Apophatic Elements in Derrida’s Deconstruction

Ivana Noble

1. Introduction

To speak about apophaticism in Derrida runs two risks. The first, would be to dismiss the theme completely and say that Derrida explicitly distances himself from the apophatic tradition and sees it as a ‘rhetoric of negative determination' or only as another type of theology, which aims at strengthenning claims by which we can grasp divine essence.[1] Derrida calls this hyperessential theology, which restores the order it puts into question. He remains critical of any determination, whether positive or negative. He argues that what is based in a negative determiner still attempts to give an identity (non-entity) to who we are and what we do and how we relate to one another and our world and to God. Thus, it remains a "negative" mirror image of the positive determination.[2] The second risk is to consider Derrida a proponent of apophaticism too quickly. There are overlapping themes in Derrida's deconstruction and in the apophatic tradition, as will be demonstrated, but there are also Derrida's criticisms of apophaticism. Here an important question arises, namely, what exactly Derrida considers apophaticism to be. Drawing on Dionysius and Meister Eckhart in particular, Derrida seems to make little distinction, if any, between the Western via negativa and Eastern apophaticism.[3] He also does not take into account criticisms of apophatic hyperessentialism, which, as can be found, for example, in Gregory of Nyssa,[4] is found in the apophatic tradition itself. And finally, we cannot fit him too easily into a Christian theological framework as his own background is in Judaism.

The aim of this article is to shed more light on the relation of Derrida's deconstruction to apophatic method. In order to do that, I will first examine Derrida's concept of deconstruction and its targets: the logic of identity and the metaphysics of presence. Here I will trace Derrida's arguments for not treating deconstruction as yet another approach claiming to give access to a more certain (non-)knowledge. It will be argued that , perhaps, similarly to Gregory of Nyssa, Derrida attempts to challenge the claims to possibilities of any final and unchangeable determination of meaning and truth in our language about the world in which we live, about ourselves or even about God. This will give me a base on which to examine Derrida's explicit relation to the apophatic tradition and to which aspects of apophatic thinking are to be found in Derrida's deconstruction, which ones he distances himself from, and which ones are missing, and thus where a Christian theologian employing Derrida's method has to rely on other sources.

2. Two targets of Derrida s deconstruction

Where does Derrida's concept of deconstruction come from? What is it related to? These are the main questions of this part. In order to be able to answer these questions I have at least to sketch a development of his thinking.

Derrida's early period of writings is strongly influenced by the rigor of phenomenological analysis. His first two works are directly dedicated to Husserl; an Introduction to Husserl s L Origine de la g om trie (1962) and La Voix et le ph nom ne: Introduction au probl me du signe dans la ph nom nologie de Husserl (1967).[5] In the same year he published two other works, a collection of essays L Ecriture et la diff rence (Writing and Difference), and De la grammatologie (Of Grammatology). In these writings we can trace the roots of Derrida s deconstruction. He approaches themes of violence in metaphysics, representation and misrepresentation, assumptions of rationally structured meaning and the radicality of metaphorical language. His deconstruction starts in literary criticism. He sees language as radically metaphorical, deprived of any literal meaning and claims that we have to do away with any idea that a text discloses any single truth value which is there to be discovered: 'The "rationality" ‑ but perhaps that word should be abandoned... inaugurates the deconstruction, not the demolition but the de‑sedimentation, the de‑ construction, of all the significations that have their source in that of logos. Particularly the signification of truth.'[6] Concentration on logos led to logocentrism, the "impurity" of writing, to the preoccupation with the "proper", the "distinguished", the "literal", the "exclusively clean",[7] which contrasts with the always changing living speech.

