ABSTRACT
Literature is seemingly excluded from answering the most basic of questions, because it never gets beyond its own textuality, is not concerned with determining the 'essence' or 'truth' of objects outside itself. Once one has determined the totality of what is as 'having been' made possible by the institution of the trace, 'textuality', the system of traces, becomes the most global term, encompassing all that is and that which exceeds it. The most obvious 'index' of syntax is the space between words, what Mallarme called the blanc; and it is upon the Mallarmean example of the blanc that Jacques Derrida has articulated some of his most important deconstructions of literary criticism. He has used the supplementary status of writing – the addition that replaces, the part bigger than the whole – to deconstruct one of Rousseau's major contributions to thought, the opposition nature/culture, and to deal, once more, with the strange phenomenon of the philosopher who writes to attack writing.
