Responsibility, Biodegradability

Abstract

My paper broaches the possibility of a rapprochement between a modulating ethic of responsibility and the environmental issue of biodegradability. The latter is a trope that Derrida has carefully worked through and over extensively, in a response to his critics in the wake of controversial revelations about Paul de Man's early wartime writings in his native Belgium. Derrida's vigilance stems from what he saw as biodegradability's double edge with regard to the survival of a text: foolishly optimistic in its claim to return to a tradition or milieu, even while eradicating the text's singular event. Yet in connecting this text to simultaneous readings of other texts concerning the responsibilities underlying discussion, as well as Derrida's reading of de Man's notion of ‘materiality’ in ‘Typewriter Ribbon: Limited Ink (2)’, I make and trace moves towards a modulating and literal biodegradability that, when thought alongside these readings, brings together futural and material modes of deconstructive responsibility, while remaining responsive to the inter-generational disseminating pressures of past signatures, present events and future contexts.