When we approach a text of Derrida's what do we find ? What do we expect ? A Derridean text performs a number of functions, we shall seek to examine what they are, how they work, what is their attraction.

Derrida claims to have identified a logocentric fallacy that runs throughout western thought, the classic example of which is the fallacy of identity, which, Derrida claims, is possible only by the prior existence of differance. The term differance has an ambiguous definition, meaning both the (infinite) deferral of (a promised) presence and the definition of an element by what it is not, the difference between it and some other element.

Starting from this basic truth, Derrida employs a method called 'deconstruction' which he derives from a Heideggerian term 'destruction' in which any system of thought, any definition, anything which claims to be an identity, a unity, is shown to have within it the starting point for its own contradiction. Derrida's writings, then, are always about other writings, to 'deconstruct' them. For example his work on Levi-Strauss shows that structuralism necessarily contains a presupposition which denies structuralism, this element is not called one name, but changes depending upon the subject being examined -in Rousseau it is 'the supplement', in Husseral 'the trace' etc.

A second part of Derrida's method uses the notion of 'text' or 'writing' to define any discourse, including speech. It is from this metaphor (the term must not be taken in the literal, everyday sense) that the term differance obtains its primary meaning - the words of a text obtain their meaning only from other words, the 'object' of a book is never actually present in a book, but description/affect/ promise of the object is created by the text. Derrida's phrase 'there is nothing outside the text' means that what we may take to be the actual experience of something present (looking at something, for example) is for Derrida simply another text (let's call it the scopic text) with its own promise of a presence 'beyond' itself (which never comes, whatever is promised is always another text).

Following this practise of deconstruction it is clear that Derrida is criticising a basic presupposition of language. For him, there is no meaning or truth, since these are just unfulfilable promises. Thus he is stuck with a language continually speaking of definitions, truths and basic terms, none of which he holds to be the case. To counter this problem he introduces two strategies: placing a term 'under erasure'. This is borrowed from Heidegger who defined words etymologically and did not wish their normal meanings to be taken, for Derrida it means 'yes I am using this term, but not literally, just that the effect produced might commonly be referred to as this'. The second strategy is to use a sequence of letters that neither constitutes a word, a term, a definition or a meaning, 'differance' or 'supplement' might be such a sequence.

We now come to a number of problems about Derrida. The first point is that in giving our definition of him we have had to use terms that he would not accept - he wouldn't say that he had a starting point, perhaps, or that there was a basic theory that he applied to a number of areas. If under Derrida's philosophy we are not allowed to say something as simple as A is B without getting into major conceptual difficulties the whole process of describing or defining his work becomes almost impossible. It is not a matter of translating from one language, one terminology, to another, as from French 'chat' to the English 'cat', from 'chien' to 'dog', in Derrida's language he accepts none of the 'understandings' of the old words, but he will accept using some of the words themselves, granted that they are given his new meanings (another term he doesn't like, of course).

The second problem is Derrida's choice of texts to subject to study. He always takes obscure or minor works from the authors he writes about. For Rousseau he does not write about 'The Social Contract' but takes a little known work about language. For Plato he does not take 'The Republic', 'The Meno' or 'The Symposium' but 'Phadrius'. Other times he may just use obscure authors. The is, of course, nothing wrong with studying and writing about unknown authors or obscure writings, but to make such large scale claims from marginal evidence is often seen as reducing the effectiveness of his case. The other side of the coin to this is that in not tackling major works, and indeed major thinkers, he is simply refusing genuine criticism - the main example here is Marx, for all his writing about Hegel Derrida makes little or no mention about Marx, and makes evasive replays in interviews when the subject is brought up.

A third criticism relates Derrida to Foucault and Lacan, with whom he is sometimes grouped. Foucault studies prisons and the internment of the insane, Lacan psychoanalysis. Both come near in their claims to what Derrida says, but Derrida is seen as the most radical. Isn't this, say the critics, because Derrida is out of touch with the real world, with actual scientific practise ? The other two pull back from Derrida's bold claims because they have some basic study to balance their ideas against. In writing about writing Derrida has no such balance.

Having attempted some sort of brief assessment of Derrida, has he actually made us change the way we would go about anything ? Derrida always rejects the summary of a text, which is understandable since much of his work is an argument against the replacement of one text by another. However, philosophy could be seen as precisely this attempt at simplifying, reducing, condensing. It could be argued that while the topics covered by philosophy are too vast to consider scientifically what philosophy does is to try to find a key to explain quite a lot of it. Take as an example Sartre's 'Being and Nothingness', this could be read as the attempt to apply the dictum 'we are what we are not and we are not what we are' to various aspects of life, and see how far we can go, how much sense such an explanation makes, and in fact we find that it does make quite a lot of sense. Ok, there are objections, but starting from a simple idea it does explain a lot. Perhaps a similar argument could be made of Marx's reading of history as the history of class struggle.

Now is Derrida's a philosophy like this? I suppose we could take him as one, or can he be doing something quite different? One problem with trying to use it as a dictum has already been mentioned - not only does Derrida not always deal with the major thinkers, when he does he rarely if ever deals with their major ideas. Hence although he makes wide sweeping claims for his philosophy, he has not actually shown how it would be applied to whole areas of thought and experience. His actual practise has been minimal - getting arrested for possession of drugs in Czechoslovakia resulted in some mumblings about human rights, his other activity has been in the teaching of philosophy in sixth forms, hardly world shattering.

What can we do with Derrida's thought if we can't reduce it to a dictum to be applied and we can't imply its meaning from particular stances Derrida takes outside philosophy ? Another avenue is what Derrida's followers do, if we can't learn from Derrida, can we find something out from his followers. Unfortunately although there are a number of writers who claim to be inspired by Derrida, who indeed write like him - especially in the U.S., departments at the universities of Yale and John Hopkin both have important bodies of 'deconstructionists' - he claims that these groups have misunderstood him, and cannot be taken to be true to his work. Again, although he is sometimes grouped with Lacan, and French critics in the Telle Quelle group (for example Julia Kristeva) would have cited them both as important influences, after a long silence he denounced Lacan and claimed to disagree with fundamental aspects of his work.

At the end of the day perhaps there is only one thing to do with Derrida's work, what others who are inspired by him have done. This is very simple: the most obvious appeal about Derrida is not the content of his work but the style. His obscurities allow the critic to be as creative as the work the criticism is about. Not accepting that there is an objective truth to write about has left Derrida free to write in a playful, intelligent, witty style - full of puns, insights and imagery, occasionally 'justifying' such light treatment of what would usually be very heavy intellectual labour by the above types of argument, always swarming with ambiguity, contradiction and deliberate attempts to mislead and confuse - Derrida does not write to explain or educate, but to entertain both himself and the reader. In the film he appears in, 'Ghost Dance', he is full of such lines as 'do I believe in ghosts ? You ask a ghost if he believes in ghosts ? Yes! Long live ghosts!', all he means by all this is that he is defining ghosts as the images in a film, of which he is one, but to actually state this is to lose the fun and the ambiguity.