Deconstruct this

From The Boston Review, on the modernist philosophy of deconstruction: "Though it began as an academic theory, deconstruction has come to pervade even popular culture in English — a remarkable accomplishment if one is accustomed to hearing about the social irrelevance of the humanities. We talk now of deconstructing not just texts and philosophical systems, gender binaries or sites of political power, but recipes and men's wear. … The ubiquity of the word in our cultural vocabulary points to a distinctively American phenomenon."