The poetโฆis the man of metaphor: while the philosopher is interested only in the truth of meaning, beyond even signs and names, and the sophist manipulates empty signsโฆthe poet plays on the multiplicity of signifieds.
Jacques DerridaIt is to have a compulsive, repetitive, and nostalgic desire for the archive, an irrepressible desire to return to the origin, a homesickness, a nostalgia for the return to the most archaic place of absolute commencement
Jacques DerridaI became the stage for the great argument between Nietzsche and Rousseau. I was the extra ready to take on all the roles.
Jacques DerridaThe trace I leave to me means at once my death, to come or already come, and the hope that it will survive me. It is not an ambition of immortality; it is fundamental. I leave here a bit of paper, I leave, I die; it is impossible to exit this structure; it is the unchanging form of my life. Every time I let something go, I live my death in writing.
Jacques DerridaBut because me and myself, as you no doubt are well aware, we are going to die, my relationโand yours tooโto the event of this text, which otherwise never quite makes it, our relation is that of a structurally posthumous necessity. Suppose, in that case, that I am not alone in my claim to know the idiomatic code (whose notion itself is already contradictory) of this event. What if somewhere, here or there, there are shares in this non-secretโs secret? Even so the scene would not be changed. The accomplices, as you are once again well aware, are also bound to die.
Jacques Derrida