Choose ONE of the following topics on Derrida and deconstruction--or make up a question of your own. If you make up your own question, please state that question at the beginning of your worksheet; otherwise, you don't need to signal which question you are working with. As with the previous worksheet, the questions have different levels of difficulty. If you did well on the previous worksheet, try tackling a slightly tougher topic for this one.

1. What does Derrida add to Saussure's and/or Levi-Strauss' ideas of structure? How does Derrida define the center of a structure or system? What are the characteristics of the center? How is the center related to play? What is play, and why is it important? In answering this question, you might want to trace how our tinker-toy sculptures have evolved.

2. What is the "scandal" that Derrida says Levi-Strauss discovered? How is this "scandal" central to Derrida's ideas in this essay? How do binary oppositions function in relation to this "scandal"? How are binary oppositions central to Derrida's understanding of how the world (i.e. systems of human thought) is structured?

3. What is deconstruction as an action or practice? What does deconstruction hope to deconstruct? You may want to show how deconstruction works by trying to apply Derrida's ideas to a piece of literature, or to a philosophical idea, or to a set of culturally familiar binary oppositions.

4. Discuss this central paradox of Derridean deconstruction: "We have no language...which is foreign to this history [of Western metaphysics]; we can pronounce not a single destructive proposition which has not already had to slip into the form, the logic, and the implicit postulation of precisely what it seeks to contest" (p.85 Adams and Searle). What is Derrida saying? What might be some of the implications of his statement?