ABSTRACT
The contemporary French thinker Jacques Derrida promotes a constant investigation of bodies' legitimacy through an attitude of deconstruction. Deconstruction identifies, explores and questions the foundations informing systems of thought. A constant affirmation is the purpose of deconstruction as a beneficial experience, not as a destructive process. In its recognition of multiple discourses and myriad truths, postmodern thought acknowledges the potential validity of conceptions of the good other than the dominant norm. Postmodern attitudes to law are united by an understanding of knowledge as a construction created in a context of cultural, social, scientific and linguistic practices. Derrida argues that modernity's logocentricity is constructed, privileging certain perceptions and interests at the expense of the 'others', the devalued elements in binary pairs of concepts used to influence political and cultural existence. In legal critique, deconstruction's inquiry reveals deficiencies in law's attempt to do justice. Derrida seeks justice by considering the experience of other realities and perspectives that exceed law's dominant images.
