objects he was able to describe—does not prevent a text from
‘meaning’ something. On the contrary, this possibility gives
birth to meaning as such, gives it out to be heard and read”
(Speech 93 ).
“The living present springs forth out of its nonidentity
with itself,” Derrida concludes ( 85 ). Even when I do something
as simple and present-tense as waving my hand or jumping
happily in the air, I should be aware that this present has been
invaded by a non-presence: the fact of my own future disap-
pearance, my death.
The grim determination with which Derrida sets out to
sour the “living present,” to make it wilt and subside into a ma-
trix of nonidentity, testifies to his will to alienate us from our
experience. In this, he takes part in a tradition. Characteristi-
cally, philosophy pulls rank on our native feeling, our desired
sense of ourselves. This can be a salutary effect, comparable to
the Christian moralist’s desire to remind us in the face of our
self-congratulation that we are but dust and ashes, or the
psychoanalyst’s critique of the comforts of fantasy. But like the
moralist’s dismal rigor or the analyst’s reductive truth telling,
the philosopher’s commitment to alienation may drift too far
from ordinary life. In a certain mood, I may feel that the
prospect of death really is inscribed in each of my statements
and gestures. But the mood cannot be a permanent one: the
memento mori remains a partial view.
The Derridean philosopher David Wood writes ofSpeech
and Phenomenathat “Husserl scholars have not reacted too fa-
vorably to it.”^14 This is a considerable understatement. Husserl
scholars have found it difficult to take Derrida’s book seri-
ously; they see in it an attempt to get the better of Husserl by
misrepresenting his texts. This is especially the case with Der-
rida’s insistence on the theme of voice and speech. He claims
From Algeria to the École Normale 57