ABSTRACT
Imagine some graffiti on a wall somewhere that reads simply: ‘BE FREE’. These two words provide a striking example of what Derrida calls a double bind (TNOF 203). As an order, ‘be free’ tells you to be what you cannot be except in obeying this order: to obey the order to ‘be free’ is not to be free. You are free to do anything as long as you accept that you are not free to disobey what I am hereby ordering you. Come on, be free. But is it an order, in fact? Who is the ‘I’ here? And who is the reader or addressee of this piece of graffiti transplanted from an imaginary wall on to the page in front of you? In grammatical terms we could describe the words ‘be free’ as an imperative. As the author of How To Do Things With Words points out, however, ‘an “imperative” may be an order, a permission, a demand, a request, an entreaty, a suggestion, a recommendation, a warning … or may express a condition or concession or a definition’ (Austin 76–7).
