ABSTRACT
The theme of origins has plagued history and historians since time immemorial. Indeed, the very immemoriality of time points to a time before memory. What memory could be before the beginning of time? That memory which would be before the beginning of time surely cannot be human memory. Augustine had a view of divine memory as somehow before time, outside time, different from time. But what of that time that is "before memory"-at the very origins of history? What of the time that is before human memory, before the time when time could be marked by memory, in memory, from a remembering point of view?Are there many such original times, or is there just one? Is there any point in speaking of an origin that marks the beginning of time itself? Or are there different times with different origins? This theme of origins has marked the discourse of both Foucault and Derrida in different ways and at different times. However, what origin means for Foucault and Derrida, what "origin" means for a theory of history, what origin means for their respective textual practices itself operates at the very place where the theory of origins becomes most explicit. Let us begin then with the theory of origins.
