Derridan Thought

Curriculum studies advances through the work and thought of Jacques Derrida. Derridian thought, like curriculum studies, advances complicated conversations and difficult memories. Curriculum studies is a field that examines issues on teaching, the university, democracy, race, class and gender, sexuality, politics, ethics, responsibility, nation, place, and geography. Derrida complicates ideas such as these by deconstruction. For Derrida, deconstruction is a way to think through ideas. Deconstruction is not destruction; rather, it is a form of generative interpretation. Thus, to deconstruct terms in curriculum studies such as geography, nation, and identity—for example—Derrida suggests that each term founders under the sign of an aporia. Every idea is unstable as it entails its opposite.