Speech and Phenomena and Other Essays on Husserl's Theory of Signs

by Jacques Derrida

In Speech and Phenomena, Jacques Derriba situates the philosophy of language in relation to logic and rhetoric, which have often been seen as irreconcilable criteria for the use and interpretation of signs. His critique of Husserl attacks the position that language is founded on logic rather than on rhetoric; instead, he claims, meaningful language is limited to expression because expression alone conveys sense.

Genres: Philosophy, Nonfiction, Theory, France, Language, Linguistics, Essays

166 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1967

About the author

Jacques Derrida was a French philosopher best known for developing deconstruction, a method of critical analysis that questioned the stability of meaning in language, texts, and Western metaphysical thought. Born in Algeria, he studied at the École Normale Supérieure in Paris, where he was influenced by philosophers such as Heidegger, Husserl, and Levinas. His groundbreaking works, including Of Grammatology (1967), Writing and Difference (1967), and Speech and Phenomena (1967), positioned him at the center of intellectual debates on language, meaning, and interpretation.
Derrida argued that Western philosophy was structured around binary oppositions—such as speech over writing, presence over absence, or reason over emotion—that falsely privileged one term over the other. He introduced the concept of différance, which suggests that meaning is constantly deferred and never fully present, destabilizing the idea of fixed truth. His work engaged with a wide range of disciplines, including literature, psychoanalysis, political theory, and law, challenging conventional ways of thinking and interpretation.
Throughout his career, Derrida continued to explore ethical and political questions, particularly in works such as Specters of Marx (1993) and The Politics of Friendship (1994), which addressed democracy, justice, and responsibility. He held academic positions at institutions such as the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales and the University of California, Irvine, and remained an influential figure in both European and American intellectual circles. Despite criticism for his complex writing style and abstract concepts, Derrida’s ideas have left a lasting impact on contemporary philosophy, literary theory, and cultural criticism, reshaping the way meaning and language are understood in the modern world.

Reviews

[Alex Lee · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is surprising in that here, Derrida takes on Husserl (someone 2 generations ago) who sought to "fix" Kant's issues without introducing metaphysics... yet Derrida shows how Husserl re-introduces metaphysics by doing so; by presenting a hermeneutically sealed approach to sensemaking, one that "puts the cart before the horse" in terms of their sense of what the answer should look like.

What is even more surprising is that there are certain ideas here that Derrida develops which I had attributed to Deleuze (like sense and difference). In that sense, Derrida is more focused on the content matter whereas Deleuze is more focused on presenting the idea. Although in some regard these guys all wrote about the same thing, just from different areas.

For those seeking to understand where modernism and post-structuralism diverge, this is a great text, although practically speaking it is of no category, instead, something that emerges through the interactions of the inquiry at hand.

[Thomas · Rating 5 out of 5]

"my words are "alive" because they seem not to leave me: not to fall outside me, outside my breath, at a visible distance;"
Oftewel, ik hoor mijzelf spreken: auto-affectie.
Maar is het niet zo dat ik mijzelf enkel kan horen spreken omdat ik kan spreken? En spreek ik niet een taal, die ik heb gekregen, die mij voorafging, waar ik mij altijd al in bevind en die mij dus nooit 'eigen' is geweest? Het pure nu-moment waarop ik in absolute nabijheid sta van mijn uitdrukking, blijkt geen geïsoleerd moment, maar een deel van een keten, waarin ieder moment geen nu-moment maar een spoor is van verleden sporen. De illusie van een absoluut ik verbergt "the strange "movement" of this difference. Want waar ben ik, nu? "Ik", de ik die zogenaamd achter deze tekst staat, is dat Thomas? Waar is Thomas? Niet hier, achter, voor, tegenover de lezer (als deze er überhaupt is). Misschien is Thomas wel dood. En juist omdat Thomas - oftewel, ik, nu - mogelijk dood is, en in ieder geval afwezig blijft, wordt deze tekst leesbaar.