Deconstruction has as its main target the logic of identity, which is derived from Aristotle. It consists of three laws: (i) the law of identity: whatever is, is; (ii) the law of contradiction: nothing can both be and not be; and (iii) the law of exclusion: everything must either be or not be.[8] This logic of identity, according to Derrida, lies at the heart of Western metaphysics and its main fault is that it approaches life as a theory, where everything can be fitted into the prescribed categories. Derrida claims that the logic of identity is an exclusivist system disregarding differences and depriving life of creative power. It treats reality as static, homogeneous, logically coherent and essentially simple. The whole dualist metaphysical vocabulary is, according to Derrida, a result of the process of excluding the different. Concepts like sensible‑intelligible, ideal‑real, internal‑external, fiction‑truth, nature‑culture, speech‑writing, activity‑passivity, etc. propose that there is a fixed "objective" structure of reality, which does not change. Such credulity, according to him, has to be deconstructed. Then a creative unboundedness of reality can be rediscovered, where the different is no longer excluded or imprisoned in fixed metaphysical rules. For this purpose he introduces the notion of diff rance. This neologism attempts to combine the two meanings of the French verb diff rer ‑ to "differ" and to "defer". Derrida s diff rance points to the finitude of reason and the permanent impossibility of absolute knowledge .[9] Concerning the "diff rance", Derrida goes back to Saussure's structuralist theory, where 'language in its most general form could be understood as a system of differences, "without positive terms"'.[10] Saussurian analysis brings Derrida to the recognition of an 'unconceptualisable [sic] dimension' in language. Lechte concludes: ‘Difference without positive terms implies that this dimension in language must always remain unperceived, for strictly speaking, it is unconceptualisable. With Derrida, difference becomes the proto‑type of what remains outside the scope of Western metaphysical thought... Difference is not an identity [we can add, not even a negative identity]; nor is it the difference between two identities. Difference is difference deferred.'[11]

John D. Caputo explains Derrida s diff rance in terms of meaning as an effect produced by the spacing between signifiers , and points out that the system of such meanings is not a system, does not close over, but remains in a permanently open‑ended condition . Diff rance makes it possible both to say something and impossible to nail it down definitively, decidedly. [12] Caputo puts it as follows:

‘We never get a chance to write from on high, we never win the transcendental high ground. We write from below, slowly and painfully forging unities of meaning from the flow of signifiers... unities about which we keep our fingers crossed that they will get us through the day. We are always inside and outside truth, unable to stop the rush of truth, yet unable, too, to hold truth in place and stop its rushing off.'[13]

Derrida's emphasis on not reducing language to the identity of its concepts is attractive; however, this also means that words do not have any sharp boundaries, they can become circular, which makes communication incredibly difficult. Here is the vulnerability of Derrida's approach: when the fixed objective structure of reality is gone, the conceptualisable truth is deconstructed, what is left? Gregory of Nyssa, like Derrida, argued for an awareness that language can never grasp the essence of things,[14] yet we can acknowledge things in their effects.[15] Derrida's deconstruction is left with the problem of missing reference. Both Gregory and Derrida emphasized the constant striving and straining of humankind on the never‑ending journey, yet for Gregory this is a never-ending journey towards God, while this is absent in Derrida.

Derrida's deconstruction is, in the final analysis, addressed to a "metaphysics of presence". Presence is perceived as particular and temporal. Derrida speaks about "positing" presence in events. He points out, however, that events have a paradoxical structure. Jonathan Culler presents Derrida's view in the following way: 'for presence to function as it is said to, it must have the qualities that supposedly belong to its opposite, absence.'[16] The difference between presence and absence in Derrida's terms is not grasped in an immediate experience, but in a reflective reconstitution of presence. We posit presence through an interpretation, through a fiction about it, where an original lack of something makes possible an appreciation of its presence. And on the other hand, presence provides us with a permanent destruction of such fictions and their principles.[17]

Paul Ricoeur states that deconstruction as opposed to identity faces the problem, ‘but what about absolute difference?'; for deconstruction as opposed to presence, the problem is, ‘but what about [the] impossibility to "recognize the same"?' He asks further, ‘Can deconstruction be identified or presented?' He points out that there is no way of answering the question of "what do you mean" by deconstruction, and no way to "experience" deconstruction. ‘Deconstruction has to be deconstructed reflexively', says Ricoeur, and contrasts it with positions, that built a system on the initial critique they represented. Thus, deconstruction is not nihilism, atheism, meaninglesness or pure vacuity, as a Buddhist approach might propose. The question of the degree to which it can be compared to apophatic thinking remains open. If as I want to propose in the following section it can be so compared, Ricoeur says, ‘then it is constructed by the love of God and our love to God.'[18]

