Analphabetic Writing: Choreography after Derrida

For decades, Jacques Derrida and his works have been considered unsuitable for discussing dance, performance, or embodied matters. This article challenges this belief and re-reads Derrida’s corpus with the aim of redescribing choreography grammatologically. This theoretical elaboration takes the philosopher’s texts on dance and non-phonetic writing as a starting point and also considers the readings and criticisms that dance scholars have made regarding deconstruction and Derrida’s work. Taking into account the distinction in Of Grammatology between ‘narrow writing’ and’ ‘writing in general’, I will examine dance notation as narrow dance writing and reject the idea that it is the only way we can conceive choreography. Beyond the prejudice against choreography that arose in the 19th century and was reinforced at the turn of the 21st century, it is possible to redescribe this type of writing as spacing, closer to the conception of writing in Derrida’s texts on Antonin Artaud or the ‘arts of the visible’. Ultimately, the article will demonstrate the theoretical elaboration through a brief examination of the case of American modern dancer Loie Fuller.