An approach to reading a text that tries to discern all hidden opinions, influences, agendas, and philosophies motivating its author; part of a larger academic approach called "literary criticism." Opponents of deconstructionism claim that this method suggests all information to be relative and is merely a way to strip from a text all authority and meaning. In other words, deconstructionism holds that the author's intended meaning can't simply be what it is—what the author meant becomes whatever the text means to each individual reader. The Da Vinci Code's Leigh Teabing arrives at the conclusion that "history" is relative because those in power (the "winners") are its writers, so historical accounts, intrinsically, cannot be trusted as accurate (DVC, 256).