Derrida, “Letter to a Japanese Friend” (1983)

Deconstruction is not a method and cannot be transformed into one. Especially if the technical and procedural significations of the word are stressed. It is true that in certain circles (university or cultural, especially in the United States) the technical and methodological "metaphor" that seems necessarily attached to the very word deconstruction has been able to seduce or lead astray. Hence the debate that has developed in these circles: Can deconstruction become a methodology for reading and for interpretation? Can it thus be allowed to be reappropriated and domesticated by academic institutions?

It is not enough to say that deconstruction could not be reduced to some methodological instrumentality or to a set of rules and transposable procedures. Nor will it do to claim that each deconstructive "event" remains singular or, in any case, as close as possible to something like an idiom or a signature. It must also be made clear that deconstruction is not even an act or an operation. . . .

Deconstruction takes place, it is an event that does not await the deliberation, consciousness, or organization of a subject, or even of modernity. It deconstructs itself.

Graff, “Determinacy/Indeterminacy”

In any case, with respect to the type of indeterminacy that stems from the self-deceit allegedly built into language, the point is that some instances of this indeterminacy are more interesting and plausible than others. The most interesting and plausible instances ("'This living hand") would seem to be those in which the desire to transcend the condition of language is an explicit preoccupation of the text, as opposed to a theme that is attributed to the text on the ground that it is present in all language. To put it another way, this type of indeterminacy becomes more interesting the less one has to rely, in order to produce it, on something that is supposedly the case for all language.

David Richter, “Structuralism and Deconstruction,” in The Critical Tradition

Despite the inventiveness of these readings, it became clear that regardless of the text analyzed the usual end product of deconstructive criticism was aporia: the intellectual vertigo caused by looking into an apparently endless hall of mirrors. This is an effect that, unfortunately, palls on repetition. Many scholars, initially struck by the power of deconstruction, found that, no matter how inventive the path, each venture led invariably to the same vista.