Abstract

Deconstructing the Platonic presence/sign, memory/archive hierarchies; the Derridean situation; memory’s inherent contamination by writing; the metaphysical pipedream of purity and pure presence; originary impropriety; deconstruction of metaphysics’ constitutive dyads; the sign as supplement; the logic of alterity; original difference, trace, and doubling: violence of difference and violence of identity; metaphysics’ exclusion of the Other, Derridean repatriation of the Other; extending hospitality to the sign; deconstruction of selfhood; from binarity to doubling; contamination as ethical; writing as omission, absence, reduction, castration; the ethical imperative to write.