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Margaret Davies, "The Proper: Discourses of Purity", Law and Critique IX/2 (1998), 147-173: As Derrida has indicated, Western Philosophy is a 'metaphysics of the proper'. The 'proper' can be described as a configuration of conceptually-related characteristics, such as self-possession, presence, purity, singularity, and propriety, many of these terms surfacing at critical points in Derrida's work. This article elaborates on the notion of the proper with particular reference to law, legal positivism, and the legal concepts of property and personality. In addition to the work of Derrida, a variety of sources are drawn upon, including several literary works (by Suniti Namjoshi and Kate Grenville), to illustrate the ways in which the proper structures thinking around the person, law and ownership. In doing so, the article draws connections between the different dimensions of the proper, and concludes by considering some of the implications of Derrida's deconstruction of the proper for legal thinking, especially in relation to property. e-mail: margaret.davies@flinders.edu.au

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