ABSTRACT
This chapter concerns deconstruction proper, that is, the American development from sources in Derrida of a particular set of protocols for reading texts. Since those texts are most often literary texts, this is really a second chapter on literary studies. It is remarkable how far it sets itself apart from American deconstruction au pied de la lettre and how much it is pulled into the gravitational field of British post-structuralism. British post-structuralism, for reasons discussed in relation to the Oxford Literary Review and its Southampton conference of 1981, has remained largely uninterested in deconstruction in definition, American deconstruction. In this respect the differences between American deconstruction and the attempted incorporation of Derridean deconstruction into British post-structuralism must be grasped in relation to different national cultures, or rather international ones, since here the British tradition finds its place as European.
