In Europe, on the other hand, deconstruction was
understood as a response to structuralism; it is therefore sometimes
referred to as a "poststructuralist" approach. Structuralism argued
that individual thought was shaped by linguistic structures. It
therefore denied or at least severely deemphasized the relative
autonomy of subjects in determining cultural meanings; indeed, it
seemed virtually to dissolve the subject into the larger forces of
culture. Deconstruction attacked the assumption that these
structures of meaning were stable, universal, or ahistorical.
However, it did not challenge structuralism's views about the
cultural construction of human subjects. Social theories that
attempt to reduce human thought and action to cultural structures
are sometimes called "antihumanist." Ironically, then,
deconstruction suffered the curious fate of being an antihumanist
theory that nevertheless was often understood in the United States
as making the radically subjectivist claim that texts mean whatever
a person wants them to mean. The misunderstandings that
deconstruction has engendered are partly due to the obscurity of
expression that often distinguishes the work of its adherents.