Goed. Waarschijnlijk de beste plek om te beginnen met Derrida. Het is interessant om te zien dat deconstructie begint in conversatie met fenomenologie en de vraag naar objectieve kennis. Het was immers Husserl's project om wiskundige waarheid te bewijzen op grond van het subject en de logische taal. Derrida toont aan dat zowel de logische taal als het subject naar iets onmogelijks verlangen: de absolute zelf-zekerheid van een ideale tegenwoordigheid.

[Michal Lipták · Rating 4 out of 5]

Well, after reading Derrida's "introduction" to "Origin of Geometry", I know the drill. Derrida is attentive reader and interpreter of Husserl - here he submits First Logical Investigation and § 124 of Ideen I. to close reading. He's interpreter only up to the point, sure, just until différance rears its head and does what it musts.

The line of criticism deployed against Husserlian "metaphysics of presence" is actually not that difficult to comprehend. In phenomenology, the notions of source, origin, self-evidence in a wholly transparent givenness, are crucial. He indeed seeks to counter all those sorts of relativism (listed under rubrics of naturalism, historicism and psychologism in "Philosophie als strenge Wissenschaft") with a notion of "self-evidence" which can understood as source of true judgments - even if the self-evidence is always already deferred, sedimented and even - we can say with Heidegger - forgotten. Phenomenology is, however, transcendental philosophy, so it can actually do with possibility - if logically, by means of questioning-back or Rückfrage, we can reach the possibility of source, the relativism is ultimately conquered.

As for Derrida, I don't think he wants to rehabilitate any sort of relativism, and moreover I think that in a way he's actually doing phenomenology (and there are indeed certain structural similarities with late Merleau-Ponty here, and Derrida himself claims affinity to Heidegger). But what he simply says is that there's no origin - there's only différance, which means: there's only difference, differentiating, deferral and deferring. Différance is operation and a result of operation that's both temporalizing and spatializing. In the latter sense it strikes at the heart of Husserl's phenomenology of time-consciousness: here Husserl differentiates between remembering (secondary memory) and retention (primary memory). Retention is passive and links together proximate now-points in temporal flux and thereby constitutes the "lived presence" whereby, for example, perception within lived presence allows for possibility of self-evidence (where e.g. "seen" ("this white", etc.) is unmediatedly "seen"). Derrida strikes right at the heart and deconstructs retention, calls temporal flux a spatialized "archi-scène" (p. 84) where now-points are spatially differentiated as absolutely new events and "lived presence" - and thus self-evidence - turns out to be mirage. There's always a mediation.

This strike should be decisive enough, and it even happens in footnote. Why then, does he spend further 100 pages on criticism? Because Derrida doesn't just want to propose metaphysical corrective to Husserl - he has more old-fashioned ambition in mind, namely to show that Husserl is inconsistent with himself, or, simply said, contradictory and wrong. Hence the painstaking deconstruction of "soliloquy" as source of pure non-indicative expression in First Investigation. As with deconstruction of practical proto-geometers (construing "more or less smooth" surfaces as planes in order to, for example, build a house) as source of geometry in "Origin of Geometry", Derrida seems correct in his criticism, but the consequences don't seem to me to be as far-reaching as Derrida believes. In his regressive analyses Husserl indeed lapses from time to time and names the "source" in a way that's as naive as it is trivial, and it necessarily proves hasty and incorrect - and, well, Husserl knows it, and he begins anew and again (admittedly, this point may be lost sometimes, especially in France where phenomenology takes this theological turn with likes of Jean-Luc Marion - but that's surely not what Derrida reacts to, since it's later occurrence, not really a thing in 1960s). These sources won't be that much dwelt upon - Rückfrage will begin anew, led by different Leitfäden, and so on. But in doing so we meticulously and continually retrace our steps and even Derrida will have to admit this is meaningful operation, something that philosophy can do.

