I remember having put this question to Paul de Man in the form of a
virtual objection: if this be so [that deconstruction is already at work
in literature, e.g. in Rousseau], then there would be nothing left to do;
yet how would we interpret the fact, that deconstruction, in spite of all
this, constitutes a topic, that it influences certain events and something
happens?  Deconstruction is not a memory which simply recalls what is already there. The memory work is also an unforeseeable event, an event that demands a responsibility and gestures, deeds. This act is caught, however, in a double bind: the more you remember, the more you are in danger of effacing, and vice versa. Deconstruction cannot step out of this aporia, of this double-bind, without diffidence. Jacques Derrida interviewed by Elisabeth Weber, Jüdisches Denken in Frankreich. Frankfurt/M: Jüdischer Verlag 1994, 77-8 |