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Jacques Derrida Jacques Derrida 'Of the very many books on Derrida that have already appeared, Marian Hobson's must surely count as one of the most challenging and the most stimulating. Her own text interacts with those which she discusses in ways that are truly illuminating of both - not least in the very fact and nature of their interaction. Hobson displays a remarkable sense for the main deeply underlying themes of the philosophical-cum-literary tradition within and through which Derrida is working, themes which continue to work them­ selves out in his - and indeed her - writing.' Alan Montefiore, Emeritus Fellow of Balliol College, Oxford 'In this exceptionally sophisticated book, Marian Hobson has done what no other book to date on Derrida has done: to explore the relation of argu­ ment to the mode of writing. By exhibiting the patterns of organizations, filaments of construction, micromovements, circuits of argumentation, which constitute the undercurrent of his writings from which, like the tips of icebergs, Derrida's coinages of individual terms, positions, and deter­ mined arguments, including "deconstruction", emerge to be thematized, Hobson succeeds in demonstrating the rigor of Derrida's work, more precisely, the unheard kind of consistency that characterizes it. Above all, this superb study on the question of language in Derrida, and Derrida's language, by emphasizing his writerly strategy of sketching links, rein­ forcing connections between words, themes, arguments, and providing for extensions into other texts, shows Derrida's work to stage incalculable possibilities of connection from whence future commentaries are allowed to proceed.' Rodolphe Gasche, Eugenio Donato Professor of Comparative Literature, State University of New York at Buffalo Marian Hobson is Professor of French at the University of London, Queen Mary and Westfield College. She is the author of The Object of Art (1982) and co-editor of Reappraisals of Rousseau (1980) and Rousseau et le dix-huitieme siecle ( 1993 ). Critics of the Twentieth Century General Editor: Christopher Norris University of Wales, Cardiff Northrop Frye Deleuze and Guattari The theoretical imagination Ronald Bogue Jonathan Hart Postmodern Brecht A. J. Grimas and the Nature of A re-presentation Meaning Elizabeth Wri.q'ht Ronald Schleifer Christopher Caudwell The Ecstasies of Roland Barthes Robert Sullivan Mary Bittener Wiseman Figuring Lacan Paul Ricouer Criticism and the cultural unconscious S. H. Clark Juliet Power MacCannell Jiirgen Habermas Harold Bloom Critic in the public sphere Towards historical rhetorics Robert C. Holub Peter de Bolla William Empson Julia Kristeva JohnLechte Prophet against sacrifice Paul H. Fry Geoffrey Hartmen Criticism as answerable style Antonio Gramsci G. Douglas Atkins Beyond Marxism and postmodernism Renate Holub Introducing Lyotard Art and politics Kenneth Burke Bill Readings Rhetoric and ideology Ezra Pound as Literary Critic Stephen Bygrave K.K. Ruthven Roman Jakobson F. R. Leavis Life, language, art Michael Bell Richard Bradford Jacques Derrida Opening lines Marian Hobson ~~ ~~~!~;n~~:up LONDON AND NEW YORK First published 1998 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon, OX14 4RN Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada by Routledge 711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017 Transferred to Digital Printing 2011 ©1998 Marian Hobson Typeset in Gaillard by Routledge All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilized in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Hobson, Marian. Jacques Derrida: opening lines/ Marian Hobson. p. em.- (Critics of the twentieth century) Includes bibliographical references and index. l. Derrida, Jacques- Language. I. Title. II. Series: Critics of the twentieth century (London, England) B2430.D484H63 1998 98-13838 194-dc21 CIP ISBN 0-415-02197-9 (hbk) ISBN 0-415-13786-1 (pbk) Publisher's Note The publisher has gone to great lengths to ensure the quality of this reprint but points out that some imperfections in the original may be apparent. For AB, JB, MGC, KE, JK, MJ, MNJ, RP, SP,AS, MW. Contents Acknowledgements xi List ofabbreviations Xlll Introduction 1 1 Histories and transcendentals 7 Writing and difference 9 Sketching out the foreground: 'writing1, <difference 1 and <deconstruction 1 9 A detour round 'writing1 13 <Deconstruction 1 as an articulation ofphilosophy and history of philosophy 15 Deconstruction and empiricism 20 Empiricism and transcendentality 26 Writing and universal conditions 30 Universal conditions and historicism 32 The <syntax1: transcendentals and historicity 35 The infinites 41 The two infinites 42 HusserFs Kantian Ideas and historicity 46 Infinity ofand in Idea 49 The aporias ofthe infinite 52 History and absolute infinity 55 2 Replications 59 Roots and the a priori 61 Writing and the 'fold' 