Le sans d'être

Abstract:This essay explores the unintended consequences and complications of Derrida's différance through his own language and that of Heidegger, with additional reflection on the trace and its effacement. Self-revocation and forgottenness occur at the crux of any effort to articulate Being, in the very language of this effort, as a "prose-ontological ellipsis." Only in the margins of utterance, in the wandering from or skewing of the bindings imposed by language on thought (enacted in Derrida's own double-columned work Glas, which opens spaces between Genet and Hegel), can transcendence occur, and then only through dissemination. This performative text illuminates the ontological lacunae in language through repetition, refraction, and provisional formulae that inevitably break down in the act of reflection on negation.