Dear Priya,

Utilising Derrida’s framework for Sufi works, poetry or otherwise, has an established and fruitful basis. Your supervisor is correct in stating that Derrida has a non-Islamic bias, though this does not necessarily invalidate the use of the tools he advances. Being so advanced in your dissertation, one direction that you could try is highlighing an awareness of Derrida’s bias, how this could impact on any potential analysis of Islamic works, and that you will be foregrounding the specifically Islamic nature of the materials you are studying. Showing an awarenss of an inherent bias and how you will address this should provide nuance to your work and satisfy the concerns raised by your professor.

Thank you prof. can I please have your direct email id as well? Sir, these were not observations from my supervisor but an external evaluator of my work with a background in Islamic studies commented so.

Deconstruction (not destruction but de-construction) involves the identification of the components of a text or argument and showing how they are put together--with the purpose of exposing what may be hidden assumptions, internal contradictions, and possibilities of constructing in a different way using the same materials. Theoretically, there is no text that cannot be deconstructed. For examples in the Hebrew Bible, see, for example, my article "Deconstruction and Biblical Narrative," Prooftexts 9 (1989) (reprinted in the book Interpreting Judaism in a Postmodern Age, 1995).