Postmodernity and the Question of the Other || The Question of Derrida's Women

The Question of Derrida's WomenAuthor(s): Jennifer ThomasSource: Human Studies, Vol. 16, No. 1/2, Postmodernity and the Question of the Other (1993),pp. 163-176Published by: SpringerStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/20010993 .

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Human Studies 16: 163-176, 1993. ? 1993 Kluwer Academic Publishers. Printed in the Netherlands.

The question of Derrida's women

JENNIFER THOMAS

Department of Political Science, Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, MD 21218

The delayed title of this reading will have been "The Question of the Other." But - woman will be my subject. Such a question, the question of

the other, in this case the question of woman (if one ignores the "but,"

which I will do but - only for the moment) returns the "other" to the

position of object of knowledge.1 Such knowledge may be determinedly indeterminate - but indeterminacy itself can serve a purpose. Thus, the

indeterminacy which Jacques Derrida ascribes to woman in his essay on

Nietzsche's style, Spurs: Nietzsche's Styles/ ?perons: Les Styles de

Nietzsche is often seen by his critics as yet another repositioning of woman

as either the fetish of philosophy (Doane, 1989:125), or as the backdrop for the erection of a (masculine) philosophical system (See Irigaray, 1983). The

beginning proper of Derrida's text is marked by a series of juxtapositions: the question of style/ the subject of woman: the question of style/veils and

sails/ genres and genders/ spurs. Such an oblique entry into the question of

woman allows one to overlook the ways that this essay might itself pose an

interrogation of the "question of woman." If one is to examine the way that

such an interrogation is articulated in the margins of this text, one must

attend meticulously to Derrida's styles. One must therefore begin before the

question of style2 and address the first question of his lecture: the question of the exergue. His attention in the first section of his reading to the form of

the exergue will serve to situate the question of style as the question of

woman. And because it is by means of an analysis of the exergue that

Derrida problematizes the question of woman, I will pause at length in the

space created by such an exergue.

The mystery of articulation

Gayatri Spivak, in a surprising move which repeats that for which she

criticises Derrida in his reading of "How the True World Became a Fable,"



164

presents the opening of Spurs as

The circumspect title for this meeting would be the question of style. But woman will be my subject. (1983:1712).3

The first and opening step, however, of Derrida's essay mark the context of

a letter of Nietzsche from which Derrida will cite pieces.4 This description of context -

notably unhelpful in the attempt to track down a stable

meaning for the words of Nietzsche's letter despite the fact that it tells us

the site and date of the production of such letter as well as the identity of

the addressee, that is, the destination of the letter - is followed by this

sentence: "Je d?coupe, dans sa lettre, les formes d'un exergue -

erratique."

Exergue: both "'outside the work,'" and "the space on a coin or medal

reserved for an inscription,"5 it is also "the space on a coin or medal

between the rim and the bottom of the picture or design ... [or] the inscrip? tion in this space." The inscription in the space at the bottom of American

coins states the value of the coin in question. The exergue as the inscription of the value of a coin, as the place of that

inscription and as the space created by such inscription. The exergue thus

functions as an articulation: it will be both the presentation of a meaning and that which delimits the boundaries of sexual difference. Thus, in his

reference to the possibility of "floating" between masculine and feminine

when we speak of "voiles,"6 Derrida tells us that such refusal to establish

the boundaries between masculine and feminine is possible as long as one

does not articulate (Derrida, 1978:38). "Articulate" - a reference to the role

of the article in the French language as that which presents gender - here

indicates the role that spacing has in the presentation of sexual difference.

And the refusal to articulate is therefore a defense against "the terrifying,

blinding and deadly menace (of that) which presents itself, gives itself to be

seen with obstinacy: presence, therefore content, the thing itself, meaning, truth - as long as this is not already the abyss, deflowered in all the unveil?

ing of difference" (Derrida, 1978:38). But if articulation is that which

presents sexual difference, it is thus also that which undoes all presentation. Thus Derrida, in another essay, tells us that, "so called phonetic writing, by all rights and in principle, and not only due to an empirical or technical

insufficiency, can function only by admitting into its system nonphonetic

'signs' (punctuation, spacing, etc.). And an examination of the structure and

necessity of these nonphonetic signs quickly reveals that they can barely tolerate the concept of the sign itself'. (Derrida, 1982:5; my emphasis).

