ABSTRACT
Let us recall Answer 1 to the question ‘Why Derrida?’ More effectively than those of any other contemporary writer, I suggested, his texts describe and transform the ways in which we think about the world, about life, death, culture, philosophy, literature, politics and so on. I would like to say a little more now about the perhaps rather innocuous-sounding phrase ‘describe and transform’. There is something a bit cryptic about it. What, you may wonder, is the relationship between describing and transforming? Surely these two things are opposites? To describe something is to treat it (whatever it may be, life, a literary text, a political situation) as pre-existing the description: in describing, you offer a statement about how things already are. To transform, we might suppose, is quite a different business: indeed, it may seem odd to say that texts can transform anything at all. How, we may ask ourselves, can a text transform? A text is surely just lifeless, inert, printed matter?
