This is how deconstruction works: by showing that what was prior and privileged in the old hierarchy (for instance, between creative writing and literary criticism) can just as easily seem secondary, the deconstructor causes the formerly privileged term (creative writing) to exchange properties with the formerly devalued one (literary criticism). Would we write if there were not critics -- intelligent readers motivated and able to make sense of what is written? Who, then, depends on whom?
Not everyone, however, has so readily seen the attractions of deconstruction. Two eminent critics, M.H. Abrams and Wayne Booth have observed that a deconstructive reading "is plainly and simply parasitical" on what Abrams calls "the obvious or univocal meaning" (Abrams 457-58). In other words, there would be no deconstructors if critics did not already exist who can see and show central and definite meanings in texts. Miller responded in an essay titled "The Critic as Host," in which he not only deconstructed the oppositional hierarchy (host/parasite), but also the two terms themselves, showing that each derives from two definitions meaning nearly opposite things.
From "Deconstruction and The Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man"
