1. For an argument that notions like trace and différance come together to make up something rather like a philosophical system, see Gasché, Tain. This very thorough and impressive work argues that Derrida has been misread because of his appropriation by literary theorists, and that he needs to be restored to philosophy proper. (See especially p.3 on this point). For criticism of Gasché, see Rorty, 'Transcendental'.

2. For a good discussion of the difference between Derrida's orginal interests and the interests of his English-speaking followers, see Grumbrecht, 'Deconstruction Deconstructed'. For the claim that deconstruction should not have been extended from metaphysics to literature, that it was a mistake to have taken 'a legitimate philosophical practice ... as a model for literary criticism', see Eco, 'Intentio', p. 166.

3. See Man's reply to a request for a definition of 'deconstruction' by Robert Moynihan, in the latter's A Recent Imagining, p. 156: 'It's possible, within text, to frame a question or to undo assertions made in the text, by means of elements which are in the text, which frequently would be precisely structures that play off the rhetorical against grammatical elements.'

4. For Derrida's discussion of the similarities and differences between Heidegger's project and his own, see Margins, pp. 25-7 and 134-6. See also Megill, Prophets, chapter 7.

5. See Saussure, Course, chapter 4, sect. 4. The same point is made by Wittgenstein at many places in Philosophical Investigations.

6. This is not, of course, to say that there is no such thing as linguistic reference to non-language. But merely to repeat Wittgenstein's point that ostensive definition requires a lot of 'stage-setting'. The common-sense claim that 'There's a rabbit' is typically uttered in the presence of rabbits is undermined neither by Wittgenstein's point, nor by Quine's arguments about the inscrutability of reference, nor by Derrida's about the tendency of the signifier to slip away from the signified. For the impact of such arguments on the notion of meaning, see Stout, 'Meaning', and Wheeler, 'Extension'.

7. This phrase occurs at Derrida, Grammatology, p. 158. In its context it has a more specific and complicated sense than that usually attached to it by hostile commentators.

8. The phrase 'the transcendental signified' is one of Derrida's terms for an entity capable (per impossible) of halting the potential infinite regress of interpretations of signs by other signs. See Derrida, Grammatology, p.49, where he agrees with Pierce that nothing can stop such a regress.

9. For the distinction between these two types of philosopher, see Fine, 'Anti-Realism' and Rorty, 'Pragmatism', pp. 351-5.

10. See Davidson, 'Myth', p.165: 'Beliefs are true or false but they represent nothing. It is good to be rid of representations, and with them the correspondence theory of truth.'

11. On Derrida and Wittgenstein, see Grene, 'Derrida and Wittgenstein'; Staten, Wittgenstein; Rorty, 'Nutshell'. On Derrida and Davidson, see Wheeler, 'Extension' and 'Indeterminacy'.

12. See Davidson, 'Myth', p.163: 'Instead of saying that it is the scheme-content dichotomy that has dominated and defined the problems of modern philosophy, one could as well say that it is how the dualism of the objective and the subjective has been conceived ... [T]he most promising and interesting change that is occurring in philosophy today is that these dualisms are being questioned in new ways or are being radically reworked.' Such passages in the writings of Davidson, Putnam and other analytic philosophers parallel the decontructionists' attacks on 'the traditional binary oppositions'.

13. A similar point is made by Robert Scholes at pp. 67-73 of Protocols. Scholes is concerned to distinguish a metaphysical from a pragmatic sense of 'presence', and to argue that scepticism about the former is irrelevant to the latter.

14. See Stout, 'Relativity', pp.109-10, and Rorty, 'Circumvention', pp.20-1 for two ways of posing, and expanding on, this rhetorical question.

15. For dubeity, see Abrams, 'How to do Things'; for angrier reactions, see Hirsch, Aims, p.13, and Bate, 'Crisis'.