Surprise of invention : making fun of the statutory

For this special issue of The Australian Feminist Law journal we asked contributors to critically address questions about law in its relation to, and as, technology through the thematic of invention. Invention, as the late French philosopher Jacques Derrida argued, is both necessary and impossible. Law is inventive or it is nothing at all! At least, that's what we said then. This slogan, which echoes Derrida: 'Deconstruction is inventive or it is nothing at all" requires further elaboration. Now, in this introduction we consider three aspects of invention that we have found (invented and/or discovered) in the papers collected here: Plasticity, Creativity and Justice. Although Derrida linked deconstruction and invention (and as we shall see, law and technology) he also wrote that deconstruction.