Deconstruction as Repetitive Crossing Out and the

Movement of Appearing: On Derrida’s 1964/65

Heidegger Reading
Benjamin Schuppert

In the preface written on the occasion of the publication of Derrida’s

master’s thesis Le problème de la genèse dans la philosophie de Husserl
in 1990, one can read about ‘the originary complication of the
origin’ which Derrida had uncovered in this study of Husserl’s
phenomenology, in 1954: this ‘initial complication of the simple’,
the ‘inaugural divergence that no analysis could present, make present
in its phenomenon or reduce to the pointlike nature of an element’
has from that point ‘not stopped commanding’ what he has ‘tried to
prove’.1 Reading this, one could be misled into thinking that the idea
of différance and deconstruction and generally all ‘concepts’ like trace,
supplement, pharmakon etc. that are characteristic of deconstruction are
already present in this early text, but that Derrida does not yet wrap
this idea in such a ‘literary’ manner as he will do in his later works.
This paper shows that, through his reading of Heidegger in his
1964/65 Cours titled Heidegger : la question de l’être et l’Histoire,
Derrida articulates a possibility to account for what he previously
defined through concepts like ‘dialectics’ or ‘ontology’ in a way that
rigorously flows from the fact that the ‘idea’ or ‘meaning’ of ‘originary
non-originarity’ is not in opposition to its representation by language
but that this representation is essential to it.2
What I want to suggest is that ‘deconstruction’, which appears
conceptually in Derrida’s work for the first time in this early Cours,
may be comprehended as an opportunity to take this complication into
consideration. I intend to make clear that deconstruction articulates

The Oxford Literary Review 43.1 (2021): 155–176

DOI: 10.3366/olr.2021.0355
© Edinburgh University Press
www.euppublishing.com/olr
156 Oxford Literary Review

the relation of appearing and disappearing in a way that in fact

does not situate it as something that may appear to an intuition
or simply be named, but rather indicates it as something that is
solely given in the scriptural and metaphorical act of repetition and
simultaneous crossing out of what one already comes upon, what
already appears. Deconstruction is not ‘there’ somewhere, independent
from deconstructive reading, and therefore cannot be comprehended
ultimately as something that would be accessible independently from
its specific taking place or in a characterization of its true nature.
The following analysis will focus on Derrida’s interpretation of the
crossing out of being, which serves as a center for his early Heidegger
reading, and from which the movement of Heidegger’s thinking may
be grasped as a whole. According to Derrida, only in the crossing out
of the word ‘Sein’, which is to be found in Heidegger’s Zur Seinsfrage,
is it possible to read off metaphoricity, the ‘originary non-originarity’,
the necessary withdrawal of being, which leads to a complication of
appearing and disappearing, of phenomenal truth and semblance.
Not only can ‘originarity’ itself—the being of beings, that is, the
phenomenality of phenomena—not be simply said or brought to
givenness: ‘originarity’ is ‘itself’ nothing but this impossibility.3 As a
result, the phenomenality of being becomes legible in the crossing out
as an irreducible semblance which at the same time eludes the simple
opposition of phenomenal truth and semblance and thus does not
disprove or refute the originarity of being.4
Firstly, to further elaborate what has been indicated, the
transformation and transgression, which Heidegger’s question of
being goes through between Sein und Zeit and the turn must be
outlined.5 Then, through Derrida’s reading of Heidegger, I will
elucidate the connection between the crossing out of the word
‘Sein’ and the question of appearing. Finally, I will close these
considerations by briefly sketching out an interpretation of La voix et le
phénomène, in which Derrida continues his Heidegger reading between
the lines.

I. Appearing and Disappearing. From Sein und Zeit to the Turn

Heidegger’s question of being, which initially articulates itself as a
question of phenomenological fundamental ontology, is subjected to
several transformations throughout Heidegger’s thinking. The most
Benjamin Schuppert 157

important, most famous one of these transformations is the so-

called ‘turn (Kehre) in Heidegger’s thinking’, which results in a
transformation of the structure of phenomenality, which Heidegger
will first call ‘Aletheia’, ‘unconcealment’ or ‘Sinn’, and later the ‘truth
of being’.6 Let us now sketch this transition from Sein und Zeit to the
turn with respect to the issue of phenomenality. We shall then describe
the interpretation of Heidegger’s gesture of the crossing out of the word
‘Sein’, which Derrida develops in his 1964–5 Cours.7
As is widely known, phenomenological fundamental ontology has
its starting point in the understanding of being by Dasein, which,
according to Heidegger, has always already understood its own
being and the meaning of being as such. The starting point of
Sein und Zeit is this always already open, although not specifically
addressed, understanding of being, which, according to Heidegger,
has to become an explicit question about what one has always
already understood, whereby the pre-ontological understanding of
being may become ontological, that is, explicit. If Dasein essentially
is this understanding, and understanding means to understand being,
understanding itself is supposed to be understood thematically and
explicitly. The understanding of being itself is the interrogated (das
Befragte), from which the meaning of being in general will be read off.
The starting point of Sein und Zeit, the understanding of being, is at
the same time that by which the research will reach its goal, the answer
to the question of being.8
If the horizon of the understanding of being, Zeitlichkeit as the
meaning (Sinn) of the being of Dasein, was phenomenologically
uncovered, then, according to Heidegger’s hypothesis, the temporality
of being as such, its meaning—which Heidegger determines as
Temporalität—itself may be grasped in and through the temporality
of Dasein.9 Regarding the method in Sein und Zeit, this implies
in turn that being is supposed to show itself through a
phenomenology of its understanding. More specifically, this means
that in and through the self-phenomenalization of understanding,
which Heidegger calls ‘authenticity’ (Eigentlichkeit), Dasein may reveal
itself phenomenologically in its being, whereby, starting from its
phenomenologically elucidated meaning of being, the meaning of being
as such, as Heidegger argues, is supposed to become phenomenal and
thereby to phenomenologically prove itself.
158 Oxford Literary Review

