tention to the context of the moment shows that he is not the
simplistic adherent of self-presence that Derrida claims he is.
Husserl, though not a believer in the “pure present,” still
remains far removed from Derrida’s idea that moments are in-
dicative signs—that there is no present, only representation. We
represent (that is, indicate) time to ourselves, Derrida writes, in
order to live our temporally extended lives. Time means the
reading of signs. In a reading that owes much to the early sec-
tions of Hegel’s Phenomenology,Derrida argues that the “now,”
the ostensibly present moment, is in fact insubstantial, a noth-
ing, because it is negated by the past and the future, just as
the self is a nothing because it will someday be dead. When-
ever I say “now,” whenever I notice the current instant, I fur-
nish a mere representation. I can never make my way into the
present.
Here, for the first time, Derrida establishes a central role
for death, the sine qua non of his philosophy. Derrida remarks
that “my nonperception, my nonintuition, my hicandnunc
absence are said by that very thing that I say, by thatwhich I say
andbecauseI say it” (Speech 93 ). It is not just that my state-
ments can still function even after my death (if they are writ-
ten down, or if people remember them). Rather, death is re-
quired for my words to mean anything at all. As Derrida puts
it, with a somewhat chilling touch: “The relationship with my
death(my disappearance in general) thus lurks in this deter-
mination of being as presence, ideality, the absolute possibility
of repetition. The possibility of the sign is this relationship
with death....The appearing of theIto itself in the I amis
thus originally a relation with its own possible disappearance.
Therefore,I amoriginally means I am mortal”( 54 ).
Derrida’s credo is not “I think, therefore I am,” but rather,
“I die, therefore I am (not).” Death creeps into our very self-
From Algeria to the École Normale 55