If articulation both presents sexual difference and threatens any such

presentation, this is because the spacing which holds articulation at bay is

also, itself, an articulation. Such spacing would then both defend against the

threat of truth and also enable the system of written signs: "This force of



165

rupture is tied to the spacing that constitutes the written sign: spacing which

separates it from other elements of the internal textual chain (...), but also

from all forms of present reference (...) objective or subjective. This

spacing is not the simple negativity of a lacuna but rather the emergence of

the mark" (Derrida, 1988:9?10).7 Articulation thus becomes both the

condition of the possibility of presentation and that which separates all

presentation from presence.

Returning to the second sentence of Derrida's text: "Je d?coupe, dans sa

lettre, les formes d'un exergue -

erratique." We can render this in English as: "I cut out, punch into, from/within his letter, the forms of an erratic

exergue." Such a translation, however, would efface the bar in an attempt to

follow the rules of proper English grammar which tell us that an adjective must go before a substantive. But the position of the bar in Derrida's

sentence is not, quite, proper French.8 The bar follows the phrase, "the

forms of an exergue"; cutting a space between "exergue" and its adjective -

"erratique" - the bar functions itself as an exergue. Just as the exergue is

both the place of inscription and the inscription which creates that place, the

bar is simultaneously an indication of a space, a filling of that space - both

of which are an articulation - and a material delay - a suspension of

articulation. The bar, then, marks the space -

by means of which one is

momentarily arrested - between the substantive and its adjective. The

exergue is the bar that in its articulation defers articulation. And the bar is

that which indicates the already of the exergue: Nietzsche's letter is already an exergue, is already such because it is a written sign which can always be

and is already cut out - an exergue. Thus, in "Signature Event Context,"

Derrida (1988:9) claims: "... a written sign carries with it the force that

breaks with its context, that is, with the collectivity of presences organizing the moment of its inscription. This breaking force is not an accidental

predicate but the very structure of the written text." Therefore, if Nietzche's

letter remains mysterious - "Will anyone ever know what was thus named

between themV (Derrida, 1978:34; my emphasis) - it is so because of the

already: "Already, the name of that which effaces itself or in advance

subtracts itself, leaving nonetheless a mark, a signature subtracted

from/within that very thing from which it is withdrawn - the here and now - and for which it would be necessary [il faudrait

- and yet would be

lacking] to take account" (Derrida, 1978:38). But of course, such an

accounting is impossible, despite Derrida's assurances ("... of which it

would be necessary to take account. Which I will do ...), precisely because

such a naming takes place between them in the space of the exergue, in the

articulation which is the possibility of such naming, but which also always drives away the menace of presentation. This force, which breaks with

presence and makes all writing into an exergue, is thus also that which



166

makes any text readable. That is, articulation always leaves a mystery; or,

perhaps, mystery always leaves an articulation.

Values and veils: Derrida's harem

And we thus arrive at the mystery of woman. Derrida finds within the text

of Nietzsche three types of statement about woman (Derrida, 1978:96). In

the first sort of statement, woman functions as the power of falsehood, as

one who misleads and is placed in opposition to truth. As such, she func?

tions as Nietzsche's misleading letter. Because she pretends to hide a secret, she is a fraudulent promissory note, the exergue without the coin. Also as

the bar - that which marks (indicates and inscribes) a space and that which

defers (proper) articulation - she gives herself for, that is, passes herself off

for, a value. "One cent," or "Quarter Dollar," she says. But alas, she does

not deliver any value, she is always hidden from herself and from him. Like

a false clue, a sort of trickery, she maintains the pretense of the phallus which she, in fact, does not have. And the phallic philosopher (Nietzsche?

Derrida?) has simply to look to see that in fact he has it, and she does not.

She thus functions within a system of veiling and unveiling: it suffices to

unveil her to see that she is truthfully a lie.

In the second sort of proposition, woman functions as Christian truth.

Positioned as such by the dogmatic philosopher who is a "seducer without

experience" (Derrida, 1978:54) she is believed to be the locus of a

privileged and religious truth. She still functions, for Nietzsche, as the lie, but as such she is a lie which is believed to be true only by the dogmatic

philosopher, who understands nothing about women: "this truth which is

woman, the philosopher who believes, credulous and dogmatic, in truth just as he believes in woman, has understood nothing" (Derrida, 1978:52).

