ABSTRACT
The critical response to a genealogy which includes illegitimacy has generally been to enshroud it in a kind of tactful silence. Jacques Derrida, in La Carte postale, develops an extensive allegory of just this sort of activity. In fact, Derrida is deliberately practising precisely that form of textual coming from behind which he was later to describe so well in La Carte postale, where the disciple insidiously dominates the master. Delegitimation by proxy could no longer be achieved by the exploration of infantile sexuality, even that of a genius. Identification with homosexuality had already received critical relegitimation in the canonisation of Proust and Gide. One can better appreciate the function of delegitimation by proxy in the construction - and deconstruction - of the subject if one compares the two extraordinary relationships which developed in tandem: that of Sartre with Genet, and that of Simone de Beauvoir with Violette Leduc.