4. Derrida on Apophaticism

When we deal with Derrida's relation to apophaticism, we have to be aware that he does not make a distinction between the Eastern apophasis and the Western via negativa. He uses the concepts as synonymous and places them under the one heading of negative theology.[19] Thus, his references to negative theology are relevant for the analysis of his explicit relation to the apophatic tradition as well. His most detailed consideration of the subject is contained in his essay ‘How To Avoid Speaking: Denials'.[20] But his relation to the apophatic tradition (negative theology) as a question has been with him for some considerable time. Already in his essay ‘Différance' (1968) he gives a considerable account of why his work is close to negative theology and yet cannot be identified with any form of it:

‘So much so that the detours, locutions, and syntax in which I will often have to take recourse will resemble those of negative theology, occasionally even to the point of being indistinguishable from negative theology. Already we have to delineate that différance is not, does not exist, is not present-being (on) in any form; and we will be led to delineate also everything that it is not, that is, everything; and consequently that it has neither existence nor essence. It derives from no category of being, whether present or absent. And yet those aspects of différance which are thereby delineated are not theological, not even in the order of the most negative of negative theologies, which as one knows are always concerned with disengaging a hyperessentiality beyond the finite categories of essence and existence, that is, of presence, and always hastening to recall that God is refused the predicate of existence, only to acknowledge His superior, inconceivable, and ineffable mode of being'.[21]

From here onwards Derrida charges negative theology with attempts to reestablish yet even stronger form of hyperessentiality by means of a negative definition, something, which can be already seen with Eunomius's attempt to find a name for God which is descriptive of divine essence.[22] In spite of criticisms from Jean-Luc Marion,[23] of which Derrida gives a detailed account, he does not change his position, and in his later essay ‘How To Avoid Speaking: Denials' gives the folloving definitions of the negative theology:

‘Under the very loose heading of "negative theology" as you know, one often designates a certain form of language, with its mise en sc ne, its rhetorical, grammatical, and logical modes, its demonstrative procedures - in short a textual practice attested or rather situated "in history", although it does sometimes exceed the predicates that constitute this or that concept of history.'[24]

A couple of lines further on he states that, although there is not one single negative theology, but a variety of different ones, they still have in common a ‘rhetoric of negative determination' considering that ‘every predicative language is inadequate to the essence, in truth to the hyperessentiality (the being beyond Being) of God', and consequently claim that ‘only a negative ("apophatic") attribution can claim to approach God, and to prepare us for a silent intuition of God.'[25] Then, Derrida lists three types of usual objections against ‘everything that resembles negative theology': (i) ‘You prefere to negate; you affirm nothing'. This objection leads to charges, justified or unjustified, of nihilism and atheism; (ii) You speak for nothing, ‘only for the sake of speaking, in order to experience speech'. Here Derrida says that to experience speech itself is not saying nothing, and nor is speaking to no one; (iii) It leads to the negative manifestation of God. ‘[F]rom the moment the proposition takes a negative form, the negativity that manifests itself need only be pushed to the limit', and the hyperessentiality of God is reestablished, ‘Every negative sentence would already be haunted by God or by the name of God'. An ‘inversion has always already taken place... in order to say that divinity is not produced but productive.'[26] This third objection captures most of Derrida's attention. He says that when the apophatic discourse is analysed in its

‘logico-grammatical form ...it perhaps leads us to consider the becoming-theological of all discourse. ...God would be not merely the end, but the origin of this work of the negative. Not only would atheism not be the truth of negative theology; rather, God would be the truth of all negativity. One would thus arrive at a kind of proof of God - not a proof of existence of God, but a proof of God by His effects, or more precisely a proof of what one calls God, or of the name of God, by effects without cause, by the without cause.'[27]

And it is here where Derrida distances himself from the apophatic (negative) theology: ‘No, what I write is not "negative theology."'[28] Yet, this refusal springs from a similar insight to that of Gregory when he sought to refute Eunomius arguments. The negative can prove as rigid a determiner as the positive ‑ what we cannot say about God being as limiting and destructive as any positive theology. Derrida is unwilling to accept a place among the negative theologians if that means accepting that the not‑saying of God is simply a variant on the saying of God. For, in his reading of Dionysius and Meister Eckhart, but also of Augustine, he finds repeated reference to hyperessentiality , to being beyond being.[29] But such reference is not so much subverting a positive theology as replacing it. Hyperessentiality is still fundamentally an ontological statement, one which is rooted firmly within a neo‑Platonic metaphysics. The problem is not solved, merely transposed.

