The Derridean ten commandments : the protocols of deconstructive interpretation in Derrida's writings

Abstract EN

Paradoxically referring to the Biblical Ten Commandments, this paper gives an account for how Derrida, implicitly, deconstructs the canon-centred reading through providing certain protocols of deconstructive interpretation.

It aims to appropriate Derrida by arguing that throughout the Derridean oeuvre, ten deconstructive protocols, analogous to the Biblical Ten Commandments, can be elicited to constitute a “force of rupture” that constantly de-territorialises any given context and defies the idea of the self-presence of meaning.

These interpretative protocols are always already open and fluid, and any attempt for deciding the meaning will thus become an activity that shows both the possibility and the impossibility of interpretation.

Concerned with the predefined limitations of texts, Derrida touches upon several politics of interpretation such as the play of differences, the trace, and the dynamics of intertextuality, the sous rature, decentring of the structure, the bricolage, the supplementary, the indeterminate, the disseminal, and the undecidable principles in texts.