DERRIDEAN DECONSTRUCTION: A CRITICAL ANALYSIS IN ISLAMIC PERSPECTIVE

Abstract

This research paper primarily deals with Derridean Deconstruction – one of the most powerful pillars of
postmodernism – which questions the very credibility and trustworthiness of the meaning of a text whatever; hence
making the meaning impermanent and transient entity. For Derrida, language is unreliable; it is a play of signifiers.
He maintains that a “Signifier” does not have a permanent “Signified”; the “Signified” itself becomes a new “Signifier”
in a language. And this new signifier generates another signifier as there is no signified for it, too. In this way, a chain
of signifiers generates, and meanings are postponed and delayed endlessly.And language, in fact, becomes the second
name of a series of signifiers only with no signifiedsat all. Thus, it is impossible to find a stable and permanent
signified of a signifier.
To Derrida, language is multi-vocal and ambiguous and manages to provide an outlet to plurality of distinctive
interests. Hence, there is no such a thing as “Universal Truth” and there is no single meaning of a sentence. Everything
said in “Metaphysical” context may be reinterpreted. In other words, it may be deconstructed. Derrida’s prose style is
tediously bombastic and perplexing. He deliberately uses tumid language.
Islam with its distinctive Metaphysics is one of the religions of the world which insists the permanent nature of the
meanings of the holy text that is the Noble Quran and Sunnah – two fundamental pillars of Islam. Thus, this paper has
endeavoured to make a critical appraisal of Derridean Deconstruction in order to prove that the stability and fixity of
the meaning of the text – transcendental in particular and worldly text in general – is sine qua non for the continuity
and survival of the intellectual achievements of Man and also the civilization thereof.
A number of verses of the Holy Quran and some Hadiths of the Holy Prophet have been cited to make our point’s
reliability and truthfulness more cogent. Also, numerous Western and Muslim theorists and philosophers have been
referred to who do not see eyeball to eyeball with Derrida so far as his theory of deconstruction is concerned.