Following the recent death of Jacques Derrida, JamesJ asked me this question: How does deconstruction relate to postmodernism?

This is a complicated question, mostly because most critics (literary critics, who don’t really criticize, but that's semantics) can’t talked about deconstruction without talking about postmodernism; understandably so, because deconstruction by its own definition cannot be defined.

Let’s understand what the two have in common. Boiled down to their basics, both methodologies question the relationship between the signifier and the signified. The basic argument is, meaning cannot be known because language is a collection of symbols, that are not always agreed upon; that is, the aporia of our language ( or any language for that matter) makes it impossible to determine absolute meaning. This function of language is responsible for puns, political humor, actually all sorts of humor, and questioning previously established truths.

The Ultimate Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy is quite entirely the most interesting, simple-complexity I have ever read. It is Sci-fi, after a fashion, but not in any serious sense; only in that it takes place in space with aliens and androids, however putting that aside ... it transcends catagories.

It is, in fact, a collection of five novels by Douglas Adams; a series with titles such as: The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy; The Restaurant at the End of the Universe; Life, the Universe and Everything; So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish; Young Zaphod Plays it safe. It follows the adventures of: Arthur Dent, the last of two living earthlings; Trillion, the other earthling; Ford Prefect, an researcher from a small planet somewhere in the vicinity of Betelgeuse; Zaphod Beeblebrox, the fugitive, ex-president of the Galactic Council; and Max, the Paranoid Android.