Derrida also refers to more contemporary discourses resembling the one of negative theology, to Wittgenstein and Heidegger in particular. Derrida recalls the end of Wittgenstein's Tractatus: ‘The inexpressible, indeed, exists. It shows itself; it is the mystical' and ‘Concerning that about which one cannot speak, one must remain silent.'[30] Derrida examines the necessity Wittgenstein speaks about, the necessity of ‘the trace', as Derrida puts it, a trace in speech, a promise for future when ‘one must speak' of ‘what is as yet unpresentable'.[31] Wittgenstein provokes Derrida to give an account of his silence in the face of this promise. Derrida states that ‘this promise is older than I am', it is a ‘destination toward speech, this silence yet remains a modality of speech: a memory of promise and a promise of memory.'[32] But then, there is Derrida's somewhat odd conclusion:

‘"how to avoid speaking" since I have already started to speak and have always already started to promise to speak? That I have already started to speak, or rather that at least the trace of speech will have preceded this very speech, one cannot deny. Translate: one can only deny it. There can only be denial of what is undeniable.'[33]

Thus, we are left with a response as a kind of a response to a provocation or to being asked to do an impossible task. And yet there are ways in which Derrida does want to retain something of the insight of negative theology, precisely of the unspeaking of God which it at least implies: hence the title of his essay. In other words, at stake for him is not so much the negative understanding, a negative epistemology or metaphysics to substitute a previous more positive one. Instead, he is interested in not‑saying, in how it is possible to not‑speak God, in what precedes such not‑speaking.

Does it mean, then, that Derrida argues for a kind of metaphysics of silence, which would take him back to where he started with his critique of the metaphysics of presence? He addresses this issue, when dealing with the contribution of Heidegger. Heidegger's What is Metaphysics, Derrida argues, can be read as an example of a negative discourse. Heidegger, according to him, points out the strangeness of what is as the wholly other, of what transcends Dasein. But Heidegger does not solve the problem of how to avoid speaking of Being. Derrida writes that Heidegger claims that a certain ‘topology of Being' is necessary, which can help us to avoid ‘objectifying representation', including a negative objectifying representation.[34] Even God's essence cannot be expressed by means of Being, and faith has no need to do so. Faith has a need of a place where one can encounter God, a place of God's revelation, a place of human prayer. But whether such a place is possible, Derrida leaves as an open question.[35]

Here another term of Derrida s comes into play, that of d n gation , which is sometimes translated into English as denial , but which is perhaps best left as denegation . The French term (a translation of the German Verneinung) operates as an affirmative of negation, or a double movement of negation. This is for him an unconscious movement prior to speech or action, as well as a conscious movement within speech. Until the unconscious motivation for our words and deeds is felt, they remain un‑words and un‑deeds. With the motivation, we can become conscious of them, though always as past or future.

It is in this context that Derrida understands negative theology. It both constitutes a form of theology, a conscious movement within speech towards a clearer explication or (not‑)speaking about God, but at the same time it deconstitutes that theology, by the unconscious recognition of the impossibility of the task it has set itself. To arrive at an understanding of God, to have knowledge of God is necessarily to see in God the incomprehensible, the unknowable. It is to become aware of the lack of understanding and ignorance.

Derrida also raises the question about which "place", which ground, one avoids speaking from. Is it because one wants to keep a secret? Or is it because one does not have the secret, that in a way what is expected to be uncovered is still found as hidden? Or is it because of holding on to the secret that there is no secret? He states that his place is not that of Greek or Christian tradition of negative theology, but, if anything, then that of Jewish and Islamic thought.[36] But he does not want to thematize this place:

‘I thus decided not to speak of the negativity or of apophatic movements in, for example, the Jewish or Islamic traditions. To leave this immense place empty ...was this not the most consistent possible apophasis? Concerning that about which one cannot speak, isn't it the best to remain silent?'[37]

5. Conclusion

This essay has, I hope, demonstrated that Derrida is in some senses dealing with similar kinds of questions to these of apophatic theology and responds to them with remarkably similar probings to those I pointed out in my essay ‘The Apophatic Way in Gregory of Nyssa' presented in this collection. Yet Derrida rejects apophatic (negative) theology as he sees it as hyperessential. It reestablishes and strengthens the order it puts into question, perhaps in a similar fashion to Eunomius's negative names of God, such as unbegotten, uncreated or ungenerated, which in the end become the absolute names of God, giving access to divine essence. What Derrida does not reflect is the critique of the hyperessentiality of the negative approach to be found in the apophatic tradition itself. His rejection of apophaticism is motivated by similar reasons to those we find in the apophatic tradition of the Fathers, of which Gregory is a striking example. Derrida is in agreement with this tradition in his emphasis on the impossibility of grasping the essence of things, including the essence of God, in the stress on permanent movement, on things being always in process, and on our participation in this process, which cannot be reduced to either positive or negative speaking.

