaning. Instead the meaning embraces fragmentation, conflict and discontinuity in matters of history, identity and culture.

Deconstruction does not focus on progress, totality and necessity but on the very opposite of these intellectual emphasis namely discontinuity, plurality and contingency. Kenneth Thompson has interpreted the meaning of Derrida’s deconstruction as

‘Deconstruction views cultural life as intersecting texts by deconstructing or breaking down the narrative to show how it is composed to different textual elements and fragments. From the above discussion the major characteristics of deconstruction are mentioned below:

1)

Deconstruction is not a theory unified by any set of consistent rules and procedures. It has been variously regarded as a way of reading, a mode of writing and above all a way of challenging interpretation of texts based upon conventional notions of the stability of the human self, the internal world and language and meaning.

2)

The most fundamental project of deconstruction is to display the operations of logocentricism in any text. Logocentricism refers to any system of thought which is founded on the stability and authority.

3)

Deconstruction tries to reinstate language within the connection of the various terms that have conventionally dominated western thought, the connection between thought and reality, self and world, subject and object. For deconstruction there is no truth or reality which somehow stands outside or behind language, truth is a relation of linguistic terms and reality is a construct.

4)

Deconstruct is post structural blend of philosophy, linguistics and literary analysis.

5)

Deconstruction rejects the surface meaning and tries to find out the hidden meaning.

6)

A text gives several meaning. Like in any form grammar, graph or writing, it transcends its author and point to its origin. Hence the meaning of the text is not exhausted by the author’s intentions or the particularity of the historical context.

7)

Meaning and texts can be plural and unstable.

Deconstruction is a method of enquiry. It is a play of presence and absence. Thus from the above analysis deconstruction may be understood as a philosophical movement and theory of literary criticism that questions traditional assumptions about certainty, identity and truth. It asserts that words can only refer to other words and attempts to demonstrate how statements about any text

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11 subvert their own meanings. In popular usage

the term has come to mean a critical dismantling of tradition and traditional modes of thought.

6. DERRIDA’S DECONSTRUCTION AND EDUCATION

The work of Jacques Derrida, a French philosopher, author of deconstruction, and one of the most important people in the post-modern movement, has recently caught the attention of people who work in education. This interest has primarily had to do with the search for new ways of thinking about education and the challenges it confronts in today’s societies. Derrida's deconstruction project is an effort to show how it might be used as a philosophical framework for educational discussion.Such possibilities are set out not directly by way of a set of applications or mythologies to be followed, but by an exposition and interpretation of the Derridian text with the intention of relating deconstruction to educational discourse. The concept of deconstruction was formulated by Jacques Derrida in the 1960s from the philosophical writings of Heidegger and reveals a way of knowing which typifies French post structural and postmodern thinking. At the conference on the importance of the structural enterprise, Derrida presented his paper on structure, sign, and play in the discourse of the human sciences that identified paradoxes in structural reading. His provocative commentary on writing and differences in the year 1978 revealed the pretense of contextual stability and introduced a new term, deconstruction. In Speech and Phenomena, Derrida talks about how communication and thought are real, based on how quickly we speak.

In Of Grammaticology, Derrida takes this issue further by arguing that signs themselves are unstable and change as soon as they are understood. Derrida’s ideas thus rapidly spread throughout the world, and by the 1980s, the English Department in US higher education included deconstruction as a major literary theory. Deconstruction subsequently affected literary interpretations and analytic philosophy. Thus, the major influence of Derrida and deconstruction on the practice of education originally came from the adoption of deconstruction in English departments. As a theory of reading and writing, deconstruction has found its way into the teaching of English, both in writing instruction and composition and in the practice of literature. Some scholars, especially Danziger (1995) and Halasek (1999), have acknowledged the possible political and ethical implications of deconstructive writing pedagogy. It would seem that the reception of deconstruction in education, in the first instance, was primarily technical and based on its narrow focus on literary analysis, and has only minimally been concerned with the political

and ethical possibilities of deconstruction in relation to education.

