answer, that the place of the one and of the other
must constantly be in movement. If words and con-
cepts receive meaning only in sequences of differ-
ences, one can justify one’s language, and one’s
choice of terms, only within a topic (an orientation
in space) and an historical strategy. The justifi-
cation can therefore never be absolute and defini-
tive. It corresponds to a condition of forces and
translates a historical calculation. Thus, over and
above those that I have already defined, a certain
number of givens belonging to the discourse of our
time have progressively imposed this choice upon
me. The word tracemust refer to itself to [sic] a cer-
tain number of contemporary discourses whose
force I intend to take into account. Not that I accept
them totally. But the word traceestablishes the
clearest connections with them and thus permits
me to dispense with certain developments which
have already demonstrated their effectiveness in
those fields. ( 70 )Derrida claims that “a certain number of givens belonging to
the discourse of our time have progressively imposed the
choice” of the word traceon him. Listening to Derrida, we hear
the expression of history itself, along with his own nervous
and habitual qualifications. (One thinks, perhaps uncharita-
bly, of William Kerrigan’s remark that reading Derrida can be
like watching a man study his facial tics in a mirror.) He is
nothing more, he would have us believe, than a conduit, and a
rather tentative one, for current “discourses.” (He is careful to
note that he does not “accept [these discourses] totally.”) It is
discourse, not the self, that speaks.
This is not the whole story, though. Surprisingly, Derrida
Writing and DifferenceandOf Grammatology 85