Jacques Derrida has undermined the accepted rules of philosophy, rejected its methods and concepts, broken its procedural limits and contaminated philosophy with literary and other kinds of writing. Derrida's philosophy is an initially puzzling array of oblique, deviant and yet rigorous tactics for destabilizing texts, meanings and identities. "Deconstruction", as these strategies have been called, has been reviled as a politically pernicioius nihilism and celebrated as a liberatory politics of indifference. This work introduces the key strategies of Derrida's writings, explains the major controversies they have caused, and shows how Derrida himself has put these strategies to use in literature, art, architecture, and politics.