Dale (20012), in attempting to bring to the fore the ethico-political potential of deconstruction for educational discourse, note that what Derrida’s text has to offer is not a set of guidelines, rules, or prescriptions which can be applied to education to remedy whatever ails it. Reading Derrida in the context of education calls for an engagement with his forms of reasoning in analyzing educational issues. Danziger (1995) conclude that deconstruction can engage a thoughtful reader in some powerful rethinking of education, analyzing all the hidden assumptions that are implied in the philosophical, ethical, juridical, or political issues related to education. Cahen (2001) argues that if we acknowledge the radically affirmative nature of deconstruction, then the question of deconstruction is the question of education. Almost all of today's educational talk is prone to an ideologically driven educational practice that emphasizes people being taught so that they can be well- educated so that they can keep and develop their natural and social functions, as well as so that the economy can grow. In this case, education is just a tool of the state and is the main political tool of the state.

Aronowitz (2001) remarked that educational discourse that poses fundamental questions has eventually disappeared from the mainstream literature.

Present-day educational discourse no longer sees the need to interrogate the goals of education or the social and political contexts in which education functions. As a result, all educational discourse is reduced to what Aronowitz (2001) describes as the application of technologies of meaning consent, where teaching is increasingly a function for training in test taking. Thus, deconstructing education can play a vital role in this regard. Deconstructing education can play a vital role in this regard. Deconstructing education does not mean changing, replacing, or abandoning education. On the other hand, to deconstruct is first and foremost to undo a construction with infinite patience, to take apart a system in order to understand all its mechanisms, to inhibit all its foundations, and to reconstruct it on a new basis. In this regard, Derrida’s reflection on deconstruction and related concepts such as difference, justice, etc. can provide a powerful paradigm to develop greater awareness of the issues at stake in education.

Education should deconstruct the ideological influences that imprison educational discourse and, in so doing, allow the nature of education to unfold and speak for itself. Educators should affirm education and attempt to determine what it can and should do today in our society in the face of new forms of knowledge in general and the advances of technology. According to Johnson, contrary to fostering an esoteric or supercilious posture towards literature, deconstruction proves a valuable device for making the text accessible to the student.

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12 Because deconstruction is first and foremost a way of

paying attention to what a text is doing—how it means, not just what it means. Moreover, there are many research programmes which are philosophically based on Derrida’s deconstruction and its applicability to education. Some examples include Greogory Ulmer (1985). One common feature of these two approaches is that they are both somewhat critical of educational institutions and wish to promote dialogue and multiculturalism. Gregory Ulmar based his academic post pedagogy on Derrida’s writings. Some might say that Derrida does not have a pedagogical theory, but Ulmar states that Derrida has nothing but pedagogy.

The political nature of Derrida’s thought leads to the belief that teachers in state run institutions have a special responsibility to understand the educational system in which they work, whose ideas are mechanically passed on from teacher to student. Ulmar speaks about the deconstructive lecture, which aims to minimize the reproduction of ruling class ideology and maximize most students’ productivity. The lecture is a text that can be productively interpreted.

7. CONCLUSION

Since the beginning of his writing, Derrida was committed to deconstructing the political ground of education and its institutions to show the relation between power and knowledge underlying pedagogy.

Through their work, Michael A. Peters and Gert Biesta explain that deconstruction is above all a way to engage the politics of cultural institutions and social practices like the educational system by remaining the theoretical presuppositions of the ideas and methods that are used in all forms of pedagogy. Thus, Jacques Derrida may be regarded as the foremost philosopher of the humanities.

Over his long career, he was concerned with the humanities' fate, status, place, and contribution.

Through his deconstructive readings and writings, Derrida reinvented the western tradition by attending closely to those texts which constitute it. He redefined its procedures and protocols, questioning and commenting upon the relationship between commentary and interpretation, the delimitation of a work and its context. Derrida occupied a marginal in- between space that was simultaneously textual, literary, philosophical, and political, a space that permitted him freedom to question, to speculate, and to draw new limits to various disciplines.

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