Derrida's influence on, and intervention in, postcolonial criticism has always been provocative and highly controversial. One of the major philosophers of the twentieth century, Derrida invented a new and radical mode of reading that set out to unravel the metaphysical premises of ‘Western’ or Eurocentric thought, yet his resonance for the criticism of specific colonial systems remains a subject of dispute. His deconstruction of philosophical and political hierarchies, his scepticism towards the concept of ‘the West’, and, according to thinkers such as Bhabha and Spivak, his persistent interest in marginality and eccentricity have defined the very tools of postcolonial criticism. Yet others, such as Ahmad and Parry, continue to dismiss his methodology as abstract and complicit in the European structures it set out to challenge. While his entire corpus is devoted to decentring apparently grounded, stable and institutionalized systems of thought, his perspective is still frequently construed as metropolitan and insufficiently attuned to the specificities of non-European cultures to be able truly to offer a strategy for anti-colonial resistance. Derrida's reception in postcolonial circles has consequently been somewhat ambivalent, despite the undoubted importance and extent of his influence. He is responsible for the creation of a mode of criticism that serves precisely to overturn apparent, accepted hierarchies, but some readers complain that this philosophical inquiry ought to engage more closely with the everyday mechanics of the colonial system. This chapter will explore the postcolonial angle in Derrida's work, as well as the controversy it has generated, in order to suggest that his contribution relates to his questioning of the very form of philosophical thought.