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An important feature of [[Derrida]]'s [[deconstruction]] and of his critique of [[logocentrism]]'s neglect of [[writing]], as typified by the Western [[tradition ]] from [[Plato]] to [[Saussure]] and [[Levi-Strauss]].

Derrida adopts the term 'supplement' from [[Jean-Jacques Rousseau, who argues in his essay on the origins of [[language]] that writing is no more than a [[supplement]] to, or parasite on, a [[natural ]] spoken language, and who [[notes ]] in his ''[[Confessions]]'' that [[masturbation]] is a 'dangerous supplement' to normal [[sexual ]] intercourse.Derrida contends that, if [[speech]] has to be supplemented or supplanted by [[writing]], it cannot be [[naturally ]] [[self]]-sufficient and must therefore be characterized by an [[absence]] or [[gap]], which he describes as an 'originary lack'[[Language]] does not, that is, originate in a natural [[state ]] of completion as there is no extra-[[linguistic ]] point of origin, but merely the 'originary lack'.It is the [[logic ]] of supplementarity that makes [[nature ]] or [[speech]] appear to be the prior term; at the same [[time]], the [[chain ]] of [[supplement]]s or substitutions reveals the [[lack]] within it.Any attempt to find a pure point of origin, such as [[Husserl]]'s attempt to ground [[phenomenology]] in pure [[perception]], can be shown to follow the same logic and to mistake a [[supplement]] for an origin.[[Masturbation]] is a [[supplement]], but if it is to function as such, it must resemble what it repalces; it may be a [[form ]] of [[autoeroticism]], but it still focuses on the [[imaginary|imagined]] [[object]] that can never be possessed.

Here, however, it would be productive to introduce the [[distinction ]] between the [[public ]] symbolic Law and its [[obscene ]] supplement: the [[notion ]] of the obscene [[superego ]] [[double]]-supplement of [[Power ]] implies that there is no Power without [[violence]]. Power always has to rely on an obscene [[stain ]] of violence, [[political ]] [[space ]] is never "pure" but always involves some kind of reliance on "pre-political" violence. Of course, the [[relationship ]] between political power and pre-political violence is one of mutual implication: not only is violence the necessary supplement of power, (political) power itself is always-already at the roots of every apparently "non-political" relationship of violence. The accepted violence and direct relationship of subordination in the [[Army]], [[Church]], [[family ]] and [[other ]] "non-political" [[social ]] forms is in itself the "[[reification]]" of a certain ethico-political [[struggle ]] and decision - what a critical [[analysis ]] should do is to discern the hidden political [[process ]] that sustains all these "non-" or "pre-political" relationships. In [[human ]] [[society]], the political is the encompassing [[structuring ]] [[principle]], so that every neutralization of some [[partial ]] [[content ]] as "non-political" is a political gesture par excellence.

This [[concept ]] relies on our [[understanding ]] the distinction between [[reality]] and the [[Real]].

[[Reality]], as we [[know ]] it, therefore, is always [[Symbolic]]. However, the [[Symbolization]] of the [[Real]] is, and cannot be, [[complete]].

All of which is [[another ]] way of saying that [[reality]] and [[ideology]] are mutually implicated in each other.