ABSTRACT. Derrida remarks that exteriority and alterity are concepts which by themselves have never surprised philosophical discourse; the call to recognize failure as an "internal and positive condition" ultimately leads to a structural critique of language's conditions of possibility. Derrida aims to reach the point of a certain exteriority in relation to the totality of the age of logocentrism. The particular sciences and regional ontologies are subordinated to general ontology, and then to fundamental ontology.