ABSTRACT
This chapter wants to take up the reading of Dissemination where 'Plato's Pharmacy' ends and where Derrida reintroduces the problematic of the avant-garde which was so central to the 'Outwork' and his earlier essays in Writing and Difference. It provides an analysis of 'The Double Session' and how it understands the 'between', the 'intercourse' between Mallarmé and Plato. The chapter looks at how Derrida's reintroduction of the avant-garde problematic and figure of Mallarme in 'The Double Session' can be seen to relate to the question of the Platonic text. Already in the 'Outwork', Mallarmé has a significant role as announcing 'the crisis of verse', as well as subverting through his writings and reorganisation of poetry the notion of Hegelian or overall philosophical synthesis. The original version of 'The Double Session' had been delivered in 1969 and the finished work was published in 1970 in two issues of the seminal journal, Tel Quel.
