This paper intends to establish a dialogue between two texts: "Structure, Sign and Play in the Discourse of Human Sciences", by Jacques Derrida, and Nove noites [Nine nights] by the Brazilian contemporary novelist Bernardo Carvalho. Derrida's text seems to hold the origins of the deconstructionist thinking of the philosopher, and begins with an aporia pointed by Lévi-Strauss in the binary pair nature-culture to discuss the centered model of the occidental thinking. This scandal, thus, is associated to the activity of the ethnologist and has its roots in ethnography. This text seeks, therefore, to reflect upon how the fiction seizes the discourse of human sciences in order to put it in question, in a movement similar to Derrida's thinking in the permanent deconstructionism's interpellation to the scientific discourse. The narrative, which at first seemed to lead to the solution of a crime, like in a detective story, frustrates the reader's expectations, dissolving what seemed to be a consistent trajectory of a structure erected around a solid center.
game; deconstruction; truth; fiction