ABSTRACT
The image of the chain depicts the structure of substitution or supplementary which for Derrida designates the very textuality of a text. The notion of a dialogue of the question, or the question about the possibility of the question, is most explicit in 'Violence and Metaphysics'. But Derrida proceeds warily, hesitating with the language of ethical significance: 'If this commandment has an ethical meaning, it is not in that it belongs to the domain of the ethical, but in that it ultimately authorizes every ethical law in general'. The demand that deconstruction exhibit its political significance by accounting for the necessity of political decision and critique, by thematizing the question of politics as a question, reflects traditional presuppositions about the possibility of politics and the space in which it takes place, and indeed a limited understanding of the nature of deconstructive writing.
