Skip to main content Accessibility help
×
Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-94fs2 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-06T08:20:24.842Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

7 - Writing and deference: the politics of literary adulation

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  19 January 2010

Jeffrey Mehlman
Affiliation:
Boston University
Get access

Summary

There is an error – or infelicity – of translation in the English version of Grammatology which is so deeply anticipatory (if not performative) of the future of deconstruction in the United States as to deserve exemplary status. It concerns nothing less than the origin of language. Rousseau, it will be recalled, imagines passion's first utterance as a woman tracing with a stick (or “baguette”) the outline of her beloved's shadow on the ground. What sounds, he suggests, could ever match that inscription? Derrida, as well he might, reinscribes that “mouvement de baguette” as a chapter heading in his book. Here, now, is the English rendering of Rousseau: “How she could say things to her beloved, who traced his shadow with such pleasure! What sounds might she use to render this movement of the magic wand?” In the translation, it is the beloved who appears to be tracing his – own – shadow. The origin of language, that is, appears to have been lost in the translation. But the translation seems to convey its own myth: in between languages, the woman appears to have deferred to her beloved, to have handed him the stick or wand and invited him to speak (or trace) her love for him to himself. Communication has been lost, the inscription of difference (i.e., Derrida's argument) has been botched as the beloved is made to speak the other's admiration of himself…

It is tempting to view this sequence as a kind of primal scene of literary adulation – an obliteration of difference by deference (to refer to my own attempt at a mistranslation in the title of these remarks, although it is not nearly as eloquent as the case just quoted).

Type
Chapter
Information
Genealogies of the Text
Literature, Psychoanalysis, and Politics in Modern France
, pp. 97 - 112
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 1995

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure [email protected] is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×