Editing Deconstruction (section)

====Not a method====
Derrida states that "Deconstruction is not a method, and cannot be transformed into one".<ref name="Wood"/>{{rp|3}} This is because deconstruction is not a mechanical operation. Derrida warns against considering deconstruction as a mechanical operation, when he states that "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".<ref name="Wood"/>{{rp|3}} Commentator Richard Beardsworth explains that:

<blockquote>Derrida is careful to avoid this term [method] because it carries connotations of a procedural form of judgement. A thinker with a method has already decided ''how'' to proceed, is unable to give him or herself up to the matter of thought in hand, is a functionary of the criteria which structure his or her conceptual gestures. For Derrida [...] this is irresponsibility itself. Thus, to talk of a method in relation to deconstruction, especially regarding its ethico-political implications, would appear to go directly against the current of Derrida's philosophical adventure.<ref>{{cite book|last1=Beardsworth|first1=Richard|title=Derrida & The Political|date=1996|publisher=Routledge|location=London|isbn=978-1134837380|page=4}}</ref></blockquote>

Beardsworth here explains that it would be irresponsible to undertake a deconstruction with a complete set of rules that need only be applied as a method to the object of deconstruction, because this understanding would reduce deconstruction to a thesis of the reader that the text is then made to fit. This would be an irresponsible act of reading, because it becomes a prejudicial procedure that only finds what it sets out to find.