ABSTRACT
This chapter presents tactics for deconstructing (pulling apart) specific texts within a regime of truth to reveal their ‘contradictions and cracks’ (Alvesson, 2002, p. 178) and their relationships with power. Specifically, it:
• provides an overview of the origins of deconstruction in the work of Jacques Derrida; • shows how Derrida goes beyond structuralist understandings of language and meaning
to challenge the politics of binary and hierarchical thinking in language; • offers deconstructive tactics including binary analysis, erasure and metaphor that
ethically and politically affirms and attends to the other (Derrida, 1992) using illustrations from within early childhood texts;
• shares vignettes of early childhood educators mapping and deconstructing classroom meanings as an effort to deliberately practise for liberty.
