ABSTRACT
This chapter draws parallels between, on the one hand, the isle of Neverland in J. M. Barrie’s story of Peter Pan, a place that offers infinite play and ‘ecstasies innumerable’ with, on the other hand, a form of play no less infinite: It is the limitless free play of signification as described by Derrida. Both forms of play rely on a sense of displacement, without which they would not be possible. It further explores difficulties regarding what Derrida means by free play, which has divided scholars roughly into two opposing camps, the first of which sees Derrida as radically textualist in a way that forecloses contact with the ‘other’ of language. The second camp opposes this radically textualist view and sees his approach not as a foreclosure but as an openness toward this other. Despite appearances, this contested issue is not as foreign to Peter’s version of Neverland or similar motifs in other children’s stories as one might imagine: Neverlands, whether created by the fabulists of children’s literature or the savants of philosophy inevitably inspire questions of enclosure that are also implicitly ontological.
