Of grammatology: a preface to reading and writing

Abstract

What are the implications of Derrida's "Of Grammatology" for those basic acts of reading and writing within academia? But why "Of Grammatology?" After all, "Of Grammatology's" dense prose resists almost actively our readerly attempts to decipher it. What place does such a text have within an academia whose common sense views of reading and writing are brought into crisis by this text? What indeed is common sense from the perspective of such a text? How could such a text become a pretext for understanding the essential dialectic of reading and writing? Engaging these questions requires engaging with some constitutive textual performances of Derrida's seminal text, which provide the explorations of this essay. Although "Of Grammatology" (its preface mainly) is the primary focus of the essay, explorations into its characteristic moves requires broadening this focus to include a number of other texts. Broadly, these are: Derrida (1978); Derrida (1988); Bloom (1971); Halliday (2002); Heidegger (1962); Jackson (2001); Johnson (1980); Waterhouse (1981).