Joanna, I'd be curious if could elaborate on what you saw that made you switch.
-- I read Derrida in French. Some things I liked: there was an essay called "White Mythologies."
But overall, I thought he was just basically doing the old "explication de texte" on steroids.
And I think this was picked up by Lit departments because
1) It was European = high status 2) It was politically safe (quasi radical) but no one could understand it (therefore the safety) 3) It helped create a mandarin culture which justified why 90% of job applicants couldn't get a job.
Thing is, I had discovered Marx in grad school, and the most interesting criticism I was reading was either Marxist or scholarly. For example, Ong's book Ramus and the Decay of Dialog was far more substantive and useful than ANYTHING I've every read by a deconstructionist, but it sank out of sight.
I was also reading a lot of linguistics and philosophy of language...and with respect to that, what the deconstructionists were doing seemed like they were borrowing a vast vocabulary whose actual content they either didn't understand or which they decided to ignore.
At best, it was denatured Marxim; at worst, it was pure snake oil.
So I decided to learn Latin/Greek cause I was specializing in the Renaissance and wanted to present myself as a scholar. It didn't get me anywhere, but I never regretted studying the classics, because it felt like I was learning to read the DNA of western "thought."
Joanna