One must read what has already been written.
I had in mind, to make a review about a book. Recently some interest has been expressed among my Friends to look into what Derrida is all about, and one should, should one so might. This volume in particular was indicated. I know a little about Derrida and I know a little about my Friends; it pained me to anticipate them putting themselves through this murk, this brick, this STUFF--whatever--I didn’t want to see them suffer. Enough suffering by book, enough already! These Friends of mine, whose best interest I undertook to protect and defend, are talented readers all. But Derrida? You don’t want to read Derrida. Am I protecting a secret treasure which ought not be dirtied by the enjoyers of Fiction, the sullen readers of Books? No. But what do we do when faced and repeatedly threatened by this spectacle which comes under the proper name of Derrida? Read the writing and the difference, but don’t beat yourself up, and don’t beat up Derrida. That’s all I ask. No debt is owed, no balances need be corrected. Frankly, if you find yourself curious about Derrida, I mean curious like some folks find themselves curious about that which is bandied about, then Derrida is probably not speaking to you. I mean, Derrida is not speak to you. Who is he speak to, then? I don’t know. I was only overhearing.
I don’t mean to warn you off Derrida, but warn you into him. What can you expect? The audience presumed is not anything like what is known as a ‘common reader.’ Derrida presumes, not a general familiarity with something vaguely denominated ‘western philosophy,’ but an intimate and thorough familiarity with and understanding of the projects of Hegel, Husserl, and Heidegger, to limit ourselves to only three of the most complex thinkers of recent centuries. When one hears him speak of the epoché one must know what its status is in Husserl’s transcendental phenomenology. When one hears “unhappy consciousness” or “force” one must hear the corresponding sections of Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit. When one hears “destruction of the history of metaphysics,” one must know that Heidegger has read and admired all of the history of metaphysics, that Hegel is its completion. When one hears “Being” one must know whether it is Hegel’s or Heidegger’s. And then there are those other proper names; Freud, Nietzsche, Foucault, Bataille, others rendered below.
And the ‘prose,’ that style and manner of Derrida in producing his texts. It is not a matter of arbitrary posing; not a matter of obfuscation of some pre-given content or ‘substance.’ Much more it is the question of the form and the content; the thing said and its saying. To object to Derrida’s texts as they are is already to make certain presumptions about the metaphysical status of such things as substance, essence, meaning, form, etc. The very things which are in question. The very problematic of using the only language available to us to question the very thing which we are employing to question it. Of course there is no privileged meta-language, no God’s point of view to which we could escape and from which we could reflect back upon our practices without having always already been tainted by being-in-the-world, temporal beings as we are, users of language.
Reading tip: the preludes to the essays are knots of the threads which will then be woven and unwoven in the course of each piece. One must read what has already been written.
