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permits us-or should permit us-to abandon the vain search for
univocal correlation whether of signs and things or of signs and men–
tal events . Neither the inner nor the outer aim of language matters.
They are fused or cancelled. There is no problem left . For Derrida,
however, there is no such cancellation, or fusion, ever. Presence
haunts
us ,
inevitably , but there
is
no presence, only absence. Austin's
performatives, he argues , can only be said to succeed because they
can also fail. And indeed, he insists, in a sense they always do. For
language, which is said to lead to presentation , always falls into
representation .
Every
form of speech is quotable , and quotability
entails absence.
It
is the very gap between inner and outer which is
also a gap between now and then, or then and now, that makes lan–
guage what it is . Could we close it, we would be silent with the silence
of beasts or gods perhaps, but not ofmen.
The contrast of inner and outer, as Derrida elaborates it , is
identifed further with the contrast between speech and writing. This
contrast, everywhere reiterated , constitutes in fact his chief innovative
theme . His major work is entitled "On Grarnmatology ." "Differ–
ance ," neither a word nor a concept, he insists-so I don't know what
to call it-"differance" is developed out of reflection on "ecriture."
What does Wittgenstein make of this contrast? He ignores it totally.
If you look at the language games of the
Investigations,
some are
written, some spoken , it doesn't seem to matter a bit. For Derrida, in
contrast, nothing matters more . Nothing else even matters at all.
There was the philosophers' ideal of the perfect moment of speech:
for Plato the living soul could learn through recollection to
see
the
Forms . Rousseau recounts the mythical occasion when living souls
met one another in the perfect moment of the first words spoken at
some rustic spring . But there never was such a moment. Language is
always the trace of a trace . Even spoken words must linger in the
air,
a kind of skywriting . Sounds become words only when repeatable .
The unique , perfect expression of perfect presence has never been
and could never be. Language is already
text;
never present , always
the
dtfferance :
spatialization, conflict, temporalization, temporizing;
gaps , gaps , gaps.
Wittgenstein argued: no private language , because only lan–
guage in public works . Language must be public because that's where
it succeeds . Derrida argues , on the contrary, yes , language must
