ance in 1966 at the Johns Hopkins Sciences of Man symposium
(an event I will return to in the next chapter).
The year 1967 was Jacques Derrida’s annus mirabilis. He
published three major books, including his two most famous
works,Of GrammatologyandWriting and Difference.The third
book,Speech and Phenomena,is less well known, but Derrida
confessed in the early seventies that it was his favorite of the
three.
In Speech and Phenomena,Derrida continues the investi-
gation of Husserl begun in “Genesis and Structure” and his in-
troduction to the “Origin of Geometry.” He does more than
just furnish a commentary on Husserl’s thought, however.
With Speech and PhenomenaDerrida definitively turns against
Husserl, a philosopher whom he clearly admired in his earlier
writings. A full eight years after Derrida gave his “Genesis and
Structure” lecture, and five years after the equally sympathetic
Geometryintroduction, Derrida conceives a stark opposition
between himself and Husserl.
Speech and Phenomenapresents a sustained critique of
Logical Investigations( 1900 ), one of Husserl’s first important
works, in which he proposes a brilliant, groundbreaking treat-
ment of how meaning occurs. Husserl’s innovative discussion
in his first logical investigation begins with a distinction be-
tween indication and expression. In all communications be-
tween one person and another, Husserl writes, speech is bound
up with indication. Husserl’s examples of indication are canals
on Mars (which, if they existed, would indicate the presence of
living beings on the planet) and fossils (which indicate the past
existence of vanished animals). Similarly, a shouted denuncia-
tion is an indication that someone is angry. Our tone of voice,
our choice of words and gestures, indicates our meaning.
Expression, in contrast, normally (but not always) relies
From Algeria to the École Normale 49