ABSTRACT
Throughout this book, I have had recourse to the name of ethics in order to indicate the difference that feminism and deconstruction make. In neither case is the word “ethics” an obvious term: for deconstruction it might seem to imply a little too much by way of subjective agency; for feminism it might seem too individualistic and lacking in political articulation. With these objections in mind, the difference that ethics names can be roughly characterized in two ways. On the one hand, ethics insists on responsibility. That is to say, the presumed autonomy of the rational subject is reminded that it is not isolated. On the other hand, ethics insists on judgment. That is to say, it reminds those who wish to rely on meta-languages that nothing goes without saying – that any attempt to describe society exhaustively runs the risk of totalitarianism.