Yet, for all that, there is a clear divide between the two. This divide is not given by the hyperessentiality or non-hyperessentiality of the approach, but simply by the problem of reference.[38] Derrida attempts to substitute the empty space between the signifiers for reference, yet it does not open up equal possibilities. As I pointed out in my essay on Gregory, the latter refuses to reduce God to any name, even to that of unbegottenness or ungeneratedness (and today we might replace those terms with little damage to the integrity of Gregory s thought by the concept of Being ). He allows God to remain God, infinite, transcendent, incomprehensible. Yet it is precisely this God whom we are able to encounter on our journey, who reveals himself to us, in whom we live and move and have our being. He is a God of history, too, beyond yet within, and human response to this God is a response which must therefore be rooted within history. It is as human beings that we approach God, and if we never arrive it is because the not arriving is part of our (un)knowing of who God is. This is what gives hope, since God is always God, close and infinitely other, and if our journey is never‑ending, it also means that ultimately no obstacle can stand in our way. The apophatic way as found in the Fathers has the need of conversion at its heart, which is explicit in its inclusion of thoughts, words as well as deeds. It gives space to anamnesis, the living memory, which we posit in tradition and which helps us to interpret our experience, and its reference is participatory, perhaps in the sense, which Derrida criticised, that it takes God as the beginning and the end of all our activity, of all our living and moving and resting. Such apophaticism also gives space to the symbolic kataphatic theology as a complement of the apophatic critique, making it possible to acknowledge God in his effects. Derrida's deconstruction is left with the problem of missing reference. Although, he also emphasizes the constant striving and straining of humankind on the never‑ending journey, this journey is not given a direction and an aim, not even from a Jewish and Islamic perspective. Here Ricoeur's remark, that if deconstruction was to be compared with apophatic thinking, it would need to be rooted in the love of God, is relevant. For an explicit recognition of that, a theologian who searches in Derrida for inspiration has to rely on other sources.

Finally, as I noted at the beginning, Derrida confuses the Western and the Eastern approaches, the via negativa and the aphophasis. His method of deconstruction does indeed resemble some of the pre-Dionysian apophatic emphases. But apophaticism offers much more than a speculative approach to the unspoken, than a side way to the ungraspable. It is a way of ongoing conversion, rather than of resting in a static image of reality and of God, whether positively or negatively defined.

[1]See Foshay, T. ‘Introduction' to, Derrida and Negative Theology. Eds.Coward, H. and Foshay, T., State University of New York Press, Albany, 1992 : 2-4.

[2]Compare to the role Eunomius gave to the concepts of "unbegotten", "uncreated" or "ungenerated", dealt with in another article in this collection, ‘The Apophatic Way in Gregory of Nyssa', part 2: Two key controversies.

[3]Cf. Derrida, J., ‘How to Avoid Speaking: Denials', in Derrida and Negative Theology. 1992, 74-142.

[4]See my essay ‘The Apophatic Way of Gregory of Nyssa' in this collection.

[5]In English translation Speech and Phenomena and Other Essays on Husserl s Theory of Signs. Northwestern University Press, Evaston, Ill, 1973.

[6] Derrida, J., Of Grammatology. John Hopkins University Press, Baltimore, London, 1976:10

[7] Cf. Spivak, G.C., 'Translator's Preface' to Derrida's Of Grammatology, 1976: lxxxiii‑lxxxiv.

[8] Cf. Russell, B., The Problems of Philosophy. OUP, Oxford, 1973: 40

[9] Cf. Westphal, M.,Marsh, J.M., Caputo, J.D., Modernity and Its Discontents. Fordham University Press, New York, 1992: xiii.

[10]Lechte, J., Fifty Key Contemporary Thinkers. Routledge, London, New York, 1994: 107.

[11]Lechte: 107.

