ABSTRACT
There are various distinct strands of discussion in this dialogue, between two or
more unnamed parties, printed under the ambiguous title Sauf le nom: (post-
scriptum), on saving and making an exception of the name, subtitle in brackets
post-scriptum. Two issues immediately present themselves for attention: this
delayed time of writing, in the post-script, and the erasure of the name, in the
mode of plural anonymity. This mode of plural anonymity provides a link from
Derrida’s disruption of certainties about the name of God, in a multiplication of
names, across languages and traditions, and his notion of a democracy to come,
promising emancipation to the nameless, who are not yet born. My citation
here suggests a third, more surprising issue: a surmised connection between
negative theology and phenomenology, to which I shall return, by way of a long
detour.2 Phenomenology may be thought to have the form of negative theology,
if not the name, since it advocates desisting from making statements about what
there is, in order the better to reveal what there is. The preoccupation with the
form of negative theology is also apparent in the idea of writing, as post-scriptum,
as an after-effect of a moment of insight, which is suggested to be the form of
writing of Augustine’s Confessions, since their supposed addressee, God, may be
presumed already to know what is confessed.3
