and purely natural cry. Conversely, a speech of pure consonants and pure articulation would
become pure writ-ing, algebra, or dead language. The death of speech is therefore the horizon
and origin of language. But an origin and a horizon which do not hold themselves at its
exterior borders. As always, death, which is neither a present to come nor a present past,
shapes the interior of speech, as its trace, its reserve, its interior and exterior differance: as its
supplement.
But Rousseau could not think this writing, that takes place before and within speech. To the
extent that he belonged to the metaphysics of presence, he dreamed of the simple exteriority
of death to life, evil to good, representation to presence, signifier to signified, representer to
represented, mask to face, writing to speech. But all such oppositions are irreducibly rooted in
that metaphysics. Using them, one can only operate by reversals, that is to say by
confirmations. The supplement is none of these terms. It is especially not more a signifier than
a signified, a representer than a presence, a writing than a speech. None of the terms of this
series can, being comprehended within it, dominate the economy of differance or supplemen-
tarity. Rousseau’s dream consisted of making the supplement enter meta-physics by force.
((310))
But what does that mean? The opposition of
dream to wakefulness, is
not that a representation
of metaphysics as well? And what should dream or writing be if, as we know now, one may
dream while writing? And if the scene of dream is always a scene of writing? At the bottom of
a page of Emile, after having once more cautioned us against books, writing, signs (“What is
the use of inscribing on their brains a list of symbols which mean nothing for them?”), after
having opposed the “tracing” of these artificial signs to the “indelible characters” of the Book
of Nature, Rous-seau adds a note: “... the dreams of a bad night are given to us as philosophy.
You will say I too am a dreamer; I admit it, but I do what others fail to do, I give my dreams
as dreams, and leave the reader to discover whether there is anything in them which may
prove useful to those who are awake” [p. 76].
((317))
Notes
Translator’s Preface
1. For Derrida’s interest in his own Jewish tradition, see “Edmond Jabès et la question du
livre,” and “Ellipse,” both in L’écriture et la différence (hereafter cited in the text as ED),
(Paris, 1967), pp. 99–116, 429-36, and, of course, Glas. At the end of “Ellipse” he signs as he
quotes Jabès—“Reb Dérissa.” The few provocative remarks in response to Gérard Kaleka’s
questions after Derrida’s paper “La question du style” (Nietzsche aujourd’hui? [Paris, 1973],
1: 289; hereafter cited as QS), can provide ideas for the development of an entire thematics of
the Jew.
2.For an account of the
Tel Quel group, see Mary Caws, “Tel Quel: Text and Revolution,”
Diacritics 3, i (Spring 1973) : 2-8.
3.Edmund Husserl, L’origine de la géométrie, tr. Jacques Derrida (Paris, 1962).
Jacques Derrida, La Voix et le phénomène: introduction au problème du signe dans la
phénoménologie de Husserl (hereafter cited in the text as VP), (Paris, 1967) ; translated as
Speech and Phenomena (hereafter cited in the text as SP) by David B. Allison (Evanston,
1973) . L’écriture et la différence (Paris, 1967) . De la grammatologie (Paris, 1967) (hereafter
cited simply by page numbers in the text, page references to the French followed by
references to the present edition in bold-face type). La dissémination (Paris, 1972) (hereafter
cited as Dis) . Marges de la philosophie (Paris, 1972) (here-after cited as MP) . Positions
(Paris, 1972) (hereafter cited as Pos F;) parts of this book have been translated in Diacritics 2,
iv (Winter 1972): 6–14 (hereafter cited in the text as Pos E I) and 3, i (Spring 1973) : 33-46
(hereafter cited in the text as Pos E II). « L’archéologie du frivole, » in Condillac, Essai sur
l’origine des connaissances humaines, (Paris, 1973) . Finally,
Glas (Paris, 1974)
Four important essays that are as yet uncollected are « Le parergon, » Digraphe 2: 21–57, « La
Question du style, » op. cit., « Le Facteur de la vérité, Poétique 21 (1()75): 96–147 (soon to
appear in translation in Yale French Studies), and « Le sens de la coupure pure: Le parergon
II, » Digraphe 3, 1976.
4.Jean Hyppolite, « Structure du langage philosophique d’après la ‘Préface’ de la
‘Phénoménologie de l’esprit’ de Hegel, » The Languages of Criticism and the Sciences of
Man: the Structuralist Controversy (hereafter cited in the text as SC), Richard Macksey and
Eugenio Donato, eds. (Baltimore, 1970), p. 337. Translated in the same volume as “The
Structure of Philosophic Language According to the ‘Preface’ to Hegel’s Phenomenology of
the Mind.” The passage cited is on p. 159.
5.Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, Phänomenologie des Geistes, Suhrkamp edition (Frankfurt
am Main, 1970), p. 37; The Phenomenology of the Mind, tr. J. B. Baillie, Harper Torchbooks
edition (New York, 1967) p. 94. My general policy in quoting from English translations has
been to modify the English when it seems less than faithful to the original. I have included
references to both the original and the English, and generally included the original passage in
the text when I have modified the trans-lation.
6.Hegel, p. 65; Baillie, pp. 127–28.
7.Hegel, p. 22; Baillie, p. 79.
8.See « La dissémination, » Dis, II. x. « Les greffes, retour au surjet, » pp. 395–98, and pp. lxv–
lxvi of this Preface.
9.Marcel Proust, « La fugitive, » A la recherche du temps perdu, Pléiade edition (Paris, 1954),
3: 489; The Sweet Cheat Gone, tr. C. K. Scott Moncrieff, Vintage Books edition (New York,
1970) , p. 54, italics mine.
10.Hegel, p. 35; Baillie, p. 92.
11.Stéphane Mallarmé, ”Le Livre, instrument spirituel,” Quant au Livre, Oeuvres