ABSTRACT
This chapter suggests that deconstruction is neither a definable practice nor an arbitrary performance but extends a certain discipline of the question. It argues for the importance of attending to Jacques Derrida's work as a distinctive type of questioning. The chapter shows that Derrida's concern with the force of law extends beyond the foundations of legal, moral, and political authority, to the questioning form of thought and its philosophical authority. Distinguishing between the closure and the end of philosophy Derrida, like Heidegger, aims to distance himself from the idea that philosophy has simply terminated or reached its teleological completion. In a section entitled The Exorbitant. Question of Method' in Of Grammatology, Derrida sets out to justify his principles of reading and this provides as rich a vein as any from which to mine the systematism of deconstructive critique.
