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

53. Derrida clearly wishes us to read 'Plato's Pharmacy' with Of Grammatology in terms of the
latter's work on intention and supplementarity: 'I take the liberty, of referring the reader, in order to
give him a preliminary, indicative direction, to the 'Question of Method' proposed in De la
grammatologie . . . With a few precautions, one could say that the pharmakon plays a role
analogous, in this reading of Plato, to that of supplément in the reading of Rousseau' (96, n. 43).
54. These protocols are persuasive in their own terms and have certain points of specific
relevance to the section of the Phaedrus concerned with speech and writing. Indeed, Derrida
might have consolidated his position here with an eye to the Socratic problem, to the play
of 'voices' and signatures which take place in a scene of writing which purports to be a scene of
dialogic voicing, to the potentially ironic contests between a Socrates who 'speaks' against writing
in a text which is written by Plato. That he does not do so is a matter we shall address a little
later.
55. In fact, the path of Derrida's reading does not disallow Platonic intention but sets it off against
the supplementary play of the pharmakon. To this extent, 'Plato's Pharmacy' conforms to the
pattern of early Derridean reading outlined in the section 'Doubling the Text' above.
56. Literature on the authenticity of the Platonic letters is extensive and finds recommendation
here only to illustrate the difficulties facing Derrida in constructing a Platonic privileging of speech,
let alone an 'epoch of logocentrism'. Nineteenth-century scholarship simply assumed the letters to
be forgeries. Wilamowitz-Moellendorff upset this consensus by declaring the Seventh and Eighth
Letters to be genuine; and early in this century, Hackforth's discriminations served to orient the
debate in the English-speaking world as follows: 'we may hold five of the Platonic Epistles
genuine, viz., iii, iv, vii, viii, xiii . . . we must reject five, viz., i, ii, v, vi, xii . . . the remaining three,
ix, x and xi, must be left doubtful.'—R. Hackforth, The Authorship of the Platonic Epistles
(Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1913), p. 188. For a relatively recent formulation of
the case against the Seventh Letters' authenticity, see Ludwig Edelstein, Plato's Seventh Letter,
Philosophia Antiqua vol.XIV (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1966), especially pp. 76–85 where the argument
against authenticity is pursued in the specific context of the repudiation of writing. Quite the
contrary argument can be found in Paul Friedliänder, Plato I: An Introduction, 3 vols., trans. Hans
Meyerhoff (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1958), pp. 236–45.
57. The dividend of the mythological excursus is that 'Plato's Pharmacy' will then talk about the
'hierarchical opposition between son and father, subject and king, death and life, writing and
speech, etc.'. (92) as though it were structured into the very warp and woof of the Phaedrus. One
will also notice that when the life/death opposition appears in Derrida's text, it invariably does so
adjacent to 'speech/writing'.
58. 'If logos has a father, if it is a logos only when attended by its father, this is because it is
always a being (on) and even a certain species of being (the Sophist, 260a), more precisely a
living being. Logos is a zoon. An animal that is born, grows, belongs to the phusis. Linguistics,
logic, dialectics, and zoology are all in the same camp.' (79)
59. 'The inventor of writing in Greek legend was Prometheus; but he was unsuitable for Plato's
purpose, since it would have been difficult to make anyone play against him the part that Thamus
plays against Theuth. And in any case it was natural enough for Plato to go to Egypt for a tale of
pre-history, just as in a later dialogue he goes to an Egyptian priest for his story of Atlantis,'—R.
Hackforth, Plato's Phaedrus, op. cit., p. 157, n. 2. Hackforth's judgement is corroborated by G.J.
De Vries, A Commentary on the Phaedrus of Plato, op. cit. (Amsterdam: Adolf M. Hakkert, 1969),
p. 248.
60. Exploratory rather than thetic, the section on the inferiority of the written word is also
exceedingly brief in its attention to speech and writing—just under four pages (274b–277a) in
Stephanus's Renaissance edition.
61. The comparison of writing to painting will be considered below. Socrates might seem to
provide some encouragement to the life/death opposition by saying that written words speak to
you as though they were alive. (Phaedrus, 275d) However, it is not the deceptive appearance of
'life' in paintings but their property of muteness before questioning which transfers to the graphic.
62. Cf. also Apology 29b–c; Protagoras, 239a; Phaedrus, 277d–e.
63. For a variety of perspectives on the Socratic problem see A.E. Taylor, Socrates (Edinburgh:
Edinburgh University Press, 1933) pp. 131–74; Paul Friedländer, Plato I, op. cit., pp. 126–36;
Gregory Vlastos, Socratic Studies (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press,