From this point of view, actually, Derrida doesn't seem to be doing that much a different thing than Husserl. And deconstruction doesn't seem that different from phenomenological reduction. It's maybe something like "honest phenomenological reduction", which will take "there is nothing" as an answer. And thus where phenomenological reduction restarts itself, sometimes apparently for no reason, deconstruction will - even walking in reduction's steps for most of the route - seek metaphysical closure. So what we're talking about are different coping mechanisms, where Derrida's approach signalizes certain impatience (despite the fact that his engagement with Husserl up to publication of this work lasted already some 15+ years): Husserl promised rigorous science, so where are any hard facts? And yet, the continuously - and collectively - more refined terminological apparatus of phenomenology penetrates sciences, arts and politics, making them "question-back", and seek origins, even if they're necessarily elusive. Along the way they realize there're no hard facts. And in this, Derrida is actually doing phenomenology's work as a kind of attack dog - though one that bites the master, too.

Anyway, Derrida touches upon one much more central issue in phenomenology than "soliloquy" - and that is difference between neutrality/positional consciousness, with transcendental subjectivity acting a as kind of switchboard (hence the revolutionary function of cogito; though it's nothing like "voluntarism" as Derrida believes - due to the immense importance of passivity; in short, when we are aesthetically affected it's not our imagination roaming free - aesthetics are burden). There are passages in late texts in Husserliana XXIII out of which worlds can be built, there's revolutionary potential in phenomenology's emphasis on fantasy, which has arisen from quite technical discussions about the reduction in order to allow for possibility of phenomenology itself. Derrida correctly identifies this point - but doesn't push it much further beyond Husserl (who likewise didn't make sufficient use of it). Derrida was too mesmerized by the work of différance, even though, really, it doesn't change that much.

[John Lucy · Rating 3 out of 5]

Derrida is never for the faint of heart. If you are going to read this book, you should either be very interested in 20th century philosophy, literary theory, and/or phenomenology (the study of phenomenon, literally, or better, the study of signs in language); or be supremely interested in Derrida himself--maybe you've heard his name a bunch and want to to know what's up.

Still, I highly suggest reading some other work of Derrida's first. Perhaps one of his major ones, "Of Grammatology" or "Writing and Difference." The reason for that is that Derrida takes ideas that he's developed and inserts them into his commentary of Husserl's philosophies. The commentary is half exposition and interpretation, and then half modifying and disagreeing. Really, the modifying and disagreeing is less than half. And with Derrida, the main ideas are of course differance, difference, and trace.

And as always with Derrida, the writing is complex, sophisticated, and somewhat esoteric. A "layperson" could understand Derrida, it's not entirely esoteric, but it would take lots of concentration. Not that I'm a genius or anything, but I've read Derrida before and it still took me a number of re-reads at some points. Certainly this little booklet packs a punch, but the substance is not all that special, compared to what you could otherwise expect from Derrida. He is simply sifting through an other's work to insert his.

That does not warrant a recommendation. If you find yourself reading this, though, you won't regret it.

[J. S · Rating 5 out of 5]

Un hermosísimo libro de una complejidad exuberante que dudo haber comprendido en su totalidad. Sin embargo, Derrida demuestra que el proceso de deconstrucción es aplicable teóricamente desde la suma rigurosidad.

Una obra que trata, ante todo, de la fragilidad humana, de los intentos metafísicos del individuo por aferrarse al lenguaje, ansiando que su voz no discurra hasta el olvido. El lenguaje no es sino que una cáscara que apenas puede demostrar la sensación. El lenguaje es un intento más de liberarse de la muerte: es el intento de permanencia de una percepción fenomenológica, inútilmente.

El libro en sí versa en torno al significado que, en cuanto a significante, está contaminado; por escrito más aún, pues el habla permite actualizar semánticamente el contenido en un sentido socrático-platónico. El único remedio de la expresión fenomenológica pura es, pues, el soliloquio interno, cuya expresión física se resumen en cualquier intuición impresa contiene un querer-decir que, en fin, no podrá expresarse especialmente a partir de la cáscara del significante.

[Lucas Tamargo · Rating 1 out of 5]

Esta es la mayor mierda que se puede leer y que se puede haber escrito, porque no tiene ni puta idea de lo que está diciendo, pero ni puta idea de lo que está diciendo

[Jay · Rating 5 out of 5]

this text is dense, even for someone who has been reading Derrida's work for many years! On par with his work, there are parts that are almost incomprehensible unless you're intimately familiar with Husserl, however it's impossible to miss how germinal this work is to his whole project. I was impressed to find that many of the concepts and terms which central to Derrida's later work can be found here in their infancy. Moreover, this is an important text that rightfully challenges (or, corrects) the perception that Derrida's project is concerned solely language and word play.

