Misreading Generalised Writing: From Foucault to Speculative Realism and New Materialism

Abstract

Misreadings of Derrida's Of Grammatology were prevalent from the time of its debut (Foucault, Deleuze and Guattari), up to the present day (Speculative Realism and New Materialism). For fifty years, Derrida's generalised textuality has been misread as though he meant there was nothing outside text in the traditional sense. This misreading always serves to re-institute notions of linear temporal progress, either among self-styled avant-garde authors who would like to break with past traditions, or among self-styled conservatives who hope to repeat them. If the binaries that divide these works from past texts are undecidable, the ground for such temporal progress disappears, along with the divisions by which we create linear narratives of history. The misreading of Derrida is an attempt to exorcise this undecidability and regain the intellectual and market value of novelty or repetition.