objections by redefining the word writingto include speaking
as well. He suggests that speech is a kind of writing. “Language
is first, in a sense I shall gradually reveal, writing” ( 37 ). But
since writing was a relatively late invention in human history,
and infants learn to speak before they learn to write, how can
writing come first, before speech?
Derrida recognizes the objection and considers it obvi-
ous. And he has a (nonobvious) answer. Speech, although we
imagine that it comes before written language, is actually sec-
ondary to writing. When we replay a conversation, whether in
our heads or on an iPod, we are treating speech as if it were
writing. We are even—so Derrida presses the argument—
showing that speaking is a subset of writing.It is blatantly eth-
nocentric (a word Derrida wields with a certain abandon in Of
Grammatology) to say that some societies are illiterate. “Actu-
ally, the peoples said to be ‘without writing’ lack only a certain
type of writing” ( 83 ). Derrida shows himself unwilling to ac-
knowledge that there are differences between societies that
possess writing and those that do not. As anthropologists have
long recognized, the transmission of memory, of the history of
the tribe, takes place differently in an oral culture and a liter-
ate one. Where there is no writing, and therefore no fixed
records to be consulted, history tends to become the property
of rumor and legend.
Rather than such anthropological distinctions, Derrida
concerns himself with our common plight as humans who (as
in Sartre’s philosophy) are condemned to self-division. He
argues that there is always an alienation from “self-presence,”
however directly we express ourselves. No matter how imme-
diately, spontaneously, or sincerely we speak, we are still not
transparent to ourselves (as Freud showed with his study of
unconscious motivations and slips of the tongue). The pure
Writing and DifferenceandOf Grammatology 75