In his GrammatologyDerrida forecasts “the death of
the civilization of the book.” This impending demise “mani-
fests itself particularly through a convulsive proliferation of li-
braries” ( 8 ). He aims to “designate the crevice through which
the yet unnameable glimmer beyond the closure can be
glimpsed” ( 14 ). With a resounding blast, then, Derrida’s Gram-
matologyannounces, in the title of an early chapter, “The End
of the Book and the Beginning of Writing.”
What is this rough beast that carries the strange new
name, grammatology? Before all else, grammatology (from the
Greek grammê,“letter”) exalts writing. More specifically, it
proclaims the liberation of writing from speech. The speaking
voice, Derrida claims, has been the central value for all West-
ern thought. And this age-old championing of voice oppresses
us. Speech is naturally attractive, writing naturally threaten-
ing, in the eyes of Western metaphysics. “The history of(the
only)metaphysics... from the pre-Socratics to Heidegger,” he
writes, is “the debasement of writing, and its repression out-
side ‘full’ speech” ( 3 ). For over two thousand years, writing has
been in exile. Derrida invites it back into the philosophical
fold.
Speech—so it seems—offers the assurance of an avail-
able, fully graspable meaning. When you say something to
yourself, you must know exactly what you mean. And this cer-
tainty is philosophy’s ideal: notably in Descartes’ cogito. As
Descartes sees it, I prove my existence by saying something to
myself. I think, and therefore—so I tell myself—I am. Not just
for Descartes, but for all the rest of philosophy, writes Derrida,
“the voice... has a relationship of essential and immediate
proximity with the mind” ( 11 ). And this closeness of voice and
mind leads to an idea of “the absolute proximity of voice and
72 Writing and DifferenceandOf Grammatology