[12]Caputo, J.D., On Being Inside/Outside Truth . in Modernity and Its Discontents. Eds. J.L. Marsh, J.D. Caputo, M. Westphal, Fordham University Press, New York, 1992: 51.52.

[13]Caputo: 52.

[14] In the previous essay on Gregory of Nyssa's apophaticism this position was described in three steps. First, Gregory argues that no single human word (or combination of them) can hope to grasp the essence of God. Second, and perhaps even more relevant for comparison with Derrida, Gregory points out that in fact it is doubtful if any human word can fully express the essence of a thing. Finally, he denies that unbegottenness, uncreatedness, ungeneratedness, is the most adequate way to name God. Cf. Karfíková, L. Řehoř z Nyssy [Gregory of Nyssa]. Oikúmené,Praha, 1999: 279.

[15]Gregory applies this primarily to our knowing God, we cannot know God in his essence (ousia), but what we can do is to acknowledge God's effects (energeiai).

[16] Culler, J., On Deconstruction - Theory and Criticism after Structuralism. Routledge & Kegan Paul, GB, 1983:95.

[17] For a relationship between deconstruction and negative theology in Derrida see Coward, H. and Foshay, T. (eds), 1992, Derrida and Negative Theology; Almond, I., 1999, Negative Theology, Derrida and the Critique of Presence: A Poststructuralist Reading of Meister Eckhart ; Bradley, A., 2000, God sans Being: Derrida, Marion and A Paradoxical Writing of the Word Without ; Collins, G., 2000, Thinking the Impossible: Derrida and the Divine .

[18]In a personal communication from Ricoeur, November 3rd 2001.

[19]For the terminological confusion, see Derrida ‘How to Avoid Speaking: Denials', 1992: 74-76.

[20]The French version of this essay, ‘Comment ne pas parler: Dénégations', first appeared in Derrida's Psyché: Inventions de l'autere. Galilée, Paris, 1987, 535-595.

[21]Derrida, J., ‘Différance', in Margins of Philosophy. Chicago University Press, Chicago, 1982: 6. (French original came out in 1968).

[22]Cf. Gregory of Nyssa, Contra Eunomium libri I et II. Ed. W. Jager, GNO II, Leiden, 1960, 3-311: I. 673; II.3.

[23]Cf. Marion, J.-L., L'idole et la distance: cinq études. Grasset, Paris, 1977: 318, quoted by Derrida in ‘How to Avoid Speaking: Denials', 1992, footnote 2, p. 132.

[24]Derrida, J., ‘How to Avoid Speaking: Denials', 1992: 73.

[25]Derrida, 1992:74.

[26]Derrida, 1992: 75-77.

[27]Derrida, 1992: 76.

[28]Derrida, 1992: 77.

[29]See Derrida, 1992: 78-81. It is interesting that Derrida does not refer to the apophatic tradition before Dionysius, where more common features would be found. He confesses his fascination with negative theology (p. 82), but persistently refuses to be associated with it.

[30]Wittgenstein, L., Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus. Routledge, London, 1990, 6.552 and 7.

[31]Derrida, 1992: 81.

[32]Derrida, 1992: 84-85.

[33]Derrida, 1992: 86.

[34]See Derrida, 1992: 125.

[35]Cf. Heidegger, M., Einführung in die Metaphysik. Max Niemeyer, Tübingen, 1953: 50-51. Derrida, 1992: 123-131.

[36]Cf. Derrida, 1992: 100. In a footnote he raises the question as to why does he hide himself behind the ‘negative theology of others and admits: ‘[I]f one day I had to tell my story, nothing in this narrative would start to speak of the thing itself if I did not come up against this fact; for the lack of capacity, competence, or self-authorization, I have never yet been able to speak of what my birth, as one says, should have made closest to me: the Jew, the Arab.' (Footnote 13, p.135) In his later biographical commentary Derrida emphasizes especially the background of Judaism, see Jacques Derrida par Geoffrey Bennington et Jacques Derrida. Éditions du Seuil, Mars 1991. This theme was developed by Ulrich Engel's paper ‘Religiöse (Nicht-)Identität' at the 3rd International LEST Congress hold in November 6-9 2001 in Leuven, which will be published by Leuven University Press.

[37]Derrida, 1992: 122.

[38]I think that Marion's critique of Derrida's accounts of hyperessentiality is justified. See note 23.