Husserl Studies 16: 77–81, 1999.

© 1999 Kluwer Academic Publishers. Printed in the Netherlands. 77

Book Review

Paola Marrati-Guénon, La genèse et la trace. Derrida lecteur de Husserl et

Heidegger. Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1998. Phaenomenologica
146, 244 pp., $100.

Just as the phenomenological reduction makes Husserl great and just as the
ontological difference makes Heidegger great, contamination makes Derrida
great. It is well known that Derrida first developed this idea systematically in
his 1967 study of Husserl, La voix et le phénomène. Until, however, Paola
Marrati-Guénon’s excellent book, no one had ever traced the development of
the idea of contamination comprehensively through Derrida’s corpus on
Husserl. Indeed, because she also puts Derrida’s Husserl reading alongside
Derrida’s somewhat later reading of Heidegger, La genèse et al trace is the
best book to date on Derrida’s interpretation of Husserl. Unlike so many of
the essays and books written over the last thirty years, La genèse et al trace
falls neither into the trap of dismissing Husserl’s through as the last version
of the metaphysics of presence nor into the trap of trivializing Derrida’s schol-
arship in the light of the Husserliana. Marrati-Guénon is sensitive to the
subtleties of both Derrida’s thought and that of Husserl. In fact, I think that
Marrati-Guénon’s greatest achievement is that she sheds a lot of light on the
most obscure passages in Derrida’s early thinking: for instance, not only
Derrida’s comment on the transcendental sense of death in section seven of
The Introduction to the Origin of Geometry (p. 48), but also his comment in
the seventh chapter of La voix et le phénomène about infinite différance be-
ing finite (pp. 97–98). Marrati-Guénon herself, however, sees the principal
contribution of her book to lie in the fact that she orients her investigation
from Derrida’s very clearly (1953–54) Le problème de la genèse dans la
philosophie de Husserl. According to Marrati-Guénon, in Derrida’s first
Husserl book we see Derrida following the guiding thread of the problem of
genesis through Husserl’s development; what is important for Derrida in
Husserl’s development is that Husserl never abandons his starting point in a
geneticism (psychologism), even when he turns to a structuralism (transcen-
dentalism). As Marrati-Guénon puts it, “C’est la question de la genèse du
transcendental, et de son échec, qui aura donné à penser à Derrida cette ‘con-
tamination’ irréductible qui est au coeur de son travail” (p. 6, Marrati-Guénon’s
emphasis). Specifically, she stresses that the problem of genesis for Derrida
discloses a tension between “origin and becoming” (p. 11). Every genesis
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refers to an absolute emergence of a sense which is nevertheless still relative
to a becoming; in other words, the sense must be at once originary insofar as
it cannot be reduced to what precedes it – otherwise it would not be a sense,
that is, ideal – and derived insofar as it must be carried into the present by a
past – otherwise it would seem to drop from the sky ready-made (p. 11).
Derrida’s idea of contamination, therefore, results from the attempt to con-
ceive the autonomy of sense and its birth in time (p. 11). Marrati-Guénon
refers to the guiding thread of the problem of genesis continuously in her
book, even and especially when she turns to Derrida’s reading of Heidegger
(see especially, pp. 143–150).
For Marrati-Guénon, Derrida’s reading of Heidegger is inspired by what
he learned from Husserl early on, especially from Husserl’s descriptions of
internal time consciousness where the tension between becoming and origin
seems to be most evident (p. 143). For Derrida, according to Marrati-Guénon,
origin or gathering or openness in Heidegger is an unconditioned and non-
derived, autonomous and absolute beginning (p. 150, n. 51). She claims that
“Heidegger déplace du niveau de l’analytique du Dasein à celui de
l’hisstorialité de l’être le modèle origine/recouvrement, B ouverture/fermature,
si on veut B, toujours guidé par la préoccupation d’une pensée plus originaire
de l’être et du temps. Mais aucune question génétique ne vient compliquer un
modèle essentiellement statique” (p. 130). Derrida shows that this static ori-
gin or gathering or openness is always marked by an irreducible passivity or
by an irreducible alterity (p. 144). To use the terminology that comes to re-
place Derrida’s early Husserlian geneticist language, the Heideggerian ori-
gin is marked by the trace. Marrati-Guénon therefore claims that Derrida’s
indirect but continuous reliance on a sort of geneticism results in a profound
dissymmetry between Derrida’s relation to Husserl and his relation to
Heidegger (p. 208). The question of a genetic becoming never stops haunting
Husserl’s phenomenology (p. 131), while “cette dimension génétique est
complètement absente de la pensée de Heidegger” (p. 148).