[Stafford Davis · Rating 5 out of 5]

Jacques Derrida’s Speech and Phenomena is a pivotal text that has come to be representative of the unique self-critical turn that philosophy undertook in the late 20th century. Originally published in 1967 as La Voix et le Phénomène and translated into English in 1973, the book is an analysis of Edmund Husserl’s phenomenology and his theory of signs. Derrida critiques Husserl from a position of respect that, in his examination, both challenges and builds upon Husserl’s thought. Speech and Phenomena introduces the radical ideas that have come to be closely associated with the author fifty years on, such as, différance, the trace, and the metaphysics of presence as well as the literary writing style that both imparts and demonstrates Derrida’s philosophy. In a cursory way Derrida is known as a philosopher of language, yet at the heart of this text and his overall philosophic endeavor is an ethico-political challenge to absolute foundations in any guise.

In the “Introduction,” Derrida maintains the original German and begins with Husserl’s “sense” of a “twofold” definition (Doppelsinn) of “sign” (Zeichen) to mean either, “indication” (Anzeichen) or “expression” (Ausdruck). In this distinction, the indicative sign is a signifier with no signified concept that merely points toward the anticipation of a conceptual meaning, and is therefore meaningless. The expressive sign, on the other hand, is one in which a signifier is vitalized by its signified concept, so that it stands for something and thus contains meaningful content. Confusingly, Derrida waits until the next chapter to state Husserl’s point that “sign,” “indication,” and “expression” are often considered synonymous, and that Husserl’s intention is to ascribe meaning (Bedeutung) and sense (Sinn) to “expression” and a lack of meaning and sense to the sign that is “indication.” For Husserl, both variances of a sign occur within the self-presence of a subject, and this is the crux of what Derrida finds problematic. Derrida states that this distillation behind communication is essentially a phenomenological reduction that attempts, but ultimately fails, to divorce itself from the metaphysics it is bracketing. Derrida writes that Husserl “puts out of play all constituted knowledge, he insists on the necessary absence of presuppositions” (Derrida 4) whereupon the subject is “the source and guarantee of all value” (5) that, in the end, does not escape metaphysical presence.

Further, the Husserlian notion of “ideality” that allows for ideal meaning to maintain a sameness in infinite repetition can only be understood in a relationship to the temporality of the present. Phenomenology cannot give an explanation of authentic ideality because it requires representation in subjectivity, or “the necessary transition from retention to re-presentation” (7). This problem is emblematic of the account of absence being a non-presence in relation to a living, subjective presence. Derrida points out that the signification in language is an unsettled medium of difference between this non-presence and presence. A difference that additionally seems to unite life as the continual present to ideality as definitive meaning in the expressive signs of “living speech” (10). This linking unification, in Derrida’s interpretation of Husserl, seems to provide an advantage to the “phonè” of phoneticism, that is the vitalizing voice in speech, which in turn brings back Husserl’s phenomenology to the metaphysics which Husserl had attempted to bypass. Thus, Derrida likens this phenomena to a metaphysics of presence that is a “privilege of presence as consciousness” (16) with the result being that the “voice is a truism” (ibid). In this sense, Derrida can be understood to initiate a project in his comprehensive introduction that continues Husserl’s phenomenology with an epoché, a phenomenological reduction, of phenomenology itself.

