Deconstruction is the name of that way of reading and thinking. It says a piece of writing has no one true meaning we can finally pin down. Instead the text pulls in more than one direction, and the reader's job is to notice the tensions, the gaps, and the things the writing cannot quite control. It began in philosophy and literary criticism and later turned up in talk about law, buildings, and culture. Though actually, in magazines and everyday talk, 'deconstruction' is also used as a fancy word for taking something apart — a recipe, a fashion look, an argument. Teachers and critics mean the method, and they mean the claim that there is no single explanation. If you meet the word in a literature class, they almost certainly mean that method, not 'we pulled the dish to pieces on a plate.'