Teleotheology

Abstract

This article explores the hypothesis formulated by Derrida in his early work that structuralism is Aristotelian in foundation. To this end, it traces Derrida’s engagement with Aristotle’s Physics between the seminal essays “Force and Signification” (1963) and “Ousia and Grammē” (1968). On the one hand, it demonstrates that Derrida reads Aristotle’s concept of time as the presupposition of what he designates as structuralism, that is, the teleological understanding of movement from its achieved structure and thus from a theological simultaneity. On the other hand, it shows that Derrida finds in the very text of Physics the index (grammē) for understanding movement otherwise: as the irreducible articulation of space and time, namely, the trace, inscribed in a non-simultaneous volume.