Jacques Derrida
Signéponge / Signsponge.
Columbia University Press, 1984. First edition. Translation by Richard Rand. 0231054467 xi/160 pages.
Volume, measuring approximately 6.5" x 9.5", is bound in black cloth, with silver lettering to spine. Book shows very light shelfwear. Binding is firm. Previous owner's name and address appear on front flyleaf. Interior is otherwise clean and bright. Dust jacket shows moderate wear, with small closed tear at top edge of front panel and age toning to rear cover. Jacket is preserved in mylar cover.
"The work here presented is the text of "Signéponge," portions of which were originally delivered as a lecture before the Colloquium on Francis Ponge, held at Cerisy-la-Salle in July of 1975, and subsequently delivered as the inaugural seminar of The Thing, the first of a series taking place over a period of three years at Yale University (Heidegger/Ponge, Heidegger/Blanchot, Heidegger/Freud). Since only two fragments of "Signéponge" have been published elsewhere, this edition marks its first appearance in printed form as a complete and integrated essay.
Among its many claims to the singular, "Signéponge" proposes a genuinely new "science" of reading...Derrida draws on a variety of inspirations for his new science -- "a science which itself engages in a rather singular relationship with the very name of science" -- and these are signaled with the text of "Signéponge" itself. Among them, cerntainly, is the work of Francis Ponge, arguably the strongest poet to come out of France since Paul Valéry. Another inspiration, certainly, is the later work of Martin Heidegger, meditating on the topics of "the thing," the "gift," the "work of art," and "the event."...Finally, "Signéponge" turns, and turns again, upon a series of themes to be found in the corpus of Derrida's own writing: thus, where "Signature, Event, Context" anticipates the cosigning of the (fantastic) contract between poet and thing, "Signéponge" itself anticipates the entire question of the "alea" developed in "La Carte Postale," "Télépathie," and "Mes Chances." (from the translator's introduction)