ABSTRACT
The physical presentation of a text gives it a stability which separates it from the ordinary circuit of communication in which speech takes place, and this separation has important implications for the study of literature. If these implications are not often accorded full weight, it is, as Jacques Derrida has argued, because the assimilation of writing to speech is deeply rooted in the metaphysics of Western culture. To think of the written word as simply a record of the spoken word is but one version of a ‘metaphysics of presence’ which locates truth in what is immediately present to consciousness with as little mediation as possible. Thus, the Cartesian cogito, in which the self is immediately present to itself, is taken as the basic proof of existence, and things directly perceived are apodictically privileged. Notions of truth and reality are based on a longing for an unfallen world in which there would be no need for the mediating systems of language and perception but everything would be itself, with no gap between form and meaning.2
