ABSTRACT
Among human artifacts, writing has not been the only competitor for this role, but it has been the strongest and most persistent one, more so even than thought—since, unlike thinking, writing has also the appearance of intractibility. Like the philosopher’s stone, it would produce gold; like the philosopher’s stone, it shows only that matter—including now language and writing—is recalcitrant. The fact that writing is firmly attached to history means, even if we knew nothing else about it, that it does not exist without friction. An implication of the relation between “writing and the moral self,” then, is that the same relation holds between language and evil, that is, between writing and immoral self. So at least, in both evidence and principle, history seems to attest. The Marxist tradition of criticism offers no less pointed lesson about the social conscience of writing, with its disclosure of way that silence and repression—the gaps in or around writing—are themselves part of any text.
