Perhaps I am; where does this evil twin reside?

I am speaking of the work of Derrida, and the work of his followers that is (for the sake of simplicity) published by university presses-- because that's what I read.

If the "evil twins" are undergrad posers, well, I don't really know or care what they're up to these days.

I think that statement illustrates the disconnect...."figuring out" is what should be done, but "deciding" is what is often actually done. To me it seems you are talking about the uncompromised (correctly implemented) theory, whereas he is talking about what the theory has typically become, in actual practice. If that makes any sense.

It makes sense, but it's not what I was getting at.

My point was a Nietzschean one (which Derrida concurs with).

We don't consciously choose how to interpret a text.

Here's a link to an old Usenet post I wrote, which collects a few Derrida quotations, one of which is precisely on this subject:

http://groups.google.com/group/humanities.classics/browse_th...

(Sorry about the crappy formating there...)