ABSTRACT
Turning to the relationship between deconstruction and critique in the context of contemporary literary and cultural criticism, one would have to observe that, by and large, the term 'critique', as it is deployed in that field, seems to have rather more to do with Marx than with Kant. The widespread use of the term 'critique' in the sense of a demystification of what is taken to be natural or universal doubtless betrays some sort of debt, however indirect, to the ideological critique of Marxism. To come to a critical decision about literature, in terms of its essence, its property, its 'being-literary' or whatever, would be to arrest the undecidability which gives literature its chance, the chance of always again saying otherwise. In contrast, Derrida's conception of literature may be regarded as maintaining the tension of that impossible, inevitable self-reference, of that undecidable oscillation of auto- and hetero-reference.