According to the provisional definition of phenomenology in Sein

und Zeit ‘semblance’ (Schein), which distorts the approach to the
phenomenon of being, to being as it in itself is (an ihm selbst
ist), is to be comprehended as a ‘privative modification (privative
Modifikation)’ of the phenomenon.10 Therefore, semblance, which
pretends to be phenomenality, but de facto is non-phenomenality, is
made possible through the phenomenon and can be seen through by
that only. Certainly, Heidegger’s formulation of a ‘provisional’ concept
of phenomenology includes a warning, not to distort the phenomenon
through a method inadequate to it before the phenomenon is given
directly as it is, that is, as originary. Rather, Heidegger insists, we are to
define the idea of phenomenology from its matter, its phenomenon.11
However, this precaution is still a phenomenological precaution,
relying on Husserl’s famous ‘principle of all principles’ (Prinzip aller
Prinzipien), that is, the assumption that originary givenness guarantees
an approach to what is to be investigated without any presupposition
that skews it.12
The structure of authenticity and inauthenticity reflects the structure
of the concept of phenomenology as referenced in Sein und Zeit:
‘It can only have lost itself and it can only have not yet attained
itself’, one can read about Dasein in Sein und Zeit, ‘in so far as it is
essentially possible as authentic, that is, it owns itself (sofern es seinem
Wesen nach mögliches eigentliches, das heißt, sich zu eigen ist)’.13
In the originary (self-)givenness of Dasein, its ‘authenticity’, in which
Dasein shows itself in its ‘truth of existence (Wahrheit der Existenz)’,
that is, becomes phenomenologically transparent, the distortion and
semblance of inauthenticity, in which Dasein is ‘initially and for the
most part’ (zunächst und zumeist) biased, may be broken up and seen
through.14
Looking at the structure of Sein und Zeit it becomes clear that the
choice of where to set the point of departure when trying to answer
the question of being, and the hypothesis that being may show itself
through a self-phenomenalization of its understanding, only proves
itself retrospectively, once the question of being is answered. Not only
is the choice of an exemplary being confirmed, but it also becomes
clear that there is an answer to the question of being. If being as the
possibility of its understanding were extrinsic to this understanding,
being could not show itself but would remain concealed in the shadow
Benjamin Schuppert 159

of non-phenomenality. Answering a question requires that what is

asked about (das Gefragte) meets the openness of the question, that
is, shows itself. If what is asked about were not to show itself, there
would be no answer, in Heidegger’s terms, no Erfragtes, no Sinn des
Seins which is nothing but being, the Gefragte, in its phenomenality.15
By showing itself, the matter of phenomenology, the being of beings,
also shows that the traditional and inauthentic understanding of being,
which Dasein initially has a bias toward, may fundamentally be broken
up. It shows that it is possible to see through the concealment or
semblance, to which being is subordinated throughout the history of
ontology, and to account for such a concealment from the clarity of the
understanding of being which it distorts. If the origin of concealment
were not in the understanding itself as a privative modification of
understanding, of the clearing of Dasein, concealment could not be
seen through by understanding, or, put differently: if the possibility of
understanding did not lie within understanding itself, understanding
could not become self-transparent at all.16
The priority of phenomenal transparency and possibility regarding
semblance and impossibility carries and determines the circular
structure of Sein und Zeit, the choice of an analysis of the self-
understanding Dasein as point of departure and the idea of being able
to grasp being through a self-phenomenalization of this understanding,
in short, to search for fundamental ontology in the Daseinsanalyse
itself. Should it appear that the meaning of being, the phenomenality
of phenomena may not become a phenomenon, then the question
could not be answered, semblance and distortion could not be seen
through, and the attempt to draw the meaning of being from Dasein
and therefore to determine it as the exemplary being for answering the
question of being could not succeed.
That not only exactly this is the case, but that Heidegger’s
fundamental ontological approach is fundamentally aporetic, is shown
primarily by the fact that as soon as the possibility of phenomena itself
could become a phenomenon, that is, be explicitly understood, the
difference between Dasein and other beings as well as the difference
between being and beings would be neglected. Dasein would be
the highest being and would therefore become an expression of the
history of metaphysics only, according to which the meaning of
being has always been understood as presence, and through that as a
160 Oxford Literary Review

being.17 However, this approach is not only aporetic but through its
phenomenological character, which still regards Husserl’s orientation
toward the originary givenness as binding, also covers up the fact that
being cannot become a phenomenon in the first place. That this is so, is
shown not only by the aporetic consequences of fundamental ontology
in case it succeeds, but already in several passages within the scope of
the published part of Sein und Zeit, which all concern the same issue:
the issue of being’s withdrawal.18
Along with Heidegger’s emphasis on the ‘co-originarity’
(Gleichursprünglichkeit) of authenticity and inauthenticity, it is
particularly worth highlighting the use of the ‘always already’, the ‘a
priori perfect’ in which a delay between constitution and constituted
announces itself, which, in a literal sense, means that the constituted
necessarily misses its constitution.19 Dasein is always already in the open
and simultaneously displaced understanding of being. As necessarily
factical, it is thrown into the openness of an already open world, it
is to be found in written records, in a historical here and now, which
restricts its possibilities and eludes it. Dasein is not simply projection; it
is a thrown projection (geworfener Entwurf ).20 It does not have control
over itself, over the possibility (Möglichkeit) that it is, in the sense of
a libertas indifferentiae. Dasein is, as mortal, as finite, dependent on the
openness of being, which is always already open, and on the fact that
it exists and understands being.21 It does not constitute itself through
self-producing and self-originating but through a constitutive letting be
(Seinlassen) of what is beyond its abilities and therefore can only be
let be. According to Sein und Zeit, Dasein is ‘a null being-ground of a
nullity (das nichtige Grund-sein einer Nichtigkeit)’.22
In the last paragraphs of Sein und Zeit, which are dedicated to the
historicity of Dasein, the aforementioned issue of the ‘always already’
returns, in its conflict with the methodical aspirations of Sein und Zeit,
and Derrida’s early Heidegger reading in 1964/65 focuses particularly
on these passages.
Two things can be observed in the passages on historicity: on the one
hand, the historicity of Dasein is determined as a ‘concrete elaboration
of temporality’; on the other hand, the motif of being’s withdrawal can
be found again.23 As the preface of Sein und Zeit tells us, historicity is
not an accident of Dasein, but constitutes its being; Dasein ‘is [. . .]
its past’.24 Consequently, the historicity of Dasein is described as a
Benjamin Schuppert 161

