Derrida’s “Structure, Sign, and Play”: analysis
Jacques Derrida’s "Structure, Sign, and Play in the Discourse of the Human Sciences" (1966) is one of the most influential essays in modern philosophy, literary theory, and the humanities. Delivered at a conference at Johns Hopkins University, this paper marked a major turning point in 20th-century thought, signaling the transition from structuralism to poststructuralism and laying the foundation for Derrida’s deconstructionist philosophy. In this article, we will explore Derrida’s main arguments, unpack his complex ideas, and examine why this essay remains crucial to understanding the instability of meaning in language, literature, and the human sciences. The Structuralist Background Before Derrida’s intervention, structuralism was the dominant intellectual movement in fields like linguistics, anthropology, philosophy, and literary criticism. Thinkers like Ferdinand de Saussure, Claude Lévi-Strauss, and Roland Barthes believed that human culture and language are govern...