I grew up on a diet of science and spent 10 years in the IT industry. I'm an auto-didact, I taught myself C for example. I went back to university and studied math and philosophy. I mainly studied analytic philosophy which is basically western philosophy from ancient to scholastic to modern up until Hegel and then follows the Anglo/American tradition. Continental philosophy follows the same path up until Hegel and then takes a Franco/German tack.

I say all this because the writer fails to mention that the tradition he is having a go at is essentially continental philosophy. Contrary to forkandwait's assertion in this comments page deconstruction is attributed to Derrida, not to Heidegger. Derrida was influenced by Heidegger (and says as much himself I believe) but Derrida is credited for this whole deconstruction lark. Literary critics working in the continental philosophical tradition will employ stuff like this. Others won't, it is worth pointing this out.

Now then.

Analytic philosophers have a hard time decoding continental philosophers. So it is no surprise that people coming from even further afield have difficulty. I had a hard time initially, it took me a couple of years.

My take on deconstruction is that it is the technique of finding an internal contradiction in the text you want to refute and basically letting the text undermine itself. If it is anything more than this I'd like to know. I generally would never use the word deconstruct as it is too trendy and has become too intellectually charged for my liking. I prefer plain language. But I will use words like ontological when they need to be used but only then, if you see what I mean.

Finally, onto the claim of bogosity. I think maybe yes at times by certain windbags and lesser practitioners but mostly I think that no. In Derrida's case I would say no. I say this is the back of having read "Plato's Pharmacy" by Derrida and let me tell you it blows a lot of other philosophy out of the water. It is telling our man read a secondary source on Derrida, and did not drink straight from the fountain.

It irritates me immensely that someone believes they can read a couple of secondary texts and then claim to know enough to rubbish an entire swath of thinkers in the history of ideas. Continental philosophy gets most of the brunt of this because of the prolixity and verbosity of their texts. But I ask you, why has our chap not read Derrida for himself? Hmm? Because then he would have to read all of Derrida's influences. And be aware of the currents of thought in which Derrida was swimming. And so on, back and back until you reach the ancient Greek thinkers. I mean analytic philosophers (less now than before) have reacted in very adverse ways to philosophical texts from continental philosophers so Chip has company. But you know, try harder I say.

One little final point. I think the reason the word "problematic" is used as a noun is because it is used as a noun in French. Correct me if I'm wrong.

I'm actually getting pretty tired of the condescending attitude from the science/engineering crowd. Some bits of philosophy are formal in the way that logic or maths is so it will never be empirical. And. So. What? Big deal that natural language is ambiguous but that's part of its beauty as well. I say if you approach what I do in such bad faith so frequently then it is your fields that are suspect, not mine.