Beginning the chapter, “Sign and Signs,” Derrida introduces the problem of translation that illustrates the lively and playful way in which he himself writes, and therefore reads as somewhat of an irony that is also communicated as subtext. Derrida expands on Husserl’s distinction of signs as indication or expression mentioned in the introduction writing, “Certainly an indicative sign is a sign, as is an expression. But unlike an expression, an indicative sign is deprived of Bedeutung or Sinn” (17). However, Derrida asserts that these functions of signification are entangled together in a de facto manner. Which is to say, Husserl can only attempt to make, at best, a de jure distinction. Derrida then recedes this magnification and questions the general meaning of a sign, thereby invoking ontological status. The question would produce answers that “pretend to assign a fundamental or regional place to signification in an ontology” (24) and further, this would presuppose a notion of truth onto sign usage in that, “One would subject sign to truth, language to being, speech to thought, and writing to speech. To say that there could be a truth for the sign in general, does this not suppose that the sign is not the possibility of truth, does not constitute it, but is satisfied to signify it – to reproduce, incarnate, secondarily inscribe, or refer to it?” (ibid). Herein is Derrida’s essential project in which his method of analysis illustrates the instability of a foundational truth or ideality that he later in the book refers to as “an ethico-theoretical act” (53).

In “The Reduction of Indication,” Derrida returns to the entanglement of the indicative and expressive. He stresses that indicative signs can be natural or artificial with the respective examples of Martian canals or stigmata. In both senses, the phenomena can be indicative of something or nothing at all. Any meaning derived would fall into expression, and so, with this seeming distinction, Derrida claims that Husserl attempts to reduce and bracket, as an epoche, the significance of indication. In effect, this would position indication outside of subjectivity. So again, with vocalization as an example, it would be difficult to discern the expressive meaning behind or in a speaker’s voice without indicative sounds or speech.

Beginning the next chapter, “Meaning as Soliloquy,” Derrida addresses the meaning and sense of expressions as well as their metaphysical temporality. Expression intends an externalization even though it originates in a consciousness. Conveying an active sensibility, he states, “Expressions as meaningful signs are a twofold going-forth beyond itself of the sense (Sinn) in itself, existing in consciousness, in the with-oneself or before-oneself which Husserl first determined as ‘solitary mental life’” (33). In this manner, the expressive sign seems to not be a sign at all, but rather only a solitary intentionality within. The “with-oneself or before-oneself” suggests a pre-linguistic consciousness that seeks a metaphysical origin. Derrida insists this pursuit is teleological by reason of the ascription of a purpose that implies a first cause, that then hierarchically causes a phenomenon such as language. This, again, reigns in Husserl’s phenomenology to a metaphysical project that Derrida characterizes as “transcendental voluntarism” (35). A dualism such as spirit and body is revealed to be less oppositional and more hierarchical on account of an origin “intentionalizing” or animating the body. In this sense, spirit is the privileged notion, yet it also needs the notion of body in its own definition producing a hierarchical, vertical structure of attachment rather than distinct opposition.

This lengthy chapter then proceeds to the physicality that Husserl describes as meaningless or pure indication. The vitality or animation that gives meaning to expression is absent in the spatial dimension of communicative bodily movements and gestures. Derrida points out that this reinforces the metaphysical nature of Husserl’s exclusion because it deprives meaning from physicality by way of a self-present language. Additionally, Derrida goes on to claim that what determines indication and its supposed distinction from expression is “the immediate nonself-presence of the living present” (37), which is to say, the empirical presence of natural phenomena as well as others (alterity) that lie outside self-presence. Paradoxically, the only way to know of this otherness that is another subjective self-presence, and non-presence to subjective presence, is through exchanged indicative signification with alterity. In this way, Husserl’s exclusion of the physical world of indication actually supports alterity. Finally, with his reinterpretation and advancement of indication, Derrida proclaims, “despite the initial distinction between an indicative sign and expressive sign, only an indication is truly a sign for Husserl” (42).

