Derrida's definition of invention

This was actually a major point of contention in our senior seminar class a few weeks back, when we were reading J.L. Austin's speech-act theory in How to Do Things with Words. Particularly when we discussed how the similarity between performative and constative (non-performative) statements begins to increase when evaluating their infelicities (lack of success; failures):

“In order to explain what can go wrong with statements we cannot just concentrate on the proposition involved (whatever that is) as has been done traditionally. We must consider the total situation in which the utterance is issued—the total speech-act—if we are to see the parallel between constative statements and performative utterances, and how each can go wrong."

Austin urges us here to seek out context as a way of identifying how both performative and constative statements can go wrong (or become "infelicitous") in distinct ways. Though performative and constative statements may appear similar without proper context, Austin argues that they become clearly different when considering individual situations.

This is almost reminiscent of J.L. Austin's "How to Do Things with Words" and his theory surrounding performative utterances v. constative utterances. Language as direct action, or "speech-acts" and not mere nonsense.