Although the term ‘deconstruction’ is closely associated with the French philosopher Jacques Derrida, deconstructive theory and practice has been appropriated and extended by a variety of groups (feminists and marxists in particular). Most attempts to define deconstruction inevitably return to Derrida's writings; it must be pointed out, however, that in addition to those versions of deconstruction that are closely related to Derrida's work, there are American versions of deconstruction (the so-called Yale school of de Man, Hartman, Hillis-Miller and others, for instance), and what might be called Neo-Marxist forms of deconstruction (involving prominent theorists such as Ernesto Laclau and Gayatri Spivak). Deconstruction is most easily defined in terms of what it is not: it is not a concept, program or system of philosophy. It is perhaps best defined as a strategy of reading, writing and analysis specifically aimed at the ‘textual unconscious’; that is to say, it works to bring to light aspects of textuality such as idealisms, paradoxes, contradictions, excesses and differences which are ‘repressed’ or passed over in silence by the text, but which, at the same time, enable narratives, discourses and systems of thought – that is to say, texts – to be produced. There are a large number of antecedents of deconstruction, but the most prominent are to be found in the work of Nietzsche, Freud, Saussure, Vološinov and Heidegger. For deconstruction there is nothing outside the (con)text, but, at the same time, there is really no pure textual or contextual identity, either. If deconstruction is forced to play what is inevitably a self-defeating game, viz. to be used as an analytical tool, it does so through recourse to a wide variety of analytical strategies. Probably the most important of these strategies of analysis are referred to in the following terms: binarisms, differance, transcendental signifier, trace, supplement, dissemination and spectrality. These are the main terms and strategies that characterize deconstructive analysis; in addition, terms such as ‘writing’, ‘parergon’, ‘pharmakon’ and ‘hymen’ are also very useful. Although deconstruction has been closely identified with the field of literary analysis, an influence that has been vigorously contested, particularly by humanist and marxist critics, it has been taken up, influenced, and contested, by numerous other fields and practitioners of analysis and enquiry, including orthodox philosophy, historiography, theology, marxism, psychoanalysis, sociology, anthropology, film theory, philosophy of science, post-colonialism and feminist studies. Deconstruction has been critiqued from a number of perspectives, although by far the most frequent criticism, assumed, to no small extent, by literary pragmatics, reacts against what it sees as deconstruction's obliviousness to grounded meanings, a position which, however, misses the deconstructive ‘point’. A more theoretically sophisticated critique of deconstruction has been mounted by the Lacanian-Marxist Slavoj Zizek, who argues, from a Hegelian perspective, that deconstruction does not adequately address the undecidability of identity.