"A new fad in literary criticism offers the possibility of saying something new without the need for original thought. And so we get feminist readings of Shakespeare, psychological readings, sociological readings, and so on. But even by the standards of those particular fads, Derrida's 'deconstruction' offered extraordinary new opportunities. The infinite play of meaning meant that a great classic could hint at all kinds of things that had never been seen in it before. A favorite tactic was to make a text say the opposite of what it seemed to say on the surface. By loosening critical commentary from the constraints of what the author actually said, academic critics who lacked originality could seem to achieve some semblance of it. This is surely why Derrida became at this time the most influential figure in literary studies in the English-speaking world." John Martin Ellis