However, in the third sort of statement, woman is affirmed as that which

operates beyond the system of oppositions (truth/falsity); she is affirmed as

art. Not as the misleading promise of a false value, but rather as one who

creates value, she is the process of what Nietzsche calls, in "On Truth and

Lies in a Nonmoral sense" (Nietzsche, 1979), metaphor. As such, she is still

the exergue, but she is the exergue as that which enables value and not as

that which promises a false value. Thus, if the first woman allows the

philosopher to look at the coin and claim, "but it's only metal," the third

woman indicates the illusory quality of truth:

Truths are illusions which we have forgotten are illusions; they are

metaphors that have become worn out and have been drained of sensuous

force, coins which have lost their embossing and are now considered as

metal and no longer as coins (Nietzsche, 1979:84).



167

Thus Derrida claims of the third woman that she plays at castration, but

does not believe it. Neither does she disbelieve it. She is, rather, Nietzsche's

"artistically creating subject" (Nietzsche, 1979:86) who remembers the

process of metaphorization and does not take such metaphors as "the things themselves."9 Or rather, she takes them as the things themselves, that is, as

"truth", but not as truth. She thus functions as a veil, but not as one which

hides the truth and can be raised to show either the truth or that she does not

know the truth. Rather, she is the veil which plays at truth, which functions

as the exergue and thus creates the spacing which enables truth. But such

spacing also insures that there is only "truth" and no truth.

41 forgot my umbrella"

Derrida's three women function, alternately, as the (non) fragment, "I

forgot my umbrella."10 In the section with that name Derrida notes that "we

will never know" (Derrida, 1978:126) "what Nietzsche wanted to do or say in noting these words. Not even if he wanted anything" (Derrida,

1978:122-123). The "I forgot my umbrella," functions, cut off from, cut out

of, all context. Both an articulation of "meaning," and a deferral of such

articulation, the "I forgot my umbrella" promises a value, a "behind the

veil," which is always a secret. Not because there is a secret, but because, "it can always lack and simulate a truth hidden among its folds" (Derrida,

1978:132). The articulation of meaning ["Everyone knows what T forgot

my umbrella' means" (Derrida, 1978:128)] which is also a deferral of articulation ["We will never know" (Derrida, 1978:126)], this articulation

of the bar is, for Derrida, the structural necessity of language, that which

enables us to say, "Everyone knows what 'I forgot my umbrella' means."

Structurally emancipated from all living meaning, ["I forgot my umbrella"] can always mean [vouloir dire] nothing, have no decidable

meaning [sens], play parodically at meaning [sens], carry itself away as a

graft, without end, beyond any contextual body and all finite code"

(Derrida, 1978:130-132).

And it is this possibility of abduction, that is, of cutting off, of spacing, of

articulation, which makes any text readable. But it also such a possibility which positions the text as remainder, so that we can never know what has

been positioned in the between.11

This "I forgot my umbrella" functions as simultaneously the figure of the

lie, the figure of the truth, and as that which enables one to speak of truth

and lies in a nonmoral sense. The "umbrella note" as the figure of the lie is



168

presented in the first P. S. of Derrida's epistle: Derrida there recounts a

"stormy encounter" in which a "certain hermeneut" ridiculed "the publica? tion of Nietzsche's unpublished manuscripts. 'They will end up,' he said,

'publishing his laundry notes and scraps like T forgot my umbrella'"

(Derrida, 1978:138) The "umbrella note" functions, for this "hermeneut" as

the first woman, as that which promises a value, but which as anyone can

see, provides none. Indeed, such a fragment, or such a woman, would be

worse than a non-value, simply because of the titillating suggestion that

there might be a value. The "umbrella note" is also the second woman who

presents a straight forward truth, a flat-truth, a self-evident thing in itself.

Because, as I have noted above, "everyone knows what T forgot my umbrella' means."

But, barring articulation, the "I forgot my umbrella" would also be the

third woman. Always readable and articulated, she will be the deferral of

articulation. Cut off from the coin which bears her value, she defers that

value, especially (as the first and second women) in the articulation of the

difference between appearance and truth. Her readability is born of the

double articulation: the articulation of a meaning which, in its articulation, is already cut off from her. It is thus paradoxically that which bars any access into full meaning which leaves her readable. In fact, though she

plays at believing in full meaning, she knows that such meaning exists only for the first and the second women.12 She thus gives herself for (Derrida,

1978:108), in holding herself back: "And it is a matter of reading this unedited piece, that for which it gives itself as it slips away, as a woman or

as a writing" (Derrida, 1978:126). It is as readable piece of writing that she

gives herself for. And it is as a readable piece of writing that she holds

herself back, defers herself.

