ABSTRACT
It may seem a little rash, a little like wanting to do the impossible, to propose to investigate the unnameable/the unthinkable in the first chapter. But then, there is always a risk involved in writing on the subject of Jacques Derrida or Julia Kristeva. Any attempt to grasp their ideas and pin them down gives rise to images of an entomologist from another era, haplessly waving his butterfly net, pouncing on air only to see his prey hop away or flit on by. Or finally pinning a specimen in the display case, only to be confronted by its lifelessness, and wondering whether what gave him the buzz in the first place wasn't in fact the buzzing. To study the thought of Derrida or Kristeva in its movement and liveliness, to capture it without trying to hold it captive, is an inherently risky enterprise.
