how to read derrida 06.05.06

Deutscher, Penelope, How to Read Derrida (New York: Norton, 2005). (HKD114)
An idiosyncratic and highly controversial french philosopher, Jacques Derrida inspired profound changes in disciplines as diverse as law, anthropology, literature, and architecture. In Derrida's view, texts and contexts are woven with inconsistencies and blind spots, which provide us with a chance to think in new ways about, among other things, language, community, identity, and forgiveness. Derrida's suggestions for "how to read" lead to a new vision of ethics and a new concept of responsibility.
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Deconstruction is often thought of as a dismantling, or undoing. certainly, Derrida thought that an argument, an individual or an institution's account of itself was not necessarily the most reliable authority. The moment we are confronted with self-representations, Derrida thought we should hone our listening and our critical faculties, a little like a highly attentive therapist or psychoanalyst. Deconstruction suggests that texts and arguments with which we are most familiar contain hidden and unexpected reserves, points of inner resistance, dialogues and alternatives. Attending to these, Derrida converted our understanding of the available resources of the familiar. Deconstruction was sometimes thought of as a negative or even a nihilist movement. Derrida stressed instead that it was an affirmative and potentially transformative way of reading.