"Deconstruction involves the close reading of texts in order to demonstrate that any given text has irreconcilably contradictory meanings, rather than being a unified, logical whole" -http://bcs.bedfordstmartins.com/virtualit/poetry/critical_define/crit_decons.html

Interesting Quote by prominent American deconstructionalist Hillis Miller, "Deconstruction is not a dismantling of the structure of a text, but a demonstration that it has already dismantled itself. Its apparently solid ground is no rock but thin air."

Deconstruction came about as a response to formalism and structuralism and criticises western logic.

Deconstructionalists deny that any book has one unified meaning from beginning to end.

Jane Eyre and JSTOR:

"I would put it even more strongly: deconstruction, 

as an institutional practice, has enabled the very field of theory, or, rather, 

what goes under the name deconstruction has legitimated the site of theory, 

the institutional field we find ourselves situated within-Nealon; Jonathan 

Culler, Robert A. Hall, Jr., and Nealon's other respondents in the May 

Forum; and me. So let's dispense with this death business or at least 

interrogate it for the trope that it is."

http://www.jstor.org/stable/pdfplus/462993.pdf?acceptTC=true&acceptTC=true&jpdConfirm=true