This paper seeks to clarify the distinction between positivist/scientific and interpretive approaches to public policy using the critical framework of Jacques Derrida. Derrida s deconstructive method helps to clarify the relationship among state power, public policy, and the cultural "text" of "subjectivity." It is asserted that the positivistic approaches to policy formation rely on a represen...

T     deconstruction has so far resisted historicization. But perhaps the crucial factor has been the continuing presence of its main practitioner, Jacques Derrida, who refused, one might say, to become part of history. Right up to his death in October of 2004, Derrida wrote about some of the key issues facing the world today. So while deconstruction as a ‘‘theory’’ has lar...

In this paper, an exchange of letters between the philosopher Jacques Derrida and architect Peter Eisenman is used as a catalyst to discuss the material qualities of glass and its relationship with the concept of transparency in architecture. In his criticism of an architecture devoid of human qualities, Derrida uses glass, defined through Walter Benjamin’s writings, as a hard and cold material...