An aporia is an insuperable deadlock, or "double bind", of incompatible or contradictory meanings which are undecidable in that we lack any sufficient ground for choosing among them.

According to Derrida, the result is that each text deconstructs itself, by undermining its own supposed grounds and dispersing itself into incoherent meanings in a way that the deconstructive reader neither initiates nor produces. It simply happens in a critical reading.