ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on the scope, legitimacy, and force of deconstruction. It shows how methodological issues are closely informed by the general principles which guide Derrida's reading. The chapter draws on arguments from Peter Dews, Richard Wolin, and David Wood, in an attempt to clarify those aspects of deconstructive strategy which it is claimed attest to its conservatism and impotence rather than its transformative power. It focuses on methodological considerations of delimitation, circularity, and the sign of excess as they unfold in Derrida's writing. For Derrida the project of overcoming or incorporating metaphysics must be repeated indefinitely; which implies that in order to think undecidability with regard to responsibility and justice, one must constantly interrogate the founding divisions of metaphysics. Derrida explains his use of a concept like history as a means to strategic intervention, to redeploying a word's force and generating another conceptual series.