The site and goods of exchange

But, one asks, does not this positioning of woman as that which marks a

value, as a readable piece of writing, simply reposition her within a realm of

exchange between masculine subjects (Nietzsche, Heidegger, Derrida and

his readers), dead or alive?

Suppose, then, that I were not alone in pretending to know the idiomatic code (a notion by itself already contradictory) of that event: that there

were, here or there, a presumed sharing/separating [partage] of the secret of this non-secret. That would not change the scene at all. The ac?

complices will die, do not doubt it, and this text will remain, if it is

cryptic and parodie (...), indefinitely open, cryptic and parodie, which is to say, closed, open and closed all at once or each in turn (Derrida, 1978:136).



169

She would be then, that marking of value, which he exchanges, at a profit? And if woman will be Derrida's subject, is not his subject precisely the

profit at stake? Despite the fact that all who know the code may die? And

despite the fact that there would then be no-one to share and separate the

value declared by the exergue. She will be the marking of value as the

remainder, as that which is barred from access, which promises a secret

never to be revealed (even if it is only the secret that there is no secret). She will be exchanged, then, like a letter. If woman is the epistle (of

Derrida's text), as such she will have been that marking, indicating a value, which is sent by him. She would thus, it might seem, serve as that which,

precisely, affirms him as subject, that is (but is this the same?) as author.

The end of Derrida's essay thus returns to the question of style (Derrida,

1978:134), and this moment of return [indicated from the beginning: "Le

titre retenu pour cette s?ance aura ?t? la question du style," "The delayed title for this session will have been the question of style"] reaffirms Derrida

as writing subject, as he who has appended the postscripts to this epistle, that is, to this detachable piece of writing which, perhaps, repeats those

texts of Nietzsche within which Derrida is operating.13 And as the exergue, the epistle, sent by Derrida to his readers (Derrida addresses his readers

with the illusion of directness in this section on style14), woman, while no

longer the always misleading promise of a value which is never delivered, becomes both the impossibility and the possibility of such exchange. But is this (impossible) exchange operated only for his profit and her expense?

Will he thus send her off to his friends and readers? Because she is always an exergue, a remainder, (no longer a "proper value") to which access is

barred, he will not be able to resist looking for her (Derrida, 1978:71). Even if there is nothing to be found.

Such is the way that Derrida's Spurs is often read. Luce Irigaray's "Veiled Lips" launches a very umbrella-like attack upon Spurs. Cloaked in

Derrida's words (such veiling, itself, a bitterly mimetic gesture) Irigaray asks whether the break, the exergue (as the surface of inscription and the

inscription -

itself), while posing as the site of difference, is not simply an

affirmation of the male subject.

For the back and forth movement of exchange is perhaps only a simulacrum within the same, a passage from the same to the same.

Whence the necessity for disguises: the break between the one and the other - but still within the same - which could not enter into relations

except in disguise/ fancy dress (except in drag) (Irigaray, 1983:111).15

This passage, one of Irigaray's by now famous "almost-quotations" refers

the reader to Derrida's discussion of property. Derrida suggests that because woman gives herself for in giving herself, whereas "man takes, possesses,



170

takes possession" (Derrida, 1978:108), this "/or withholds the gift of a

reserve and henceforth changes all the signs of sexual opposition. Man and

woman change places, exchange their masks infinitely" (Derrida,

1978:110). Irigaray's reference to Derrida's infinite exchange is itself such an exchange; by repeating (almost) his words, she positions herself as the

blank canvas upon which Derrida etches his subject. Her repetition of

Derrida thus reinforces her charge that woman functions within his dis?

course as a surface by means of which Derrida stabilizes his vision of

himself. Her own writing thus guarantees Derrida's description of woman

(as a simulacrum of Derrida's truth). However, what would be an simple reiteration (not that reiteration is ever simple) of Derrida's words becomes, for example by means of question marks inserted at the ends of (his)

sentences, an indication of Irigaray's lack of belief in Derrida's women.

