1 From Husserl to Artaud 1963–1964
The Origin of Geometry was published under the name of Husserl
alone, with the words ‘translation and introduction by Jacques
Derrida’ appearing only after the title. This fi rst publication was
offi cial confi rmation that Derrida had fi nally abandoned the fi rst
name ‘Jackie’. This was a more serious decision than might appear,
for someone who would soon be turning the question of the
signature into a fully fl edged philosophical theme. As he explained:
I changed my fi rst name when I began to publish, at the
moment I entered what is, in sum, the space of literary or philo-
sophical legitimation, whose ‘good manners’ I was practising
in my own way. In fi nding that Jackie was not possible as the
fi rst name of an author, by choosing what was in some way,
to be sure, a semi-pseudonym but also very French, Christian,
simple, I must have erased more things than I could say in a few
words [.. .].^1In many respects, The Origin of Geometry was a curious book,
mainly for quantitative reasons: Husserl’s text occupied only 43
pages of the French edition, whereas the Introduction comprised
- But above all, its oddness resided in a fundamental ambiguity.
In its fi rst pages, Derrida’s aim is presented in modest terms: ‘Our
sole ambition will be to recognize and situate one stage of Husserl’s
thought, with its specifi c presuppositions and its particular unfi n-
ished state.’^2 Taking him at his word, one might believe that he
was simply attempting to get as close to Husserl’s intentions as
possible. In fact, the more the reader plunges into this labyrinthine
analysis, strewn with very lengthy footnotes, the more does Derrida
seem ‘driven by the somewhat inordinate ambition to introduce us
to Husserl’s phenomenology as a whole’,^3 if not to raise questions
about the whole enterprise. And in the last pages there appear, as
yet allusively, concepts destined for a great future in Derrida’s own
work, those of originary delay and diff érance.