ABSTRACT
The strength of deconstructive questioning, its power to disrupt metaphysics as the philosophy of presence and provoke thinking, depends upon Derrida's success in opening a space or non-space from which philosophy can genuinely reflect upon and enquire about itself. That deconstruction is negative and nihilistic, that it abdicates all responsibility and judgement with regard to ethics and politics, is the charge that generally follows from accounts of its pantextualism and destruction of the subject. Deconstructive writing corresponds less to a nihilistic renunciation of ethico-political judgement and questioning than to a double movement which analyzes and translates a differential referring wherever it takes place, which is to say everywhere. Deconstruction is limited neither to a methodological reform that would reassure the given organization, nor, inversely, to a parade of irresponsible or irresponsibilizing destruction, whose surest effect would be to leave everything as is.