She thus criticizes Derrida's reliance upon separation and rupture in his

description of the role of woman. The break between the one and the other - Derrida's exergue

- becomes the spacing necessary for the passage from

the same to the same. This realm of "between," is, she argues, the space between men (Derrida and Nietzsche, Derrida and Heidegger, etc.) and

depends upon woman as a discrete entity. Thus, in a another superbly

parodie move, Irigaray positions Athena as the mediator between men:

Between - Athena: the dissimulation of horror, masking the wound,

covering up the difference of values ... The ruse, in service to the master ... her father's virgin. The inspiration and guardian of institutions

(Irigaray, 1983:102).

Athena is then the bar which separates men and forces them to work

through her, but which bars her from them. No children for Athena, nor any

relationship with her mother: that too is barred. The bar in this passage

repeats the bar of the exergue: marking a space and deferring articulation, Athena becomes the exergue which allows Derrida to talk with Nietzsche

through the question of woman. Derrida's woman, Irigaray suggests, is

created by the institution of the bar, by, that is, the positioning of her as

exergue, always cut off from her source,16 always separated from herself:

"... it is necessary -

always - to separate them" (Irigaray, 1983:105).

Woman as articulation which both enables and subverts truth - or "truth" -

is, yet again, the positioning of woman as "the fetish of philosophy"

(Doane, 1989:126). Even if this positioning maintains the pretence of

affirming difference. Hence the necessity of the mask: Athena, dressed as

the daughter, in fact functions only to affirm the law of the father. Irigaray is thus asking whether Derrida's positioning of woman as the sight of the

undecidability of "truth" does not simply repeat the creation of woman as

the "blank canvas for productions and reproductions" (Irigaray, 1983:111)



171

of Derrida. It makes her, yet again, "the privileged depository of the secret

of truth - and of its non-truth - insofar as she serves to constitute the

identity of the same" (Irigaray, 1983:117).

The question of woman

But such a strategy of attack upon Spurs - one which veils the veil of

Derrida's style - is a startling one for Irigaray to make. It neglects the ways

that Derrida's exergue upon the exergue demands such a criticism, and it

ignores Derrida's own implicit critique of the "question of woman." If

woman is the exergue - both the place created by the inscription and that

inscription - she becomes an effect, indeed perhaps the most important

effect, of the system of spacing which insures the possibility of articulation.

But because such articulation functions as well, to hold the menace of

sexual difference at bay, she becomes the system of spacing which insures

that Derrida can address Nietzsche, can leave his mark upon the question of

woman (indeed, one has a strong sense of the two philosophers battling over territory

- each leaves his mark to note his property) even as (and

precisely because) he holds her at a distance. But with regard to his mark

upon the question of woman, Derrida takes care to note that he is not here

speaking of the, figure of woman:

And to insist on that which imprints the mark of the stylate spur on/within the question of woman - I do not here speak, following a

locution so often heard, of the figure of the woman - it is here a matter of

seeing it abducted, the question of the figure being simultaneously opened and closed by what is called woman ... (Derrida, 1978:40).

He makes his mark upon the question of woman, perhaps because to ask the

question of woman is to ignore the figure of woman. If "figure" is a trope for trope, it must be noted that "figure" is also a trope for the body, par?

ticularly the body of the woman. Distancing himself from the abducted

"figure of the woman," Derrida averts his eyes from the figure of the figure, from the figure of the body, from the body of woman. The mark of style, of

the stylate spur, upon the question of the woman, indeed, the very asking of

the question of woman, insists upon and participates in the abduction of the

figure of the woman and the woman's figure. Thus to ask the question of

woman is to join in the spurring marking upon/of such a question; it is to

position woman as the already, as the already abducted, indeed, as that

which is already abducted by the question of woman. And, in fact, it is not

clear precisely what or whom is abducted. The pronoun in the quoted

passage ("it is here a matter of seeing it abducted") is the feminine "la" and



172

could refer to "the woman," "the question (of the woman)," or "the mark," as well as to "the figure." "L?," with an accent (the mark of "a quill or

stylus,") is also the word for "there." As an indication of spacing, the l?

becomes the feminine figure for distance, that is, woman as distance itself:

