How It All Got Started
Deconstruction got started in France, where the Algerian-born Derrida began blowing people's minds in the sixties. He had those razor-sharp reading skills, some insane book smarts, and an unstoppable philosophical mind.
Derrida's movement was so ground-breaking that it made major waves early on. In 1966, Derrida delivered a talk called "Structure, Sign, and Play in the Discourse of the Human Sciences" at Johns Hopkins University. (If you think that title's a mouthful, just wait for others we'll discuss down the line.)
Instantly—not even overnight—this lecture made literary critical history. It scandalized some audience members (Derrida wasn't out to make friends, as we said) but inspired others to import more deconstruction to the U.S., through translations and teaching.
Of Grammatology is often considered the key text in the U.S. importation of deconstruction. Not to mention that it's considered the deconstructionist Bible. It's a serious take-down of phallogocentrism, via a deconstruction of the speech/writing binary.
Of Grammatology also provides tour de force readings of Ferdinand de Saussure, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, and Claude Lévi-Strauss, among other biggies. The book was published in France in 1967, then in an English translation (by Gayatri Spivak) in 1976. And it grew deconstruction from fledging theoretical movement to a force to be reckoned with.