happening of ‘auto-transmission’. Dasein must hand itself down to

what is already given, it starts with a repetition and in doing so is,
as it were, behind itself in time, it necessarily begins in inauthenticity
and not in the phenomenal transparency of its being.25
According to Derrida’s interpretation, this movement, or in
Heidegger’s words ‘movedness’ (Bewegtheit), which Dasein itself
is, may be understood through the description of ‘auto-affection’
(Selbstaffektion) in Heidegger’s Kantbuch. Since it is an affection,
this auto-affection implies a difference between the affecting and the
affected.26 Dasein, as Derrida highlights, may only be affected by
something that it is not, that comes from outside: ‘Being-affected,
spirit, is the form of appearing, the phenomenalization of a being that
appears to me, that touches me, that affects me precisely because I
have not created it. Intuitus derivativus’.27 However, auto-affection is
not an affection of a being through another being, but an affection
of time through itself, the movedness of phenomenality, which makes
every phenomenon possible in the first place.28 How can we understand
more specifically such an externality, which both announces itself in the
historicity or temporality of Dasein and at the same time eludes it?
If being escapes the (self-)understanding of Dasein and at the same
time is not a being outside of it which would again presuppose the
understanding of being, there would be no other possibility but to
define being neither as inside, nor as outside of phenomenality.
What Heidegger, from 1930 on, explicitly draws from this thought
and what will become famous as the turn, is fraught with consequences:
the predominant primacy in Sein und Zeit, of truth over semblance,
of appearing over disappearing, of possibility over impossibility, of
authenticity over inauthenticity, becomes now itself interpretable as
an expression of the metaphysics of presence. The prior understanding
of appearing as originarity now transforms itself into a conception of
appearing according to which phenomenality ‘itself’ goes hand in hand
with an original deception, a deception which is already indicated in the
intended endeavor of Sein und Zeit, throughout the course of which, if
one pays attention, it ultimately reveals itself.
The original withdrawal of being, which Heidegger now describes
as ‘older’ (älter) than phenomenality, dissimulates itself in what shows
itself. Because there is no truth that precedes it, this concealment is
a necessary concealment of concealment. This double concealment of
162 Oxford Literary Review

being, which Heidegger calls ‘errancy (Irre)’, consequently does not

so much present the interpretation of being as presence as a mistake,
but rather marks the necessary failing of fundamental ontology.29
Or, put differently: starting in the 1930s, instead of finding a new
approach to answer the question of being, Heidegger attempts to
contemplate the necessary impossibility of answering this question, the
impossibility of simply jumping out of or overcoming the history of
the metaphysics of presence. According to Heidegger’s annotations for
Sein und Zeit from 1936, the method of phenomenology, the question
about understanding and the orientation towards possibility may be
left behind:

As surely as Sein und Zeit is clamped (verklammert) within

phenomenology and ontology—and in peering there (im Schielen
dahin)—and is at the same time also forced forward by this clamp
(durch diese Klammer vorangezwungen wird ): now, just as decidedly,
it is necessary to get out of the fundamental position thus gained,
out of the center of the question, into the open (so entschieden
muß jetzt aus der dadurch gewonnenen Grundstellung aus der
Fragemitte ins Freie gelangt werden). Phenomenology and ontology
are to be dismissed. Overcoming ‘Phenomenology’, and with it
demonstration (Aufweisen)—without falling for arbitrariness—on
the contrary. Overcoming ‘Ontology’, and with it the understanding
of being and the question of possibility—without forgetting
grounding.30

In these annotations one can read about a ‘reversal (Um-kehr)’,

as that which Dasein as the ‘circle (Zirkel)’ of understanding is
now supposed to be conceived, a reversal that is the ‘innermost
happening of thrownness (errancy)’.31 The circle of understanding is
now to be conceived from the irreducible withdrawal of being, which
simultaneously enables and breaks it; which evokes the precarious
necessity of errancy and so may not be conceived as anything else but
as the difference of appearing and semblance, whose differentiation it
simultaneously makes possible and undermines.
On the one hand, indeed, being is that which most eludes distortion
and concealment, derivation and non-originarity. There is nothing
which does not presuppose being. Being, appearing itself, is truly
Benjamin Schuppert 163

presuppositionless. On the other hand, it has been shown in the

movement of Heidegger’s thinking that this ‘presuppositionlessness’,
being, de facto marks a non-originarity. Being is nothing but its delay in
relation to its appearing and at the same time nothing but the margin,
or, in Heidegger’s terms, the difference (Unterschied) of appearing and
disappearing, which makes the appearing possible but at the same time
differentiates and complicates it within itself, and through this never
lets it become a phenomenon.32 But how can we express the necessity
of concealment as well as the necessity for truth to come behind
semblance that cannot be any new, any other truth, but rather seems
to be a ‘movedness’ which cannot show itself? Is there a possibility to
say this?

II. Phenomenality and Deconstruction as tour d’écriture

It can be argued that Derrida’s early reflections on Heidegger are first
and foremost inspired by this question of representation. In a later text
titled Zur Seinsfrage Heidegger crossed out the word ‘Sein’ to show that
being cannot be conceived as a being. As I want to show, precisely this
gesture of crossing out is particularly critical for the understanding of
deconstruction.
Now, if the metaphysics of presence is necessary, according to which
the presentness of presence marks the interpretation of being, if being
necessarily appears as a being, namely as the original being, which
makes all beings possible in the first place and at the same time must be
conceived as difference (Unterschied) or différance, then there is no other
possibility but to cross out the word ‘Sein’. There is no other possibility
but to work with what is already there. One has to begin with the word
that one already finds to be there, as being is nothing beyond language
and history. Contrary to what Heidegger had hoped after studying
with Husserl, there is no intuition of being, though such an intuition
is precisely what being promises.33 Therefore it becomes clear why
Heidegger noted in his personal copy of Sein und Zeit that language
is ‘not piled up (aufgestockt), but [. . .] the original nature of the truth
of Da’.34 Dasein actually is nothing other than the understanding of the
word ‘Sein’, which gains its character as a word through its meaning:
presence. The original word (Urwort) that makes possible all other
words by making possible their being as a word.35
164 Oxford Literary Review