"Perhaps woman, as non-identity, simulacrum, is the abyss of distance, the

distancing of distance, distance itself if one could still say such a thing, which is impossible, distance itself (Derrida, 1978:48). The abduction in

question would thus be enabled by the articulation of the question, by the

system of spacing which enables style to protect itself from the threatening

form, by, that is, the operation of distance.11

Such an abduction, the articulation of the question of woman, the

question of woman as articulation, is, indeed, the effect of the veil. But if

the veil serves as the surface upon which the contest between Nietzsche and

Derrida takes place, the veil serves, as well, as the embossing of

Nietzsche's coin. Thus, the reading of Derrida's Spurs which claims that his

use of woman as the fetish of philosophy uncritically repositions woman as

the backdrop of philosophy, attempts, in a movement of unveiling, to

position Derrida as both his first and second women. As the first woman,

Derrida is accused of masquerading as a feminist. Such a charge is odd

given his alliance with Nietzsche's charges against feminism,18 but it is

maintained, nonetheless, that one has simply to raise the veil to see that

Derrida is really using woman as the foundation for his philosophical

system. As the second woman, Derrida is taken as the dogmatic philosopher who believes in woman (as "truth"); his use of the figure of woman as veil,

of woman as spacing, is taken at face value. Derrida as the second woman

is thus accused of not paying heed to the dangers of the trope of woman as

veil as well as of believing in the woman as veil. Hence Mary Anne

Doane's comment that "The veil poses difficulties for both Nietzsche and

Derrida insofar as it drags along its metaphysical baggage, but neither of

them will reject the trope altogether." (1989:124). But such a straightforward attack altogether misses the point that woman

as veil is invoked precisely because of her metaphysical baggage. It thus

neglects to read Derrida as the third woman, that is, as the affirmative

woman. It takes Derrida's positioning of woman as the metal, when such

positioning functions in his text as the embossing, that is, as the exergue. A

reading of Derrida as the third woman is necessitated by the early remark:

"The delayed title of this session will have been the question of style. But -

woman will be my subject" (Derrida, 1978:34-36). If woman is Derrida's

subject, and if we are to take seriously Derrida's claim of Nietzsche that:

He was, he dreaded this castrated woman.

He was, he dreaded this castrating woman.

He was, he loved this affirmative woman (Derrida, 1978:100).



173

then we must recognize that while Derrida is, indeed, both the first and

second women, he is as well the third woman. As the third woman, as

"truth," Derrida knows that there is no woman as "truth." That is, to believe

in woman as "truth" would be to believe in woman as truth: it would be to

believe that woman is necessarily "truth," and such belief in woman as the

foundation of philosophy (even if it is as the foundation of the non-truth of

philosophy) is undone by the third woman.

Thus, in a passage where Derrida seems most uncritically to believe

wholeheartedly in woman as "truth," that is, as the force which puts truth

into quotation marks, and where he apparently inadvertently slides into a

(rather inverted, it is true) logic of unveiling, he speaks in the conditional.

The conditional does not mark his belief in the "answer" to the question of

woman (woman is "truth," woman is the undecidability of castration, etc.), but rather, indicates that such a woman is herself hypothetical, is produced

by the question of woman, and, in any case, should not be believed.

"Truth" would only be a surface, it would only become profound, indecent, desirable through the effect of a veil: which falls over it ... It

would suffice to suspend the veil or to let it fall by other means for there to be no more truth or only "truth" - thus written (Derrida, 1978:58).

The use of the conditional in this passage is quite complicated. It places the

entirety of Spurs into the conditional. Such use of the hypothetical positions Derrida within the realm of the third woman; it marks his suspension of

belief in the "truth" of truth. The conditional suggests neither the negation of belief in "truth" (which would position him as the philosopher facing the first woman and would reestablish a belief in castration), nor its unam?

biguous affirmation (which would be to play the role of the dogmatic

philosopher vis-a-vis the second woman). Rather, the conditional suggests that the third woman - as "truth" -

is, herself, an effect of the spacing instituted by the question of woman. The hypothetical problematizes

woman as "truth" by indicating that one cannot, in the present indicative,

suspend the veil or let it fall because to do so would be to believe in the

question of woman as a question of "truth." But the condition also indicates

that to ask the question of woman is not enough: such a question neces?

sitates a belief which one cannot suspend. If one could suspend the veil to

discover "truth" such suspension would suffice, however, the impossibility of such suspension is marked by the conditional. Hence the use of the

hypothetical indicates that asking the question of truth as the question of

woman leaves the questioner with a belief in truth and in woman because one cannot suspend the veil. It thus begins to undo the "question of woman"

as a question of style. It is the third woman who can ask the question of the question of woman.



