The idea that meaning is elusive, contradictory, mulilayered, and indeterminate runs through much of Jacques Derrida's work. Simply but, deconstruction is a technique of reading texts that put stheir meaning radically in doubt. It rejects the idea that there is a single, correct interpretation of a text that is deterined by the standard meaning of its words.

Rather, one might read a text to tease out its hidden contradictions or amgiguites; or one might look at what a text doesn't say, in the hope that what is absent might reveal more about its meaning than what is present.

This approach throws into question the primacy of authorial intent. Derrida did not believe that intention was of no interest in the process of deconstruction. Neverhtheless, there exists the possiblity that a text might mean someting quite different from waht the author intended. In particular, its inner logic might suggest a reading that is far removed from how the text would normally be interpreted.

Deconstruction, then, is a method that relies on subverting the surface appearance of a text, in order to reveal hidden layers of articulation. It attempts to show that texts contain contradictory logics, which tend to be overlooked in more orthodox treatment.

Once deconstructed, this text describes the image its truth. Or does it? What say you?

Once one penetrates the visible surface of an object, that which makes the object becomes changed by your intrusion... Showing you then what you expect to see (else you would have made intrusion in a different way).

Deconstruction of an original changes that original to the degree that you choose. (how far from the original or appearant visible surface will your intrusion extend).

How then could you trust your result knowing that you have altered the original in you mad dash to 'see' a different result?