Sean Burke The Death and Return of the Author : Criticism and Subjectivity in Barthes, Foucault and Derrida.

27. These problems are still further compounded when we consider that the full title of the Essay
is the Essay on the Orgin of Languages, which Treats of Melody and Musical Imitation, and that
since it gives over a good part of its labour to discoursing on music, many scholars have
concluded that this is its proper subject. As is to be expected, Derrida challenges this position,
and spends a full twenty pages arguing that, in any case, Rousseau's thought on the origin of
music is simply another expression of his thought on the origin of languages. (See Jacques
Derrida, Of Grammatology, op. cit., pp. 195–216.) That Derrida might be utterly persuasive here
is irrelevant to our concern, which is simply to note the complications involved in using one
problematical text and one problematical author to exemplify an entire epoch.
28. For example: 'from the Discourse to the Essay the sliding movement is toward continuity. The
Discourse wants to mark the beginning . . . The Essay would make us sense the beginnings by
which "men sparsely placed on the face of the earth" continuously wrench themselves away,
within a society being born, from the pure state of nature. It captures man as he passes into birth,
in that subtle transition from origin to genesis.' Jacques Derrida, Of Grammatology, op. cit., p.
253.
29. From Derrida's footnote to this claim, it would not appear 'easy' at all: 'It is beside the point
both of our projects and of the possibility of our demonstrating from internal evidence the link
between the characteristic and Leibniz's infinitist theology. For that it would be necessary to go
through and exhaust the entire content of the project'. Jacques Derrida, Of Grammatology, op.
cit., p. 331, n. 14.
30. Once again, whatever novelty and impact we ascribe to Derrida's thinking on metaphysics is
only to be determined via the extent to which he can be said to move beyond the Heideggerian
critique.
31. For instance, in an interview with Guy Scarpetta, Derrida responds to the imputation that he
has denied the subject, by saying: 'As you recall, I have never said that there is not a subject of
writing . . . It is solely necessary to reconsider the problem of the effect of subjectivity such as it
is produced by the structure of the text . . . Doubtless this effect is inseparable from a certain
relationship between sublimation and the death instinct, from a movement of interiorisationidealisation-relève-sublimation,
etc., and therefore from a certain repression. And it would be
ridiculous to overlook the necessity of this chain, and even more so to raise some moral or
political "objection" to it.' Jacques Derrida, Positions, trans. Alan Bass (London: Athlone Press,
1981), p. 88.
32. Harold Bloom, 'Auras: The Sublime Crossing and the Death of Love', Oxford Literary Review,
vol. 4, no. 3 (1981), pp. 3–19: pp. 18–19.
33. Jacques Derrida, Of Grammatology, op. cit., p. 160.
34. W.K. Wimsatt Jr and Monroe C. Beardsley, 'The Intentional Fallacy', Sewanee Review, vol.
54, no. 3 (1946), pp. 468–88. Revised version in W.K. Wimsatt Jr, The Verbal Icon: Studies in the
Meaning of Poetry (Lexington: University of Kentucky Press, 1954), pp. 3–18. Steven Knapp and
Walter Benn Michaeb, 'Against Theory', in W.J.T. Mitchell, ed., Against Theory: Literary Studies
and the New Pragmatism (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1985), pp. 11–30. 'Against
Theory' was originally published in Critical Inquiry, vol. 8, no. 4 (Summer 1982), pp. 732–42.
35. See J. L. Austin, How to Do Things with Words (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1962); John R.
Searle, Speech Acts: An Essay in the Philosophy of Language (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 1969); H.P. Grice, 'Intention and Uncertainty', Proceedings of the British Academy, 57
(1971), pp. 263–79. It is too early at this stage to foresee the impact which Grice's impressive,
long-evolving and largely unpublished work will have upon literary theory. A detailed introduction
to his thought is provided in Richard E. Grandy and Richard Warner, eds., Philosophical Grounds
of Rationality: Intentions, Categories, Ends (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1986).
36. John R. Searle, 'Reiterating the Differences: A Reply to Derrida' in Glyph I (1977), pp. 198–
208: p. 201.
37. Jacques Derrida, 'Signature Event Context', trans. Samuel Weber and Jeffrey Mehlman in
Glyph I (1977), pp. 172–97: p. 192. This essay also appears in Margins—of Philosophy, op. cit.,
pp. 307–30, but the Glyph translation is preferred in the interests of the continuity of the
exchange. For Derrida's reply to Searle's reply see 'Limited Inc', trans. Samuel Weber in Glyph, II
(1977), pp. 162–51. For Derrida's defence of his own position on intention see ibid., pp. 191–218.
38. The models Of intention Derrida deploys are not to be seen as purely intratextual