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Rereading the chapter on Derrida in Brian Ingraffia's Postmodern Theory and Biblical Theology (Cambridge, 1995), I realize just how much my understanding of Derrida was formed by reading this book several years ago. Ingraffia highlights (as I have done in a previous post, erroneously thinking I had come up with the insight myself) the fact that Derrida renounces eschatology, and therefore offers infinite deferral without closure. Ingraffia also concisely summarizes the argument of Of Grammatology to the effect that the Western conception of the sign (in Saussurean terms, constituted by the ideal signified and the empirical signifier) is complicit with a dualistic metaphysics that separates the intelligible from the sensible worlds. I was reminded how profoundly the early chapters of Of Grammatology influenced by work on sacraments.
And I'm reminded too of the intricacies and subtleties of intellectual and spiritual influences. I recall reading Ingraffia some years ago, and remember getting a lot out of it. But its best insights got lodged in my head in such a way that I forgot they were someone else's insights. Appropriately, it's a classic example of Derrida's point that alterity is not secondary but always already there: Even the voice in my head is (in)formed by the written signs I have read.
posted by Peter J. Leithart on Wednesday, October 22, 2003 at 05:51 PM
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