In the chapter, “Meaning and Representation,” Derrida makes the bold, and now infamous claim, that philosophy and its place within Western history are part of an “adventure of the metaphysics of presence” (51). He begins by stating and building on Husserl’s conception of “solitary mental life.” As this is pure expression and meaning to the subject with no indicative signs, the subject can only imaginatively represent something non-communicative to his or her self. In this solitary frame of mind, sign use is not needed or possible because such a mental act is completely of the present, or as Husserl writes, “at that very moment (im selben Augenblick)” (Derrida 49, qtd. Husserl Logical Investigations pp. 279-80). Derrida finds the representative, or re-presentation that is a reproduction or repetition of a presentation aspect of the “solitary mental life” troubling, because Husserl’s manifestation of re-presented thought involves interior language – a soliloquy. Derrida quotes Husserl: "One of course speaks, in a certain sense, even in soliloquy, and it is certainly possible to think of oneself as speaking, and even as speaking to oneself, as, e.g., when someone says to himself: ‘You have gone wrong, you can’t go on like that.’ But in the genuine sense of communication, there is no speech in such cases, nor does one tell oneself anything: one merely conceives of (man stellt sich vor) oneself as speaking and communicating (ibid)." Derrida contends that this immediate representation of thought to oneself is language, and further, is the very process that happens in language. Beyond this, however, Derrida stresses that metaphysical presence is at issue. To re-present in one’s mind is to employ signs in an Augenblick. Yet, signs are based in recollection and structured repetition in the sense that to know the definition of an object, for example, is to know by previous reference, and even if an object is singularly unique, it can only be known by using a combination of other signs that re-present information to understand the unique object. Husserl’s attempt to eliminate signs is indicative of all Western thought, according to Derrida, because the present is always in a privileged position that views signs as derivative of an ideal (recall ideality) or an over-simplified present.

“Signs and the Blink of an Eye” introduces Derrida’s concept of “trace” which further dismantles classical conceptions of the present. Specifically at issue is the division between the seemingly primordial origin that is recalled with “re-tention” and “re-presentation” – it seems that Derrida uses the prefix “re” to emphasize the necessary repetition involved in the presentation of self-presence in present consciousness. The Derridean trace is a temporally recurring motion between re-tention and re-presentation. The trace continually connects retention to the presentation of the present. Derrida writes that the trace “is a possibility which not only must inhabit the pure actuality of the now but must constitute it through the very movement of difference it introduces” (67). For Derrida, this trace bears the difference which informs much of the rest of the book.

In “The Voice That Keeps Silence,” Derrida returns to the phoneticism mentioned in the “Introduction.” He describes in a metaphysical sense how the auto-affective voice, the voice in which “I hear myself [je m’entende] at the same time that I speak” (77), is an act that seems to give life to a subject. Philosophy has traditionally privileged the voice over writing because the signifiers in speech are animated by the meaning in expressions, thus bringing indication and expression into an intimate vicinity. Yet even though the auto-affective voice seems to lock in a primordial origin by bracketing out the external world in its interiority, it nevertheless takes place in time, which then imposes the ideality of self-presence that employs traces to re-present the present. In this unsteady relational combination of re-presented present temporality, as well as interior and exterior spaces, is the “movement” that generates a polysemous difference, which Derrida called, “différance.”

The aptly titled chapter, “The Supplement of Origin,” concludes the book with a preliminary explanation of Derrida’s well-known neologism, différance. Although Derrida is known for his abstruse writing style, the short definition he gives to différance regarding the chapter title is lucid: “Thus understood, what is supplementary is in reality différance, the operation of differing which at one and the same time both fissures and retards presence, submitting it simultaneously to primordial division and delay” (88). The words here are clear, yet confusion may arise because the operation of différance is counter intuitive. Recall that différance is a generative movement that results from differences in the trace of representation in presence and the interiority of self-presence in relation to the exterior world. Différance, then, necessarily prevents the stability of the self-presence of consciousness, or its opposite, non-presence or absence.

In critiquing and dismantling Husserl’s phenomenological theory of signs, Derrida has established an impasse, an aporia that ultimately stands for the metaphysics of presence of Western thought. His différance illuminates the instability of this tradition. The ostensible dead end of the aporia provides Derrida with a means to think outside of the tradition that seeks logical, sustainable, meanings. The resulting deferral of meaning in this dismantling of binary, hierarchical relationships like subject/object and absence/presence, subsequently results in a proliferation of meaning that can be applied to other orthodoxies. Thus, Derrida’s engagement with Husserl is to build upon and reinforce the phenomenological project, and ultimately produce new challenges to established truths.

