Deconstruction

A major theory associated with Structuralism was *binary opposition.* This theory proposed that there are certain theoretical and *conceptual opposites*, often arranged in a hierarchy, which human logic has given to the text. *Such binary pairs could include Enlightenment/Romantic, male/female, speech/writing, rational/emotional, signifier/signified, symbolic/imaginary.*

Poststructuralism rejects the notion of the essential quality of the dominant relationship in the hierarchy, choosing rather expose these relations and the dependency of the dominant term on its apparently subservient counterpart. The only way to properly understand these meanings is to deconstruct the assumptions and knowledge systems that produce multiplicity, the illusion of singular meaning.