SOURCE: Atkins, G. Douglas. “The Sign as a Structure of Difference: Derridean Deconstruction and Some of Its Implications.” In Semiotic Themes, edited by Richard T. DeGeorge, pp. 133-47. Lawrence: University of Kansas Publications, 1981.

In the following essay, Atkins discusses the ideas of Derrida, a leading practitioner of deconstruction, defending him from accusations of nihilism and undermining the humanistic tradition in literature.

A major force to be reckoned with in contemporary literary criticism is Jacques Derrida. Derrida's star has risen precipitously since his participation in 1966 in a Johns Hopkins international symposium, where he took structuralism, and particularly Lévi-Strauss, to task and inaugurated deconstructive criticism in America. The following year he published La Voix et le phénomène: introduction au problème du signe dans la phénoménologie de Husserl, De la grammatologie, and L'écriture et la différence, all of which are now available in...