How did Jacques Derrida criticize the idea that an author’s intentions completely determine a text’s meaning?

Jacques Derrida challenged the traditional view that an author’s intentions serve as the stable, primary source of a text’s meaning. He argued that this perspective is rooted in a pervasive Western philosophical bias known as the "metaphysics of presence," which falsely assumes that a speaker or author can "present" their ideas directly and fully through language.123

Derrida contended that linguistic meaning is not fixed by an original intention existing outside of language. Instead, he built upon the work of Ferdinand de Saussure to explain that meaning is created through the "play" of differences between words. He coined the term différance to describe how meaning is both a result of these differences and is "deferred"—meaning it is never fully present or finalized but is instead endlessly pushed forward in an infinite chain of related meanings.123

Because words depend on their contrasts with other words, and those words depend on others in turn, meaning is inherently unstable and cannot be anchored by an author's internal state. Consequently, Derrida viewed meaning as something that emerges from the system of language itself rather than from the mind of the author.123