Margins of Philosophy
Derrida's 1972 essays — Différance, Ousia and Gramme, White Mythology, Signature Event Context
Tradition: Deconstruction / post-structuralism
Derrida's 1972 essays — Différance, White Mythology, Signature Event Context
Published in 1972 as 'Marges de la philosophie' (Minuit, Paris) — one of three Derrida books published that year (the others being 'La dissémination' and 'Positions'), part of his most prolific publishing period — 'Margins of Philosophy' collects ten essays composed across 1967-1972 that together constitute Derrida's most concentrated body of philosophical-literary intervention. Major essays include: 'Différance' (1968 lecture at the Société française de philosophie, the canonical statement of the central deconstructive concept — différance as the 'non-full, non-simple, structured and differentiating origin of differences'); 'Ousia and Gramme' (Heidegger and Aristotle on time); 'White Mythology' (the place of metaphor in philosophy — a sustained engagement with Bachelard, Bataille, and the metaphor-tradition); 'The Pit and the Pyramid' (on Hegel's semiology); 'The Ends of Man' (1968, on Sartrean-Heideggerian humanism after the May 1968 events); 'Signature Event Context' (on Austin's speech-act theory — the essay that would lead to the Searle exchange in Limited Inc); 'The Linguistic Circle of Geneva' (on Saussure and structural linguistics); 'Form and Meaning' (on Husserl's theory of expression); 'Tympan' (the famous prefatory essay set in two columns, dramatising the relation of philosophical text to its margin); and 'Qual Quelle: Valéry's Sources' (on Paul Valéry's poetics). The book is the most influential of Derrida's mid-career essay collections — 'Différance' is one of the most-cited single essays in contemporary continental philosophy.
Author
Editions cited
- Marges de la philosophie (Minuit, Paris, 1972)
- English trans. Alan Bass, Margins of Philosophy (University of Chicago Press, 1982; Harvester Press 1982)
- Companion 1972 books: La dissémination (Seuil, 1972, English trans. 1981); Positions (Minuit, 1972, English trans. 1981)
- Commentary: Geoffrey Bennington, Jacques Derrida (Chicago, 1993); Christopher Norris, Deconstruction: Theory and Practice (Methuen, 1982)
School Embodiments
Canonical statement of différance as the deconstructive concept.
"Différance is the non-full, non-simple, structured and differentiating origin of differences." (Différance, in Margins of Philosophy)
Defining early-1970s post-structuralist essays.
"There is no presence — only the trace of the trace." (Différance, in Margins of Philosophy)
Major essays on metaphor (White Mythology) and speech acts (Signature Event Context).
"Every sign can be cited, put in quotation marks; in so doing it can break with every given context." (Signature Event Context)
Sustained engagement with Heidegger and Husserl.
"Ousia and gramme — Heidegger's treatment of Aristotle on time." (Margins of Philosophy)
Post-structuralist development from Saussurean linguistics.
"Différance is what differs from itself across the structural play of signs." (Différance)
Historicist genealogy of philosophy's metaphysical margins.
"The margins of philosophy are themselves philosophical." (Margins of Philosophy, preface)
Continental-philosophical tradition.
Post-structuralist tradition.
Internal Tensions
The most influential single Derrida essay collection — home of 'Différance' and 'Signature Event Context'. 'Différance' has been continuously cited in continental philosophy as the canonical Derridean concept-formulation; 'Signature Event Context' led directly to the Derrida-Searle exchange in 'Limited Inc' (1977) and shaped the analytic-continental debate over speech-act theory.
I. Time
1972 publication; essays composed 1967-1972. Derrida was 42; this was the peak of his publishing productivity (three books in 1972 alone).
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II. Space
Paris — ENS (École normale supérieure, where Derrida had been a faculty member since 1965) and the Centre national de la recherche scientifique. The intellectual space is post-May-1968 Parisian intellectual life.
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III. Matter
Ten-essay collection (~340 pages in Bass's English translation). Each essay engages a distinct topic and a distinct interlocutor (Heidegger, Aristotle, Hegel, Husserl, Austin, Saussure, Valéry, Bataille).
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IV. Observer
Middle Derrida. The observer is the philosopher in mid-career, applying the deconstructive method (which he had begun to develop in the 1967 books) across a wide range of philosophical-textual encounters.
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V. Energy
Programmatic-deconstructive energies of the early 1970s. The book demonstrates the deconstructive method at work across the full range of the Western philosophical tradition.
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VI. Information
Single volume of ten essays. The opening 'Tympan' frames the book methodologically; 'Différance' provides the central conceptual statement; the other essays apply the framework.
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Personas that cite this work
Personas with the nearest attribute fingerprint
Historical figures whose own classification on the same six-dimensional grid lands closest to this work's. Computed by attribute-agreement on coordinates both address.
Computed school proximity
The work's attribute fingerprint scored against all schools using the same quiz scorer. Useful as a sanity check on the hand-curated embodiments above.
How Margins of Philosophy resolves each dilemma
48 resolved positions across 4 dimensions, including 16 distinctive where the majority of schools go the other way · 9 unaligned.
Each dimension is sorted so minority positions come first. Mainstream positions are folded into an expandable list.
Time · 9 dilemmas, all mainstream
Matter · 7 dilemmas · 5 distinctive
What stuff is — fundamental, relational, or appearance.
Observer · 37 dilemmas · 5 distinctive
Mind, agency, and the knower's relation to the known.