174

She is produced by the question of woman, but she is also its undoing. She

allows us to ask if woman as the "truth" of philosophy is not necessitated

by asking the question of woman, by supposing that one can ask the

question of woman. That is, if the spurring style, the quill or stylus, is that

which marks the exergue, and if style is, itself, the exergue, the separation from itself ["For the simulacrum to occur, it is necessary (and lacking) to

write in the interval (in the spacing, in the spread of the legs) between many

styles" (Derrida, 1978:138)], then woman as the interval is, of course, the

space created by the punctuation of the pen and the space which enables

that punctuation which allows the pen to continue writing. Thus although Derrida's positioning of the third woman as the "truth" of truth enables the

articulation of his subject, it also makes possible an articulation of the

problem of the question of woman. Indeed, instead of making women "the

privileged depository of the secret of truth - and of its non-truth" (Irigaray,

1983:117), Derrida's third woman can be read as an interrogation of the

desire to continue the search for woman (Derrida, 1978:71). She can be

read as Derrida's effort to undermine not simply the answering but indeed

the posing of the question of woman - the very question posed by his text.

Notes

1. Cf. Spivak (1983:185-186): "If ['a woman who is a (straight) deconstructivist of (traditional male) discourse'] confines herself to asking the question of woman (what is woman?) she might merely be attempting to provide an answer to the honorable male question: what does woman want? She herself still remains the object of the question."

2. The title of the first titled section of Derrida's essay. 3. Spivak takes Derrida to task for not reading the title, that is the opening, of

Nietzsche's chapter, "How the True World Became a Fable" in Twilight of the Idols.

4. "From Basil, in seventy two (The Birth of Tragedy), Nietzsche writes to Malvida von Meyensbug" (Derrida, 1978:34). Where citations from Spurs are

translated, the translation is my own.

5. Derrida's essay, "White Mythology," also begins with an exergue. Alan Bass notes that: "Exergue derives from the Greek ex-ergon, literally, 'outside the work.' In French and English it has a particularly numismatic sense referring to the space on a coin or medal reserved for an inscription" (Derrida, 1982:209).

6. "Voile" is both "le voile" (veil) and "la voile" (sail). The plural of both definite articles is "les" so that the gender of "voiles" is left indeterminate.

7. Later, Derrida (1988:10) claims: "Through empirical variations of tone, voice, etc., possibly of a certain accent, for example, we must be able to recognize the

identity roughly speaking, of a signifying form. Why is this identity paradoxi? cally the division or dissociation of itself, which will make of this phonic sign a grapheme? Because this unity of the signifying form only constitutes itself by



175

virtue of its iterability, by the possibility of its being repeated in the absence not only of its 'referent,' which is self-evident, but in the absence of a deter?

minate signified or of the intention of actual signification, as well as of all intention of present communication."

8. Proper French would have it thus: "Je d?coupe, dans sa lettre, les formes d'un

exergue erratique." 9. My use of this early essay may be misleading. In this essay, Nietzsche posits a

succession of metaphors which creates that which is later taken as truth. He traces back the process of metaphorization to original perceptions: "To begin

with, a nerve stimulus is transferred into an image: first metaphor. The image, in turn, is imitated in a sound: second metaphor ... [W]e believe that we know

something about the things themselves when we speak of trees, colors, snow, and flowers; and yet we possess nothing but metaphors for things

- metaphors

which correspond in no way to the original entities ... [S]o the mysterious X of the thing in itself first appears as nerve stimulus, then as image, and finally as

sound." I do not mean to suggest that Derrida's third woman is in some way better connected to original perception than the other women. In fact, the

description of the coin as metaphor seems to undo Nietzsche's attempt to locate the process of metaphor in perception: surely the coin would be

perceived as metal. In any case, the coin example serves nicely to illustrate the role of the third woman vis-?-vis truth.