Sein und Zeit still searched for the authentic meaning of being, but
the attempt to break out of metaphysics remains itself a metaphysical
gesture which goes beyond itself, transgresses itself, resulting eventually
in the turn. The division between the Bedeutung, that is, being
understood as presence, and the Sinn of being, is irreducible. The
Sinn cannot appear itself, but is ‘itself’ nothing but an originary non-
originarity, which ‘in truth’ not only takes away being’s character as
an Urwort, but also its character as a word in general—assuming that
a word constitutes itself as a word through its meaning.36 ‘In truth’,
Dasein is a trace, which necessarily dissimulates itself as a trace, and it
is the happening of being as auto-affection, as an ‘originary’ loss of the
origin, which Derrida will call metaphoricity in his Cours.37
On the one hand, in the repetitive crossing out of ‘Sein’, the
word ‘Sein’ is still there, is let be as the word it is as well as the
meaning it has, that is, presence, which awards it the character of an
Urwort or a transcendental word. On the other hand, it is marked as a
metaphor, as something that does not originally mean what it means.
But it is marked as a metaphor through which metaphoricity or—as
Derrida will slightly later call it—différance metaphorizes itself as soon
as this ‘transcendental word’ is marked as a metaphor. Through this
marking an irreducible blank space in phenomenality is indicated and
phenomenality ‘itself’ becomes legible as an ‘originary’ semblance, to
which there is no preliminary self-givenness and which complicates
every understanding of originarity.
Being as the possibility of language has always already withdrawn
itself and therefore makes room for an infinite play of metaphors
which put themselves in its place. It is this play of metaphors that is
indicated metaphorically in the gesture of crossing out—and that must
be indicated metaphorically, for there is no other possibility but to
speak metaphorically and to interpret being as a being:

The work of philosophy in general, or rather, let’s say, of thinking,

far from simply consisting in crowning scientific work from the
outside, in reflecting on it or criticizing it from the outside, in
working on it; the work of thinking is basically nothing other, in
what is called science or elsewhere, than this operation of destruction
of metaphor, of determined and motivated reduction of metaphor,
whenever and wherever it happens. Which does not mean that one
Benjamin Schuppert 165

leaves the metaphorical element of language behind, but that in a

new metaphor the previous metaphor appears as such, is denounced
in its origin and in its metaphorical functioning and in its necessity.
It appears as such. One can perhaps call thinking and the thinking
of being (the thinking of being as the horizon and the appeal
of an impossible non-metaphorical thought) what calls for such a
gesture of de-metaphorization. Given that, it could happen that
there is more thinking in the gesture of a scientist or a poet or
a non-philosopher in general when he gives himself up to this,
than there is in the philosophical-type gesture that moves around in
metaphorical slumber, in non-vigilance faced with the metaphorical
character of language. If, then, using another metaphor, one calls
vigilance this thinking destroying metaphor while knowing what it
is doing (knowing what it is doing, for it is not only a matter of
substituting one metaphor for another without knowing it: that is
what has always happened throughout history, that universal history
that Borges says is perhaps only the history of a few metaphors or
of various inflections of a few metaphors). So it is not a matter of
substituting one metaphor for another, which is the very movement
of language and history, but of thinking this movement as such,
thinking metaphor in metaphorizing it as such, thinking the essence
of metaphor (this is all Heidegger wants to do).38

‘Heidegger’s vigilance’, as Derrida calls it, offers the possibility of

marking the never-appearing deconstruction of being in the gesture of
crossing out and in doing so to read off ‘the unity of metaphoricity
and non-metaphoricity’: to mark that phenomenality is at the same
time appearing and semblance, a necessity that never appears itself,
independently of the text, of language and the constituted, of, as
Derrida puts it, ontic metaphor, but is only ‘there’ in the gesture of
crossing out. ‘This crossing out, this negative writing, this trace erasing
the trace of the present in language is the unity of metaphoricity and
non-metaphoricity as unity of language’.39
The question of being leads to a deconstruction of the word ‘being’
and of itself as question about being, by making it possible, in and
through this crossing out, to read off metaphoricity or différance which
necessarily precedes the question and opens up its possibility as well
as it always already delays the answer.40 One has to think through the
166 Oxford Literary Review

ontological difference alongside Heidegger to reach the Unterschied,

which opens up and at the same time complicates it; one has to think
through ontological difference, in which the Unterschied or différance
simultaneously announces and dissimulates itself:

To come to recognize, not within but on the horizon of the

Heideggerian paths, and yet in them, that the sense of being is not
a transcendental or trans-epochal signified (even if it was always
dissimulated within the epoch) but already, in a truly unheard of
sense, a determined signifying trace, is to affirm that within the
decisive concept of ontico-ontological difference, all is not to be
thought at one go; [. . .]. The necessity of passing through that erased
determination, the necessity of that trick of writing [tour d’écriture]
is irreducible.41

Deconstruction marks the impossibility of an absolute point of

departure through the silent gesture of crossing out, by indicating
metaphorically that what actually seems to be the absolute point of
origin, originarity itself, what avoids any mediation, any metaphor, is
itself a metaphor. Because there is no truth beyond metaphor, but at
the same time metaphor may only be understood as such through truth,
there is no other option but to cross out truth and, in this crossing out,
to let it be the truth it is. In letting truth be the truth it is, this scriptural
gesture of crossing out aims at allowing semblance to be thought, on
the one hand, and to mark such truth itself as semblance, by crossing it
out or suspending it on the other hand, thus letting it become readable
in its irreducible ambiguity.42 Deconstruction must repeat and work
with what is already there. Thus, there is no other possibility but to
speak the language of metaphysics and thereby to point, through the
very language of metaphysics, at what does not appear, what cannot be
said. Any attempt to assign a simple word for différance or metaphoricity,
to simply and directly say it would lead to falling back into metaphysics,
according to Derrida’s Heidegger reading.43

III. ‘Heidegger’s Vigilance’ in La voix et le phénomène and the

Written Circle
The topic of auto-affection as unnamable happening of originary
semblance, which ‘falsely’ suggested a horizon of time for the question
Benjamin Schuppert 167

of being—a conception of being as time—comes on the scene again

through a deconstruction of Husserl’s phenomenology in the essay
La voix et le phénomène from 1967. In this text, probably his most
famous on phenomenology, Derrida will once more give pride of place
to ‘Heidegger’s vigilance’ and consequently focus on the irreducible
metaphoricity of philosophical discourse.44 One can read there that the
‘originary’ semblance of voice, or of phenomenality, ‘determines an
epoch to which the philosophical idea of truth, the opposition of truth
and appearance [that is, semblance] belongs, such as it still functions
in phenomenology’.45 Because we ourselves are part of this epoch and
therefore cannot escape the language of metaphysics we, according to
Derrida, have to proceed by ‘plunging in, and groping our way through
inherited concepts, toward the unnamable’.46

As soon as we insert a determinate being into the description of this

‘movement’, we are speaking by metaphor. We say the ‘movement’
with the terms for what the ‘movement’ makes possible. But we have
always already drifted into ontic metaphor. Temporalization is the
root of a metaphor that can be only originary. The word ‘time’
itself such as it has been understood in the history of metaphysics,
is a metaphor that indicates and dissimulates at the same time the
‘movement’ of this auto-affection.47

