van der Walt, Johan --- "Law and deconstruction" [2019] ELECD 1675; in Christodoulidis, Emilios; Dukes, Ruth; Goldoni, Marco (eds), "Research Handbook on Critical Legal Theory" (Edward Elgar Publishing, 2019) 166

Book Title: Research Handbook on Critical Legal Theory

Editor(s): Christodoulidis, Emilios; Dukes, Ruth; Goldoni, Marco

Publisher: Edward Elgar Publishing

Section: Chapter 10

Section Title: Law and deconstruction

Author(s): van der Walt, Johan

Number of pages: 15

Abstract/Description:

The explication of ‘deconstruction’ put forward in this short chapter seeks to recover the radicality of the idea of deconstruction that Jacques Derrida developed in his writings. It does so by uncoupling ‘deconstruction’ from the law and from any attempt to employ it in the service of better or ‘more just’ law. Although Derrida was undoubtedly committed to any political or epistemological strategy that could lead to improvements of law that would render it ‘more just’ from a by and large social democratic point of view, it would be a mistake to believe that he considered strategies of deconstruction employable or necessary for such purposes. Notwithstanding the fact that he sometimes produced phrases or passages that seem to call for an employment of deconstruction for purposes of making the law more just, he evidently considered the aim of deconstruction, more rigorously understood, an endeavour to precipitate an experience with ‘an outside’ which dominant social and textual discourses programmatically expel from experience.