Despite the fact that the orientation from Le problème de la genèse allows
Marrati-Guénon to clarify much in Derrida, this orientation limits her book.
The 1962 Introduction to the Origin of Geometry demonstrates a more pro-
found understanding of Heidegger than Le problème de la genèse. We see
this in particular in The Introduction’s final section eleven where Derrida
raises a series of questions which could arise only from ontology in a “non-
Husserlian,” that is, Heideggerian sense. The clearest evidence of Derrida’s
growing understanding of Heidegger, however, is in his 1964 “Violence and
Metaphysics”; like the end of The Introduction, this essay begins with ques-
tions, in fact, with the question. Then we have the end of the 1967 La voix et
le phénomène, where Derrida speaks of the openness of an unheard-of ques-
tion which occurs after the closure of absolute knowledge. Derrida’s con-
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tinuous focus on the question in the Sixties (just as Merleau-Ponty’s defini-
tion of Being as interrogation in The Visible and the Invisible) is due to
Heidegger’s discussion in Being and Time’s Introduction (Chapter 1) of the
question of Being, a discussion which turns out to provide us with the Being
of the question. When Derrida takes up Heidegger, therefore, he is using the
openness of the question as the very model of genesis. (This same appropria-
tion of Heidegger occurs in Deleuze’s 1968 Difference and Repetition.) So,
Marrati-Guénon’s orientation from Le problème de la genèse keeps her from
realizing that Derrida’s geneticisim stems just as much from Heidegger’s
ontology as it does from Husserl’s phenomenology. Marrati-Guénon is right,
however, to stress that Derrida’s recent writings on Heidegger, like “Sendings:
On Representation,” aim to criticize Heidegger’s concept of gathering by
means of a concept of alterity. But this type of criticism arises in Derrida not
because of his Le problème de la genèse reflections on Husserlian
temporalization but because of his somewhat later reflections on language in
Husserl.
Nowhere in Le problème de la genèse does Derrida discuss language, not
even in its brief examination of “The Origin of Geometry.” He examines
language for the first time only in the later Introduction to The Origin of
Geometry. As Marrati-Guénon stresses, the discussion of écriture in The In-
troduction’s section seven forms the basis for the concept of the trace which
is not presented until 1967. But the section seven concept of écriture must be
understood through Derrida’s claim in section six that, for Husserl, funda-
mental subjectivity is ineffable for a direct, univocal, and rigorous language.
Fundamental subjectivity is, of course, for Husserl, transcendental
intersubjectivity. So, écriture, which is essentially equivocal, is Derrida’s
attempt to reconceive intersubjectivity. This attempt to reconceive transcen-
dental intersubjectivity is why the first sentence of Of Grammatology says
that “the problem of language will never [be] simply one problem among
others.”
But, if the trace really concerns transcendental intersubjectivity, then one
has to take into account that a shift occurs in Derrida’s thinking from Le
problème de la genèse to La voix et le phénoméne, a shift from temporalization
to intersubjectivity. This shift is the real reason why there is a dissymmetry
which favors Derrida’s relation to Husserl over his relation to Heidegger. In
Le problème de la genèse, part three, where Derrida examines the Cartesian
Meditations, he focuses on the Fourth Meditation’s descriptions of passive
genesis which imply, for Derrida, that passive genesis and temporalization is
prior to intersubjectivity. In The Introduction, although in his analysis he
virtually identifies intersubjectivity and temporalization, Derrida still main-
tains the priority of temporalization over intersubjectivity (see particularly
the last note of section six). But, in La voix et le phénomène B after the
80
investigation of Levinas in “violence and Metaphysics” – the Fifth Medita-
tion descriptions of Fremderfahrung frame the entire discussion of “the soli-
tary life of the soul.” In fact, Husserl’s basic phenomenological insight in
section 50 of the Fifth Meditation that the interiority of the other is never
presented to me immediately but always only mediately (never only
Gegenwärtigung but always involving Vergegenwärtigung) determines
Derrida’s entire deconstruction of Husserl’s alleged metaphysics of presence.
If any Husserlian concept anticipates the Derridean trace, it is appresentation
as described in the Fifth Meditation. But this realization implies that, in La
voix et le phénomène, the crucial definition of the trace occurs not in Chapter
five’s discussion of retention but in Chapter six’s discussion of auto-affec-
tion, where Derrida equates the movement of the trace with the order of sig-
nification.
If we recall that the subtitle of la voix et le phénomène is le problème du
signe, then we must recognize that Derrida’s thought even today is a sort of