In this text, Derrida makes clear that the word ‘time’ indicates the
movement of auto-affection by re-marking—that is, repeating and
crossing out—Husserl’s term of retention as trace and différance and
thereby taking into account the necessary withdrawal of auto-affection,
its necessary concealment and distortion in the word ‘time’.48 In doing
so, he reveals the concept of Husserl’s phenomenology—locally—as
well as the understanding of being as presence—generally—through
repetitive crossing out or suspension in its derived and at the same
time originary character, in its irreducible oscillation between presence
and absence, constitution and de-constitution. In their undecidable
oscillation the suspended concepts reflect the undecidability of the
origin itself, which is not to be found anywhere independently from
the very gesture of deconstructive suspension. Deconstruction happens
necessarily locally, even though it has necessary consequences for any
generality.
168 Oxford Literary Review

When using such ‘concepts’, therefore, Derrida by no means

indulges in literary play; rather, what is at stake here is the effort to
follow through the matter at hand, namely, that of the impossibility for
any representation by language to elude the ‘originary non-originarity’
and, conversely, for the ‘originary non-originarity’ to elude such a
representation. There is no originary intuition of metaphoricity or
différance. Thus, it can neither be said nor can it be found outside
of language. It appears and at the same time dissimulates itself only
in language. This is why Derrida could only enact the problem of
an ‘originary semblance’ or of the ‘initial infection of the simple’
performatively, in the silent metaphorical gesture of repetitive crossing
out.
As this paper has attempted to show, Derrida discovered such
a possibility by deeply engaging in and adopting Heidegger’s
philosophy. Only through this deconstructive gesture may the circle
of understanding be thought on the basis of that which opens it and
at the same time delays its closing indefinitely: ‘It is less a question of
jumping with both feet out of a circle than of scribing [d’écrire], of
describing [décrire] the elliptical deformation by which perhaps a circle
may repeat itself while referring to itself ‘.49

Notes
1
Jacques Derrida, Le problème de la genèse dans la philosophie de Husserl (Paris: Presses
Universitaire de France, 1990) 6–7; The Problem of Genesis in Husserl’s Philosophy,
trans. Marian Hobson (London/Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2003),
14–15. In what follows, when I quote Derrida, I will use the most recent English
translation of the text in question and give the reference to the French original as
well as the reference to the English translation in parentheses. The translations of
Heidegger are all mine.
2
Jacques Derrida, Heidegger: la question de l’Être et l’Histoire (Paris: Éditions Galilée,
2013). English: Heidegger. The Question of Being & History, trans. Geoffrey
Bennington (London/Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2016).
3
See Martin Heidegger, Zur Seinsfrage, in Wegmarken (GA 9), ed. Friedrich-
Wilhelm Von Herrmann (Frankfurt am Main: Vittorio Klostermann, 2004).
4
The question about language and history, which Derrida discusses thoroughly in
the Cours, is to be considered insofar as it is part of the issue of phenomenality.
It should be emphasized that for the later Heidegger, the central characteristic
of historicity and language is to be thought on the basis of their relation to the
Benjamin Schuppert 169

withdrawal of phenomenal transparency or the originary loss of the origin—which,

however, as this paper attempts to show, already announces itself in Sein und
Zeit. Therefore, the problem of language and history is simply an issue of the
relation of appearing and disappearing as well as of the question whether the
appearing may appear itself and thus become an object for a phenomenology.
Regarding the issue of history, the following reflections lead to the conclusion that
Heidegger’s early thinking misses history because, through its phenomenological-
fundamental-ontological aspiration, it covers up being’s withdrawal from the
outset. The reduction of history is thus due to the reduction of semblance. Later
on, Heidegger will determine concealment as the actual main feature of history.
‘History is the settlement of the essence of the truth of being (Die Geschichte ist
der Austrag des Wesens der Wahrheit des Seins). But because to truth belongs
concealment and unconcealment (Weil aber zur Wahrheit gehört die Verbergung
und Entbergung), it is always an open, manifest and public (ein Offenes und
Offenkundiges und Öffentliches) that easily appears to be the authentic and only
one of history (das Einzige und Eigentliche der Geschichte). The other of history,
its concealed, dissimulated and distorted, is then only taken as the mere unknown
(Das Andere der Geschichte, ihr Verborgenes, Verhülltes, Verstelltes gilt dann nur
als das gerade Unbekannte). But in ‘truth’ concealment is the main feature of
history (In »Wahrheit« ist aber die Verbergung der Grundzug der Geschichte).’
(Martin Heidegger, Über den Anfang (GA 70), ed. Paola-Ludovika Coriando
(Frankfurt am Main: Vittorio Klostermann, 2005), 180–181).
5
See Martin Heidegger, Sein und Zeit (GA 2), ed. Friedrich-Wilhelm Von
Herrmann (Frankfurt am Main, 1977). It should be emphasized that the transition
from Sein und Zeit to the turn will only be considered insofar as it constitutes the
base for understanding this paper’s main question about the inner relation of the
issue of repetitive crossing out and that of phenomenality in Derrida’s Heidegger
reading.
6
At this point, it should be noted that in the following the term ‘turn’ is
supposed to be understood in the sense of the transition from the fundamental
ontological endeavor of the 1920’s to the thinking of the history of being as
question about the truth of being. In this paper, the term ‘turn’ is neither
to be understood in the sense of the transition of temporality of Dasein
to the temporality of being, as announced in Sein und Zeit, nor in the
sense of the shift from fundamental ontology to metontology, as Heidegger
attempts to think it in the context of a lecture on Leibniz in 1928. See
Martin Heidegger, Metaphysische Anfangsgründe der Logik im Ausgang von Leibniz
(GA 26), ed. Klaus Held. (Frankfurt am Main: Vittorio Klostermann, 1978),
170 Oxford Literary Review

199–200. In his discussion of the various meanings of the term ‘turn’ Cosmus
shows that the latter two ‘turns’ are still embedded in the fundamental
ontological endeavor, whereas the turn in the first sense is the one that marks
the fundamental transformation in Heidegger’s thinking. See Oliver Cosmus,
Anonyme Phänomenologie. Die Einheit von Heideggers Denkweg, in: Epistemata
Würzburger Wissenschaftliche Schriften Reihe Philosophie 296. (Würzburg,
2001), 72. In the following, the word ‘truth’ is always understood in Heidegger’s
sense as phenomenality, whose meaning Heidegger sees in the Greek word ‘

