Abstract

This paper attempts to clarify the relationship between phenomenology and deconstruction in Jacques Derrida’s Voice and Phenomenon. I argue that the in-between status of deconstructive readings becomes visible only if we understand the double movement of reading, which neither refutes phenomenology nor simply carries on its program. As I show, the necessity of a “double reading” can be grasped only in terms of the figure of diff.rance, which escapes the opposition between appearing and disappearing. Since there is no linear transition from the field of phenomenality to diff.rance, deconstruction can only articulate itself as a transgression of the text, a transgression contained in the text itself which at the same time points to its irreducible duplicity.