Deconstruction in Criminology

Abstract

This chapter discusses Jacques Derrida's work on deconstruction, and its implications for critical criminological thought. Consistent with the central concerns of poststructuralism, deconstruction is a critical and ultimately disruptive exercise aimed at uncovering and altering the violence that is exercised through established moralities, values, and frameworks. Deconstruction appears to align clearly with the work of many critical criminologies, particularly those focused on identifying how the knowledge and experiences of a particular group of people have been overlooked and marginalized by another group. The radical subversion and disruption that deconstruction offers to Western metaphysics and the central assumptions and structures of knowledge are political in the sense that they intend to encourage a movement away from these structures and to instigate new ways of thinking. Many criminological studies that claim to engage in deconstruction do so in a way that enables a new form of ordering or arranging knowledge, concepts, or power relations.