´ ’. On ‘truth’ as Unverborgenheit or Sichzeigen, see for example Martin
Heidegger, ‘Mein Weg in die Phänomenologie’, in Zur Sache des Denkens (GA 14),
ed. Friedrich-Wilhelm von Herrmann (Frankfurt am Main: Vittorio Klostermann,
1976), 99. Probably the most famous attempt to interpret the turn from the issue
of truth has been made by Tugendhat. See Ernst Tugendhat, Der Wahrheitsbegriff
bei Husserl und Heidegger (Berlin: Walter De Gruyter, 1970). Other important
interpretations are the ones by Bernet, Rosales und Dahlstrom. See Alberto
Rosales, ‘Zum Problem der Kehre im Denken Heideggers’, in Zeitschrift für
philosophische Forschung 38 (1984), 241. Rudolf Bernet: ‘Phänomenologische
Begriffe der Unwahrheit bei Husserl und Heidegger’, in: Heidegger-Jahrbuch 6
(2012), 108. Daniel O. Dahlstrom: Heidegger’s Concept of Truth (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 2001).
7
To be mentioned as the most important early texts on Heidegger alongside the
Cours are the passage De la violence ontologique in ‘Violence et métaphysique’ as well
as the section entitled ‘L’être écrit’ in De la grammatologie. See Jacques Derrida, De
la grammatologie (Paris: Éditions de Minuit, 1967), and Jacques Derrida, ‘Violence
et métaphysique’, in L’écriture et la différence (Paris: Éditions du Seuil, 1967), 137.
8
See Heidegger: Sein und Zeit, 3–21.
9
See ibid., 24–26.
10
Heidegger, Sein und Zeit, 39.
11
‘The idea of phenomenology’, Heidegger writes, ‘in contrast to the provisional
concept that was initially indicated, may be developped’ by means of an answer
to the question of being, assuming the meaning of being is to be demonstrated
phenomenologically’. (Heidegger: Sein und Zeit, 472).
12
In Husserl’s Ideen I one can read ‘that every originarily giving intuition (originär
gebende Anschauung) is a legitimizing source of understanding (eine Rechtsquelle der
Erkenntnis), that everything that presents itself originarily through ‘intuition’ (in its
physical reality, as it were (sozusagen in seiner leibhaftigen Wirklichkeit)), is to be
accepted simply as what it shows itself, but also only within the limits it shows itself ’.
Benjamin Schuppert 171

(Edmund Husserl, Ideen zu einer reinen Phänomenologie und phänomenologischen

Philosophie. Erstes Buch. Allgemeine Einführung in die reine Phänomenologie. 1.
Halbband: Text der 1.-3. Auflage (Husserliana III.1), ed. Karl Schuhmann (Den
Haag: Martinus Nijhoff, 1976), 51) (My translation).
13
Heidegger, Sein und Zeit, 57.
14
Ibid. 293. See also ibid., 290–299. In his notes on Sein und Zeit from 1936
Heidegger writes about a ‘fundamental ontological clamping (Verklammerung)
of all questioning’ and of ‘the phenomenological existential-transcendental-
ontological ‘methodism’, the ‘constant push for demonstration (Ausweisung)—
givenness (Gebung)—adequation (Adäquatheit)’ that goes hand in hand with it.
(Martin Heidegger, Zu eigenen Veröffentlichungen (GA 82), ed. Friedrich-Wilhelm
v. Herrmann (Frankfurt am Main: Vittorio Klostermann, 2018), 177). In the
following passages it becomes very clear to what extent the authentic self-relation of
Dasein is determined by phenomenological ‘seeing’ or ‘intuition’: ‘In its character as
projection (Entwurf), understanding constitutes existentially what we call the sight
(Sicht) of Dasein. [. . .] The sight that is primarily and as a whole related to existence
is what we call transparency (Durchsichtigkeit). We choose this term to designate
correctly understood ‘self-knowledge’ in order to indicate that it is not a matter here
of perceptually finding a point that is the self and staring at it, but of grasping and
understanding the full openness of being-in-the-world throughout all its essential
constitutive factors. Existing beings sight “themselves” only when they have become
transparent to themselves.’ (Heidegger, Sein und Zeit, 195). Of course, Heidegger
dismisses the interpretation of seeing as physical or as the seeing of something that
is present as an object (ein Vorhandenes); what is to be considered is only ‘the
peculiarity of seeing’ (die Eigentümlichkeit des Sehens) that is the ‘fact that it lets
appear beings accessible to it as they in itself are without being concealed (daß es
das ihm zugängliche Seiende an ihm selbst unverdeckt begegnen läßt).’ (ibid.). This
is precisely the link to Husserl’s famous principle of all principles, namely that—
despite all the differences between Husserl and Heidegger—there is this orientation
towards what is directly given, that is, not mediated by something else that could
not be—despite all distortion and concealment—de jure traced back to beings
originarity or unconcealedness. In the background here is also Husserl’s concept
of ‘categorial intuition’ (Kategoriale Anschauung), according to which being, even
though it is not given sensually, is accessible to sight. Heidegger writes in the
lecture Prolegomena zur Geschichte des Zeitbegriffs, which he had given shortly before
he wrote Sein und Zeit, that through categorial intuition we ‘gain the scientific
approach that the old ontology was looking for. There is no ontology alongside
172 Oxford Literary Review

phenomenology, but scientific ontology is nothing else than phenomenology.’ (Martin