formalism, as Derrida himself admits as recently as Specters of Marx (Chap-
ter 2). Repeatedly Marrati-Guénon claims that Derrida is not a Kantian for-
malist. This claim is undoubtedly true since (as Fink showed) it is impossible
to be a Kantian formalist and be a phenomenologist. Yet, Derrida is not a
phenomenologist in the strict sense because of the idea of contamination.
The Derridean idea of contamination always includes two components. There
is always, on the one hand, a minimally iterable form (a sort of sign) and, on
the other, singular experience. The necessary inclusion of a minimally re-
peatable form is why singular experience is never, for Derrida, full presence.
This lack of full presence is why the experience of the trace implies neither a
pure empiricism nor even a “superior empiricism.” Indeed, because écriture
is the model for the trace, Derrida’s thought must be characterized as a sort of
technologism. This technologism is really what determines Derrida’s differ-
ence from Heidegger. Moreover, since the minimally iterable form is indefi-
nitely iterable, it can always pass over any limit and take in what was outside.
So, Marrati-Guénon is entirely correct to stress Derrida’s claim from The
Introduction that “The Absolute is passage.” But, in 1962 (after studying
with Hyppolite), Derrida is giving this claim a Hegelian sense; it refers to
what Hegel called the Absolute form, which includes difference and its over-
coming. It seems to me that the following note from “Violence and Meta-
physics” is the seed for Derrida’s idea of contamination: “La différence pure
n’est pas absolutement différent (de la non-différence). La critique par Hegel
du concept de différence pure est sans doute ici, pour nous, le thème le plus
incontournable. Hegel a pensé la différence absolue et a montré qu’elle ne
pouvait êtant impure.” Perhaps, therefore, we have to speak of a second dis-
symmetry in Derrida; he is perhaps even more indebted to Hegel than to
Husserl (just as he is more indebted to Husserl than to Heidegger). Derrida’s
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“Hegelianism” differentiates him from Deleuze and Foucault, and from
Levinas. Unlike these thinkers of the outside, Derrida is a thinker of the in-
side: il n’y a pas de hors-texte. But, like Levinas, he is a thinker of transcend-
ence, not immanence (unlike Deleuze and Foucault). What defines Derrida’s
thought is the attempt to constrain the outside to come inside (in contrast to a
thought which forces the inside to go outside).
This thought which constrains the outside to come inside determines
Derrida’s ethico-political thought. It seems to me that here Marrati-Guénon’s
orientation from La problème de la genèse takes its heaviest toll. She is cor-
rect, of course, that Derrida’s idea of contamination implies that death con-
taminates life; that the contamination of life with death in turn implies that
experience is always an experience of mourning; and that the experience of
mourning implies that the other survives memorially. In fact, in her Conclu-
sion, Marrati-Guénon repeatedly stresses this world “survie.” But, Derrida’s
more recent reflections on mourning and memory are based in another shift
in his thinking. Probably due to this renewed investigations of Levinas, Derrida
has moved away from the Heideggerian conception of the question to a con-
ception of the promise, the messianic promise. The promise constrains one to
keep the promise. For Derrida, mourning and memory refer us to the past and
passivity but understood as a past promise to do something – a deathbed
promise; but, understood as a promise, the past refers us to the future activity
in which I keep the promise and perhaps risk my life doing so. This futurity
of the promise means that Derrida’s though is always a thought of the end, of
the end to come, in other words, a thought of salvation. When someone comes
and keeps the promise, I will be saved from suffering. “Survie” therefore
means not simply passing over a limit towards death, but superlife as in “le
surnaturel.” Salvation is always “of spirit,” as Derrida says in De l’esprit.
Despite the limitations we have indicated here, we must stress that Marrati-
Guénon’s La genèse et la trace is unrivaled; it must be read if we want to
begin to understand Derrida’s thought. But, its limitations restrict it to being
only the beginning. Only by going beyond these limitations can we start to
pose the questions of the future of philosophy. Does the future of philosophy
lie in the reconception of the question in terms of the promise or in terms of
the problem? Does the future of philosophy lie in a reconception of life in
terms of spirit or in terms of matter? Finally does the future of philosophy
arise from a return to phenomenology or from a return to Bergsonism? As the
generation of philosophers that includes Derrida dies out, these questions
demand our most urgent attention.

Leonard Lawlor,
University of Memphis
USA