Ich, Ach, Auch: Certain Also-Ran Languages of Jacques Derrida

Abstract

This essay explores the curious role that the word certain plays in Derrida's corpus and the texts of his inheritors. Both less and more than a mere adjective, certain posits a standard for verbal specificity that invariably proves impossible to meet. In this regard, certain is crucial for the conceptualization of syntactic praxes that escape the hegemony of the classical subject-predicate schema. In Derrida's reading of Paul Celan, poetry is understood as the art form that most directly confronts the demands of the language of certain.