[I-kai · Rating 3 out of 5]

Occasionally brilliant, blissfully short, not always intelligible to me, generally not convinced. Lawlor's introduction was very helpful to me.

[MEMYSELFI · Rating 5 out of 5]

Makes no sense really smart stuff

[Federico]

..... pas sûr d’avoir vraiment compris ce que je viens de lire

[Larry · Rating 4 out of 5]

“If the possibility of my disappearance in general must somehow be experienced in order for a relationship with presence in general to be instituted, we can no longer say that the experience of the possibility of my absolute disappearance (my death) affects me, occurs to an I am, and modifies a subject. The I am, being experienced only as an I am present, itself presupposes the relationship with presence in general, with being as presence. The appearing of the I to itself in the I am is thus originally a relation with its own possible disappearance. Therefore, I am originally means I am mortal.” (P54)

[sologdin · Rating 2 out of 5]

so, this undoes Husserl's phenomenology. that's kinda cool, except that phenomenology was already a waste of space, so shrug.

[Mohammed · Rating 2 out of 5]

الكتاب شديد الصعوبة، والترجمة العربية سيئة جدا، قراته مرة ونصف ولم أجد سوى الصداع

[Alex Obrigewitsch · Rating 4 out of 5]

A thorough-going review seems less than necessary here, in light of the amount that has been written on this work over the years, as well as its relative clarity (as far as Derrida's writings go, this is by far the easiest to comprehend; that is, if you understand Husserl, but if you don't understand Husserl then it might be wondered why you are bothering with reading this - read Husserl first). And so I will leave here but a few trace thoughts.

One can garner already in this early work the traces of what will come to absorb Derrida's thought in the later years - not just the semiomania of the 60's, but questions of testament, secrecy and the unspeakable, the (de)constitutive role of death for the subject, as well as the ethical relation to the other (though here lacking its later, Levinasian ethical resonance).

The transcendental life, in its objective and ideal repeatability, is problematically founded upon a lapsing from presence - an instant of loss, unmarkable by consciousness, yet marked in and as time, is traced at the origin of the conscious act of apprehension. Because consciousness constitutes and grasps its object not in the immediacy of a present presence, but through the retentional no-longer-now that marks the lag of consciousness, there is an ecart of time-spac(ing) marking the place of the pure presence of the Urimpression. The "living presence" of consciousness is thus founded upon an absence, a void or rupture between pre-conscious marking of our fundamental passivity and the emergent (auto)constitution of consciousness in the intentional act.

The phenomenological voice, too, is marked by this originary silence, this absence of origin, so that its auto-affection, speaking to itself, is never a simple, immediate presence or knowing - for if so it would have no need of speaking, and could sinply remain silent. But it is haunted by this absence, this origin which it cannot locate - the self that speaks and the self that hears are non-identical, for the voice in its expression must trace the indicative path of the outside, marring the purity of transcendental subjectivity.

What is of primary import here, which Newton Garver in his preface seems at a loss to understand, is the role of impossibility underwriting this (and every) work - the impossibility of death, and its (de)constitutional role in the establishing of possibility. Death, the absolute absence and neutrality of identity and propriety, marks the origin in its running-off, in the perpetual effacement or withdrawal of presence before any beginning can be marked off. Writing has always already begun, and so it is never begun - it is always already being erased, erasing being, marking everything with the double mark (of nothing), without end.

This work, then, presents a sort of primal scene - a scene of absence, of non-appearance, of the play of figures caught in abyssal mimesis - the scene of writing, of the infinity of time caught in the suspension of finitude ever differing and deferred.