10. Doane (1989:126) comments upon woman as the "umbrella note." Her essay, however, concentrates upon the use of the veil as a way of upsetting "the visible as a guaranty or measure of certitude" (1989:126). My claim here is that while the veil may, for Derrida, upset vision, it is also that which enables

vision, just as articulation both upsets and enables linguistic certainty. 11. Cf. Derrida (1978:34): "Will one ever know what was named between themV

Yl. Thus, the philosopher who believes he possesses such full meaning sees

through the pretense of the first woman who pretends to have it. And the

dogmatic philosopher believes that he can see such truth in the second woman. 13. Indeed, and do not forget it, Derrida is, from the beginning, within the letter of

Nietzsche: "Je d?coupe, dans sa lettre, les formes d'un exergue -

erratique." One need only look at "Genealogy of Morals: A Polemic," in Ecce Homo

(1967) to see the ways that Derrida has learned from Nietzsche how to affirm the writing subject in an essay on style: "Every time a beginning that is calculated to mislead, cool, scientific, even ironic, deliberately foreground, deliberately holding off' (my underline). Nietzsche, thus, affirms himself as

subject (was it not Nietzsche who "calculated," who "deliberately" foregrounded and "deliberately" held off?) by means of a commentary on the

style of that very book in which he claimed that the subject, the doer, was

merely an effect of the seduction of language, that is, of style (On the Geneal?

ogy of Morals, Essay 1: section 13). 14. Derrida (1978:134): "Supposez que la totalit?, en quelque sorte, de ce queje, si

l'on peut dire, viens de lire, soit une greffe erratique, peut-?tre parodique, du

type, ?ventuellement d'un 'j'ai oubli? mon parapluie'. S'il ne l'est pas en

totalit?, du moins ce texte-ci, que vous commencez d?j? ? oublier, peut-il ?tre tel en certains de ses movements les plus d?rapants ... [Mon discourse] avait

m?me, n'est-ce pas, quelques vertus ou lourdeurs rh?toriques, p?dagogiques, persuasives. Supposez pourtant qu'il soit crypt? ..." (my emphasis).

15. The passage which precedes the quoted passage places Irigaray's commentary



176

on the movement of exchange between masculine and feminine within Derrida's discussion of propriation. See Irigaray (1983:111): "Fallen, the

phallic display, its reserve. To take up the question again and think it over. And to see, at this point, if the process of propriation would still dominate 'the incessant war of the sexes,' 'the mortal hatred of the sexes' ... For the affirmation or the abolition of difference? Fallen, these envelopes of proper values. To reconsider how the giving-oneself could sub-sist - between the sexes."

16. This is not to suggest that Irigaray believes in a simple "relationship with a

unique mother-nature." See, for example, (1983:116). 17. For Derrida's commentary upon the "feminine operation" as an operation at a

distance, see (1978:46-54). 18. See, for example, Derrida (1978:62-64): "It is 'man' who believes that his

discourse of woman or of truth concerns - such is the topographical question which I sketched, which slipped away, as always, earlier, with regard to the undecidable contour of castration - woman. It outwits her. It is 'man' who believes in the truth of woman, in woman-truth. And, in truth, the women feminists against whom Nietzsche multiplies his sarcasm are these men.

Feminism, such is the operation by which woman attempts to resemble man, to resemble the dogmatic philosopher, laying claim to truth, science, objectivity, that is to say, with the entire virile illusion, to the effect of castration which

accompanies it. Feminism wants castration - also that of the woman. Loses

style."

References

Derrida, J. (1978). Spurs: Nietzsche's styles/?perons: Les styles de Nietzsche. Trans. B. Harlow. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Derrida, J. (1982). Margins of philosophy. Trans. A. Bass. Chicago: University of

Chicago Press.

Derrida, J. (1988). Limited inc. Trans. S. Weber and J. Mehlman and ed. G. Graff.

Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press.

Doane, M. A. (1989). Veiling over desire: Close-ups of the woman. In R. Feldstein and J. Roof (Eds.), Feminism and psychoanalysis. Ithaca, NY: Cornell Univer?

sity Press.

Irigaray, L. (1983). Veiled lips (trans. S. Speidel). Mississippi Review 11

(3):93-131. Nietzsche, F. (1967). Ecce homo. Published with On the genealogy of morals.

Trans. W. Kaufmann. New York: Vintage. Nietzsche, F. (1979). On truth and lies in a nonmoral sense. In Philosophy and

truth: Selections from Nietzsche's notebooks of the early 1870's. Trans, and ed. D. Breazeale. Atlantic Highlands, NJ: Humanities Press.

Spivak, G. C. (1983). Displacement and the discourse of woman. In M. Krupnick (Ed.), Displacement: Derrida and after. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University

Press.



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Postmodernity and the Question of the Other || The Question of Derrida's Women

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