La fin du livre et la « préface incessante » de Derrida

Abstract

From the 1980s onwards, Derrida began writing numerous experimental and playful texts, particularly in the form of prefaces. This article first explores why Derrida uses the preface as a textual laboratory, then shows that, after ‘the end of the book’, the preface is both an impossible mode of writing and the only permitted mode of writing. Derrida takes Hegel as both a precursor and an adversary: Hegel sought to sublate the preface for different reasons than Derrida but had to write even more prefaces to do so. By analyzing Derrida's reading of this performative contradiction in Hegel, the article clarifies why Derrida is obsessed with the desire to incessantly preface. Finally, the article situates Derrida's ‘incessant preface’ within the broader context of the development of deconstruction, often referred to as a ‘turn’.