[Epifras]

Husserls fantasier:

den inre rösten som inte behöver tecken eller ljud för att betyda

den ljudliga inre rösten som är en fiktion och ren självaffektion där man spontant producerar en inre värld

lyssna och förstå den inre rösten finns ingen skillnad mellan betecknare och betecknad, finns ingen kropp för rösten

den är helt genomskinlig

känna livet i sin inre röst helt åtskild från en yttre verklighet rent liv utan relation till någonting, evigt liv, isolerat liv

idealiteterna upprepas i oändlighet - geometrikern upprepar en triangel i oändlighet utan att den förändras, kan upprepa den i oändlighet utan att den förändras, den inre rösten kan producera något i oändlighet men varje oändlighet markeras av ändlighet, det är bara något ändligt som tar det oändliga som sitt mål, sitt telos - detta är Derridas poäng, nämligen att oändligheten ändligheten livet och döden går in i varandra

geometrikern lever och dör

[Gilles Douaire]

Vous avez lu Husserl il y a 25 ans, et vous voulez (enfin) comprendre Derrida en lisant ce livre qui date du début de son activité, et qui de toute façon ne fait que 110 pages? Oubliez ça. Ce livre se situe à mi-chemin entre la traduction allemand/français de terminologie sur-spécialisée et la philosophie hyper pointue husserlienne, pour les initiés du doctorat seulement. Lisez la bio de Derrida plutôt.

[John · Rating 5 out of 5]

Its powerful, dramatic, difficult as all H___, and yet seems to chart one of the fundamental structures of what would come to be known as deconstruction. It is indispensable, and if nothing else the book's own excitement at its logic and arguments gives it a real inertia. Will restate though, it remains super difficult.

[Aliyah Liban · Rating 5 out of 5]

literally brain chemistry-altering !!!! It unpacks language, meaning, and presence in a way that feels like peeling back reality’s layers—mind-blowing and so deep it’s almost spiritual. If you want your perspective on words and existence completely flipped, this is the read. Trust me, it’s worth it.

[Anna Waterschoot · Rating 5 out of 5]

I have no philosophy education (I did linguistics), so there were a lot of parts I could barely understand. Though in the parts I did understand, I saw that Derrida is undeniably a genius.

My only complaint would be that I wanted some of the phrasing to be simpler, but I know that specialized academic texts require specialized jargon.

[Seth Pierce · Rating 3 out of 5]

Will pre give it 4 stars the second time I go through it ;)

[Iqra Tasmiae]

A review- https://www.waggish.org/2011/jacques-...

[Daniel Song · Rating 5 out of 5]

Read ch. 3-6 for PHIL139

[candela · Rating 5 out of 5]

son tan inspiradores... sé q un día volveré y aprenderé otra vez

[Noah Christiansen · Rating 3 out of 5]

Read:
- Introduction
- Chapter One
- Chapter Two

[Tom Pepper · Rating 5 out of 5]

A very important essay. The account of phenomenogy that Derrida offers here is absolutely relevant today, as so many people try to reinvent as "mindfulness" or "eliminative reductionism" (or under a host of other banners) the same project, with the same aporias, that Derrida is analyzing here. The critique of the "metaphysics of presence" is worth revisiting, as most people seem to have conveniently forgotten it, or refused to undersand it in the first place. A key text in the history of philosophy perhaps, but definitely in 20th century thought.

David Allison's translation is particularly good.

[Tijmen Lansdaal · Rating 3 out of 5]

Would've been more interesting if it really confronted Husserlian theory, but his interpretation is off the mark - and surprisingly naturalistic too (in its constant repetition of metaphysical problems of the inside and outside, of the one and the other). That said, like most other books of Derrida this does read like THE inauguration of deconstructive theory; 'all his fundamental concepts are explained here' bla bla bla. That just might be the case, but Of Grammatology is a lot funnier.

[Jesse · Rating 5 out of 5]

Despite there being passages I didn't fully comprehend (being largely unfamiliar with Husserl's work)as much as I did with Of Grammatology, I thoroughly enjoyed this (especially Derrida's explications of "differance") and will be moving on to another Derrida.

[capobanda]

Limiti

Mi arrendo, sono inguaribilmente ottusa.
Non riesco proprio a capire quale sia nella sostanza il contributo originale di questo testo rispetto a quello che aveva detto Johann Gottfried Herder circa trecento anni prima.

Ogni delucidazione sarà la benvenuta.

[David Markwell · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is one of the greatest philosophy books ever written. Derrida through readings of Husserl on signs and signifiers turns everything you think about reading on its head. Metaphysics, presence and the written word are taken to task. Brilliant!