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

of writing, it is not only compatible with the Platonic system in general, but actively and urgently
necessitated by that system. 'Plato's Pharmacy' thus gives over its first twenty pages to defending
the Phaedrus against the tradition.
Of course this will seem a little puzzling, since from a prima facie point of view, the tradition is
very much in agreement with what we might expect deconstruction to avouch here. Platonic
scholars themselves, far from upholding Plato's denunciation of writing have found it somewhat
inconsistent, and in explicit contradiction with Plato's own practices as a writer. Indeed, we might
say, that in certain respects, the critical basis on which deconstruction might take place here has
been prepared long in advance. Yet what presents itself here as the deconstruction of
logocentrism here, is in fact responding to the far more onerous pressures of constructing that
tradition.
Over and above the necessities of undoing the text, and as their indispensable condition, the
Phaedrus must be seen to belong fully to the great Platonic metaphysics, for within the
deconstructive narrative this text—of which only four pages deal negatively with the question of
writing—forms the origin of logocentrism. And the stacks are laid high against Derrida here, since
it is not just that the Phaedrus as a whole is thought to belong to a prodigal immaturity, but it is
thought to do so primarily on account of the very section which introduces the myth of Threuth to
illustrate the argument that writing, as an artificial mnemic device, would subvert the living
presence of natural memory. 23 Furthermore, additional support for the condemnation of writing
only comes from a Seventh Letter whose authenticity is widely contested.24 Derrida must insist
upon the 'rigorous, sure, and subtle form'25 of the Phaedrus, he must argue with a supremely
patient vigour, that the Phaedrus is absolutely essential and axial to the primary Platonic canon,
that the very system of Platonic idealism relates eo ipso to the the repression of writing, for it is
only from this point that the seemingly lateral question of speech/writing can be wedded to the
vast tradition of Western metaphysics. It is only from here that Derrida can say that the
metaphysics of presence came into its being with the repression of writing, only from here that his
text can begin to use these terms interchangeably within its history of Western thought.
Likewise, in the case of Rousseau's text. Having allotted to a short, little read and posthumously
published tract the onus of representing an entire age of metaphysics between Descartes and
Hegel, the redoubtable problems of exemplarity26 that this raises would be still further
compounded if—following tradition—we were to see in the Essay a work not even itself properly
Rousseauian.27 This would not have presented such problems to Derrida had he merely wished
to discuss the Essay on its own terms, as though it could have come from anywhere. But in order
to lend the theme of supplementarity its full breadth the Grammatology has been obliged to trace
it across Rousseau's entire corpus, and to read it in the deepest reserves of his experience,
thereby evolving a Rousseauism from which the Essay is thenceforth in principle inextricable.
Furthermore, within the complex economy of the Grammatology, supplementarity must be traced
through the Confessions if it is to be a determinant psychic force; as, too, the Essay must
intertextualise from a position of parity with the great discourses, for it is in this hour that the
question of writing as supplementarity conjoins itself to the discourses on nature, culture, politics;
and indeed having established the posteriority of the Essay to the second Discourse,
grammatology will spare no effort in reading the question of writing as tacitly implied in the entire
Rousseauian philosophy. 28
There is then a very definite sense in which deconstruction is in complicity with the texts it
deconstructs. As a general principle, preparatory labours of construction must accompany any
deconstructive act, for the reading must propose a model of order even if only in the interests of
finally unsettling that order; and in this sense Derrida's work acquires a rare analogue in its
industrial counterpart, for which a certain work of consolidation is sometimes necessary if a
building is to collapse according to pre-established patterns. Yet, though this initial phase of
construction is common to all the deconstructive readings, its urgency is somewhat greater in the
cases of the Phaedrus and the Essay than elsewhere. That Derrida will exert such efforts of
sponsorship on their behalf is primarily due to the peculiar fragility of the history he recounts. For
this reason, too, he has no answers to the question of Rousseau's exemplarity.
If we reconstitute the history of logocentrism, we will see that—in its exemplary moments—it
leaps directly from antiquity to Rousseau's Essay on the Origin of Languages. And it is not in the
interests of brevity or momentum that Derrida should move so expeditiously between the