Heidegger, Prolegomena zur Geschichte des Zeitbegriffs (GA 20), hrsg. v. Petra Jaeger,
(Frankfurt am Main: Vittorio Klostermann, 1994), 98).
15
For the difference between the Befragte, Gefragte and the Erfragte, see Heidegger,
Sein und Zeit, 5–11. See also Derrida: Heidegger: la question de l’Être et l’Histoire,
59–61 (28–9).
16
This makes clear why Sein und Zeit’s Destruktion of the previous and inauthentic
interpretations of being, that is, the Destruktion of the history of ontology, seems to
play a role that is only marginal with respect to fundamental ontology, even though
Heidegger appears to claim the exact opposite by emphasizing that the question of
being is supposed to be asked in a radically historical way. See Heidegger: Sein und
Zeit, 28. What it means to ask the question of being in a radically historical way is,
according to the present considerations, not possible to be clarified in the context of
a phenomenological ontology, be it fundamental or not. This is precisely why Derrida
dwells to such an extent on the question of history in this passage.
17
For the outlined aporia of the circle in Sein und Zeit as it is presented so far, see
also Cosmus 2001, 61–63.
18
On this, see Cathrin Nielsen, Die Entzogene Mitte. Gegenwart bei Heidegger, in:
Orbis Phaenomenologicus Studien 3 (Würzburg: Königshausen & Neumann,
2003), 68.
19
‘Dasein is co-originarily (gleichursprünglich) in truth and untruth’. (Heidegger, Sein
und Zeit, 295). See also ibid., 57, 59, 175. For the motif of the ‘a priori perfect’, see
ibid., 114. The expression ‘always already’ is almost everywhere operatively present
throughout Sein und Zeit. In his reading, Derrida precisely points out that the
‘always’ frees the ‘already’ from its empirical relation to specific situations and gives
it the character of generality and therefore necessity. See Derrida, Heidegger: la
question de l’Être et l’Histoire, 77–8. (41–2).
20
On this subject, see particularly Heidegger: Sein und Zeit, 75, 187–196.
21
‘As an existential (Existenzial), possibility (Möglichkeit) is not the free-floating
potentiality of being in the sense of a ‘indifference of arbitrariness’ (libertas
indifferentiae). As essentially attuned, Dasein is always already involved in particular
possibilities (je schon in bestimmte Möglichkeiten hineingeraten), as the potentiality
for being that it is, it has let some go by. It constantly adopts the possibilities of
its being, grasps them, and goes astray. But this means that Dasein is a being-
possible which is entrusted to itself, it is thrown possibility through and through
(durch und durch geworfene Möglichkeit)’. (Heidegger: Sein und Zeit, 191). On the
figure of Angewiesenheit, Heidegger writes concisely: ‘Dasein has, insofar it exists,
always already referred itself to a given ‘world’ (je schon auf eine begegnende ‘Welt’
Benjamin Schuppert 173

angewiesen), this ‘being referred to’ [or this dependency] essentially belongs to its
being (zu seinem Sein gehört wesenhaft diese Angewiesenheit)’. (ibid., 117).
22
Heidegger: Sein und Zeit, 404.
23
Heidegger: Sein und Zeit, 505.
24
Ibid., 27. ‘Its own past—and this means always this of its ‘generation’—does not
go after Dasein, but is already ahead of it (folgt dem Dasein nicht nach, sondern geht
ihm je schon vorweg).’ (ibid.).
25
For the motifs of ‘auto-transmission’ and ‘repetition’ (Wiederholung), see ibid.,
505–510. To Dasein’s thrownness (Geworfenheit) belongs that it finds itself in an
already constituted world, in an already open understanding of being—namely the
interpretation of the meaning of being as presence. On the necessary ‘beginning’ in
inauthenticity, see particularly ibid., 222–3.
26
On ‘auto-affection’, see Martin Heidegger: Kant und das Problem der Metaphysik
(GA 3), ed. Friedrich-Wilhelm von Herrmann (Frankfurt am Main: Vittorio
Klostermann, 1991), 189–191. The ‘movedness’, which characterizes Dasein,
already shows at the level of terminology that Dasein cannot be grasped in the
difference of activity and passivity. The existential (Existenzial) of ‘movedness’
is referenced multiple times in Sein und Zeit, regarding thrownness, decaying
(Verfallen) and eventually historicity of Dasein. See ibid., 235–7, 461, 495–6,
513–14.
27
Derrida: Heidegger: la question de l’Être et l’Histoire, 266 (180).
28
See ibid., 265–7 (180–81).
29
Martin Heidegger, ‘Vom Wesen der Wahrheit’, in Wegmarken (GA 9), ed.
Friedrich-Wilhelm von Herrmann (Frankfurt am Main: Vittorio Klostermann,
2004), 196. Therefore, we are faced with a concealment that is no longer to be
understood as a privative modification of the phenomenon and thus can no longer
be thought within phenomenality, which is understood as possibility. Heidegger
claims: ‘The concealment of beings as a whole, the originary un-truth is even older
than every openness of this or that. It is even older than letting be itself, which in
disclosing already holds concealed and relates to concealment (Die Verborgenheit
des Seienden im Ganzen, die eigentliche Un-wahrheit ist älter als jede Offenbarkeit
von diesem oder jenem. Sie ist älter auch als das Seinlassen selbst, das entbergend
schon verborgen hält und zur Verbergung sich verhält).’ (ibid., 194). Only now it
would be possible to ultimately claim Sein und Zeit’s formulation that truth and
untruth are ‘co-originary’. As long as ‘decaying’ is still thought as an issue of Dasein,
semblance will eventually only be explicable as an omission of Dasein, which
succumbs to the temptation of the ‘the They’ (das Man). Nielsen shows in her study
precisely that in Sein und Zeit the ‘joint’ between authenticity and decaying remains
174 Oxford Literary Review

