• Look for contradictions. Look where the spirit of the text is actually different, or opposed to, what’s actually going on. Hollywood movies are great for this.
• Read against the grain. Take a text, find what it seems to advocate, and look in the oppos...

Some critics have accused Derridean thinking of allowing for any interpretation or, worse still, of saying any interpretation is equally valid. The first is perhaps true, the second is not. Derrida was always clear that there were more effective and less effective ways of reading a text....

• Don’t listen to what the author says. Finally, thinking like Derrida means trusting one’s own analysis of a text – even, or perhaps especially, if it contradicts the authors’ idea of what they’re doing. For Derrida, the author’s interpretation of her or his text is no more v...

• Get comfortable- you’re planning to overthrow every preconceived idea. Start by closing the door. 
• Find something to deconstruct. Anything text can be deconstructed: poems, shopping list, podcast, this essay. 
• Get deconstructing.

In 1967, Jacques Derrida introduced a new method to philosophy, which he called deconstruction. Put simply, this is the idea that if something is constructed it can be de-constructed. 

That applies to objects in the world, such as chairs, cars and houses, but it also applies to the concepts...