67 Doubles 72 Reflexivity as mise-en-abyme 75 Reflexivity and subjectivity 78 Quotation 84 viii Contents The doubling of irony 85 Indirect speech 88 Parody of/and philosophy 92 The modality of quotation 96 Reiterated modalities 101 3 Strange attractors: singularities 107 Circuits of argument 107 A detour about language 109 Phantasms and fetishes Ill Time constructs 115 Singularities 120 The negotiation ofthe singular reference 121 Singulars and proper names 125 The thing and the went 130 Other 135 Singularity and the Law 142 4 Negatives and steps: 'pas sans pas' 147 Negation and the infinite: two forms of relation 148 Differance and Hegelian negation 154 The double bind and stricture 161 Stricture: connecting and constituting 164 The postal principle and the 'pas sans pas' 169 Sending 173 Tangled hierarchies 177 Return calls and histories 180 The unknown and the neuter 182 5 Contacts 187 The random and connection 190 'Assembling' in language or in a particular language 201 Nominalization and metaphor 207 'A non-classical dissociation of thought and language' 211 'A subjectless transcendental field'? 219 Prelogic 220 Writing and consistency 224 Consistency and repetition 230 Coda 234 Contents ix Notes 236 Bibliography 269 Name index 279 Subject index 283 Acknowledgements A debtor may not always be conscious of debts contracted. I have tried to record what I owe in footnotes and references, but I am aware of being a great deal more endebted than can easily be flagged, both to the writings and to the conversation of Geoff Bennington, Rodolphe Gasche, Chris Johnson and Sam Weber. Without Peggy Kamuf's generosity in reading several draft chapters and in responding to queries, this book might still be on the word processor. Terence Cave, Alan Montefiore and Margaret Whitford, each with a variety of dour kindness, helped me clarifY the argument at certain important points; I owe a great deal to their patience. I owe thanks to Chris Norris, the editor of the series, for commissioning what was in the first stages of its composition a very different book, and for helping the finished manuscript through its last stages. At various points, I have been very grateful for comments or advice on problems I encountered from Tom Baldwin, Nick Denyer and Simon Glendinning. Sidney Allen has over a long period supplied me with philological detail which would have taken a long time to constitute unaided. I am grateful to Marianne Ronfle-Nadaud for her help in locating and in translating some of the quotations, and in constructing the bibliography. Finally, the book would not exist in a final form without Rodney Laing, Nick Higgins, and the NCCU at Addenbrooke's Hospital, Cambridge; nor without a group of friends, whose unsentimental visits, whose chatter over, across, round and at me when comatose, kept the unconscious on the move and body and soul together. The book is dedicated to them. As a writer Derrida is both productive and difficult. This creates material and psychological difficulties in writing about his work. The library of Trinity College, Cambridge has made some matters of bibliography a great deal easier than they might otherwise have been, and I owe thanks. I am enor­ mously grateful to the French Department of the Johns Hopkins University for the visiting professorship which allowed me the time I needed to finish the book. Writing in a case like this, where attempting to get things right is more than a matter of rectitude (in itself quite important enough) because the object of study can read and react, is a strange enterprise. The work studied is in the public domain, but has a live connection back to the xii Acknowledgements private concerns of its author. I am grateful to my book's subject for an approval of the project which remained general and forebearing of further enquiry. Abbreviations The edition referred to appears under the date and title in the bibliography; italicized abbreviations refer to the translation (see under the original edition for details of the translation). Derrida AF Archeologie du frivole, 1973 Mf Affranchissement du transfert et de la lettre, 1982b ALT Alterites, Derrida and Labarriere, 1986b AP Apories, 1996 'At this very moment' 'At this very moment in this work here I am', 1991, see Psyche, 1987b Beehive 'Women in the beehive', 1984b CP La Carte postale: de Socrate a Freud et au-dela, 1980 D La Dissemination, 1972a D Dissemination, 1981 DP Du droit a la philosophic, 1990c DT Donner le temps, 1991a ED VEcriture et la difference, 1967b 'Entre crochets' 'Entre crochets', 1976a EO Ear of the Other, 1988, see VOreille de !'autre, 1982a Eperons Eperons: les styles de Nietzsche, 1976b Force Force de loi, 1994 Force Force ofLaw, 1992 G De lagrammatologie, 1967a G Of Grammatology, 1974 Genese Le Probteme de la genese dans la philosophic de Husserl, 1990b Glas Glas, 1974 (trans.
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