unclear because both authenticity and inauthenticity are thought on the basis of
Dasein’s finitude, that is, both ‘modes’ of being, the turning toward (Zukehr) and
turning away (Abkehr), are made possible through the openness (Erschlossenheit) of
mortality. See Nielsen 2003, 68. Only if decaying or rather the ‘oblivion of being’
(Seinsvergessenheit) is thought on the basis of the withdrawal of being, distortion,
semblance etc. will no longer have the character of an ‘error’. Nielsen writes aptly:
‘Errancy is explicitly no longer to be understood as a mere falling short of the
authentic, as an escape or a simple revisable turning away, but it has constitutive
character’. (Nielsen 2003, 79).
30
Heidegger, Zu eigenen Veröffentlichungen, 38. The addressed motif of ‘grounding’,
which is not a grounding in the sense of reasoning a fundament, but grounding
an ‘abyss’, refers to the Beiträge zur Philosophie. The motif of ‘grounding’ will,
however, not be discussed in the following, which is solely about showing the
way from Heidegger’s thinking to Derrida’s deconstruction. It must be stressed
that that this is only one possible and probably not the most ‘loyal’ approach
to interpreting Heidegger, particularly because he retrospectively marks his own
thinking as phenomenological, whereas Derrida would distrust any ‘grounding’
and ‘phenomenology’. See Heidegger, ‘Mein Weg in die Phänomenologie’.
31
Heidegger, Zu eigenen Veröffentlichungen, 84.
32
This makes clear why Heidegger rejects the term ‘being’ for Unterschied in a side
note on his text ‘Der Spruch des Anaximander’: ‘Difference (der Unter-Schied)
is infinitely different from all being which remains the being of beings. Thus, it
remains inappropriate to still name difference ‘being’—be it with, be it without
y (Daher bleibt es ungemäß, den Unterschied noch mit, Sein’—sei es mit, sei es
ohne y—zu benennen).’ (Martin Heidegger, ‘Der Spruch des Anaximander’, in:
Holzwege (GA 5), ed. Friedrich-Wilhelm von Herrmann (Frankfurt am Main:
Vittorio Klostermann, 1994), 364).
33
This makes clear that the consequence of a radically historical understanding of
the question of being must lead to questioning its status as a question, thus
that Heidegger’s remarks regarding this issue in paragraph 6 of Sein und Zeit go
far beyond phenomenological fundamental ontology. Regarding Husserl, Held
pointedly noticed that Heidegger only ‘makes the vital step beyond Husserl’ in
his late philosophy, by no longer situating concealment in Dasein but instead
understanding it as originary concealment in being itself. (Klaus Held, ‘Heidegger
und das Prinzip der Phänomenologie’, in: Heidegger und die praktische Philosophie,
ed. Annemarie Siefert (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1989), 111–139 (124).
34
Heidegger, Sein und Zeit, 117.
Benjamin Schuppert 175
35
And therefore also avoids ultimately every linguistic approach to the word, which
it then again makes possible. On the Faktum of language, see Derrida, Heidegger:
la question de l’Être et l’Histoire 80–82 (44–5).
36
As well as the word-character of all other words, presuming that meaning always
belongs to the possibility of its originary givenness, as Derrida will elaborate in La
voix et le phénomène.
37
‘Now the thinking of the truth of being is to come but to come as what was
always already buried. It follows that metaphor is the forgetting of the proper and
originary meaning. Metaphor does not occur in language as a rhetorical procedure;
it is the beginning of language, of which the thinking of being is however the buried
origin. One does not begin with the originary; that’s the first word of the (hi)story.’
(Derrida, Heidegger: la question de l’Être et l’Histoire, 105 (62).
38
Derrida, Heidegger: la question de l’Être et l’Histoire 279 (190). With
the formulation of ‘metaphoricity’, Derrida alludes to Heidegger’s following
formulation from the preface of Sein und Zeit, which, in turn, is an allusion
to Plato’s Sophist: ‘The first philosophical step in understanding the problem of
being is to not 
ó 
ˆ, ‘not telling stories’ (keine Geschichten
erzählen), that is, not determining beings in their origin as if being would be another
possible being (d.h. Seiendes in seiner Herkunft zu bestimmen, gleich als hätte Sein den
Charakter eines möglichen Seienden).’ (Heidegger, Sein und Zeit, 8).
39
Derrida, Heidegger: la question de l’Être et l’Histoire, 335 (224). As Derrida points
out in his texts on Husserl’s phenomenology, even though the deconstruction of
metaphysics announces itself in Husserl’s work, this happens against what Husserl
means to say. Husserl lacks Heidegger’s vigilance, which would let him take the vital
step ‘beyond’ metaphysics or rather deeper into the problem of metaphysics. On
Husserl’s affiliation with metaphysics, see Derrida, Heidegger: la question de l’Être et
l’Histoire, 163–203 (105–134).
40
See ibid., 335–6 (224–5).
41
Derrida, De la grammatologie, 37. English: Of Grammatology, trans. Gayartri
Chakravorty Spivak (Baltimore/London: The Johns Hopkins University Press,
1997), 23–4. While the French word ‘tour’ can mean ‘trick’ in the sense of ‘tour
de magie’ in this context, another possible translation would be ‘circular path’.
42
This is why Derrida already emphasizes in the first session of the Cours that
de(con-)struction is not a refutation. Only a thinking that aims for truth, that
is, one that reduces being to a being or pulls the constituting down to the level of
the constituted can refute. See Derrida, Heidegger: la question de l’Être et l’Histoire
24 (2).
176 Oxford Literary Review
43
‘The proper meaning whose movement metaphor [that is, metaphysics] tries to
follow without ever reaching or seeing it, this proper meaning has never been said or
thought and will never be said or thought as such.’ (Derrida: Heidegger: la question
de l’Être et l’Histoire, 106 (62). Here, one may draw conclusions from Heidegger
that may be used against Heidegger himself, who still adheres to the possibility of
a simple naming (einfaches Nennen) and to a phenomenology of the inconspicuous
(Phänomenologie des Unscheinbaren) and does so, according to the perspective on
his work which Derrida opened up, contrary to the critical potential of his own
thought. This line of thought cannot be further elaborated here, however, since
the present considerations aim simply at shedding light on the closeness between
Heidegger’s and Derrida’s thinking as it appears in the 1964/65 Cours. Needless to
say, it is not my intention here to suggest that there is in fact no difference between
them, or that Derrida’s is the most authentic Heidegger interpretation.
44
Jacques Derrida, La voix et le phénomène (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France,
1967); Voice and Phenomenon, trans. Leonard Lawlor (Evanston, IL: Northwestern
University Press, 2011).
45
Ibid., 91 (66).
46
Ibid. On this, see also Derrida: ‘Implications. Entretien avec Henri Ronse’, in
Positions (Paris: Les Éditions de Minuit, 1972) 23–4;’Implications. Interview with
Henri Ronse’, in Positions (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press 1981), 14.
47
Derrida, La voix et le phénomène, 100 (73).
48
See ibid., 80 (58). One reads there that ‘this trace or this différance is always older
than presence and obtains for it its openness.’ (Ibid. 80 (58)). Whereas Heidegger
crosses out the originary, Derrida crosses out the derived, which eventually is
nothing but a consequent acting out of what announces itself in his Heidegger
reading—but also already in his early Husserl readings—, particularly that there
is no other beginning than the non-originary. The suspension of originarity is a
consequence of the originarity of the non-originary.
49
Derrida, ‘The Original Discussion of Différance’ (1968), trans. David Wood, Sarah
Richmond & Malcolm Bernard, in: ‘Derrida and Différance,’ ed. David Wood &
Robert Bernasconi (Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 1988), 85. The
‘outside’ that is indicated in the crossing out is nothing that one could stop at or
anything that one could claim as a new thesis, but the outside has to be crossed out
ultimately, as it is an outside: ‘One is never installed within transgression, one never
lives elsewhere’. (Derrida, Implications. Entretien avec Henri Ronse, 21 (12)).