Derrida: Deconstruction

- Spends a lot of time developing his own thinking through things he's read

- Binary ideas have two parts attached one better than the other

- Western culture dominated by presence

- Speech - presence - key

- Writing = Secondary

- Speech = Presence

- Speech/presence/life

- Writing/absence/death

- Writing seen as unnecessary

- Words gain their difference through other words

- We understand language and words because they're all different

- Spoken language and writing are equal

- Speech is more important than writing

- Language is defined by absence

- Writing is a supplement

- The Trace - something in between Presence and Absence

- Poststructuralism

- Binaries keep structure the same

- Ghosts are between life and death (present and absent)

- TV - dead actors still shown (present)

- If we watch a video of yourself it's absent

- We are making more and more ghosts

- We are ghosts only in a text when we read it

- Characters in a book are ghosts

- Authors are ghosts

- We have to accept the fact that there's ghosts

- We need to learn to live with them

- Betha Mason appears as a "ghost" who haunts Jane and the reader