Postmodernism and Critical Theory: Derrida’s Deconstruction, Foucault’s Power-Knowledge, and the Postmodern Challenge to Truth
**Postmodernism** is not a unified philosophical position but a series of challenges to modernity’s foundational assumptions (objective rationality, progress narratives, universal truth, unified subject). Core sources: Nietzsche (genealogical critique of morality and truth), Heidegger (deconstruction of Western metaphysics), and late 20th-century French thinkers (Derrida, Foucault, Lyotard, Baudrillard).
## Derrida’s Deconstruction
Jacques Derrida’s (1930–2004) **Deconstruction** is a reading strategy revealing textual internal contradictions, hierarchical binary oppositions (reason/emotion, presence/absence, speech/writing), and the endless play of **différance** — meaning forever deferred and different, never finally fixed. Deconstruction is often misunderstood as “any interpretation is valid,” but Derrida emphasized deconstruction as the rigorous practice of close reading, not arbitrary interpretation.
**Foucault** (1926–1984): **Power-Knowledge** — knowledge is never neutral but always embedded in power relations. What counts as “knowledge,” what gets classified as “madness,” what constitutes “normal” are all historical and shaped by power relations. His “archaeology” (*Archaeology of Knowledge*) and “genealogy” (*Discipline and Punish*, *History of Sexuality*) analyzed how psychiatry, the prison system, and sexual norms exercise power through knowledge discourse, incorporating subjects into disciplinary regimes.
[Lyotard’s *The Postmodern Condition*](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Postmodern_Condition) (1979) defined the postmodern as “incredulity toward metanarratives” — those claiming universal validity (Enlightenment rational progress, Marxist historical dialectic) have lost legitimacy; knowledge becomes fragmented and local.
