Poststructuralism and deconstruction challenge the structuralist conception that binary oppositions are an essential characteristic of the way of thinking of the subject and of cultural systems. They argue that binary oppositions are an example of how language produces a hierarchy and communicates power and control. In each of the various pairs of opposites one acquires a central status and the other serves solely as a background for the definition of the first, and becomes inferior, or even illegitimate in relation to it. The argument is that this process is used by those in power to create a preference for values that strengthen the existing social structure and perpetuate their status in it. Examples of this process are the male-female, East-West, nature-culture and more.
Another poststruralist critique relates to the fact that the organization of reality through binary oppositions erases all intermediate manifestations, which become somewhat illegitimate. The poststructuralist approach points to the existence of different hybrid categories that combine the two binary options and allow the existence of many more options.
As for deconstruction, Jacques Derrida argued that a careful examination of seemingly basic principles will show that they can always be dismantled since they are the product of a particular system of meaning. These principles, one of the main ones of which is the array of binary oppositions, are defined by exclusion - for example, in patriarchal society the man is the primary, central side, and the woman is the excluded contrast, the negative side defined by the lack of masculine qualities in her. According to Derrida, however, the definition of man cannot exist without the existence of the woman, who carries everything that is "not a man." This dependence and emphasis on the border and the difference between the two sides of the opposition hint at the possibility that the border may not be as impenetrable as one side presents it.
In this way the structure of binary oppositions is used by the ideologies that prefer to produce rigid boundaries between allowed and forbidden, between true and false and more. The dismantling of these and other oppositions undermines these boundaries and shows that each side also includes something from the other end, and that in order to maintain these oppositions everything that does not obey this division must be erased or marginalized.
see also: Binary oppositions in linguistics
