Derrida on the Line: Scattered Reflections on the Frontiers, Borders, Limits and Ends of Deconstruction

Starting out from some early reservations in Derrida about linearity and formal deduction, both in general and as possible descriptions of his own work, this essay revisits some figures of lines and boundaries, limits and borders, frontiers and terms, to suggest the possibility of a more complex but still somewhat formalizable structure, a braided line or fractal curve, a quasi-linear and quasi-deductive ‘order of reasons’ that might hope to respect the inventive unpredictability of Derrida’s oeuvre, while also claiming something of a formalizable coherence, a through line running from the early thought of originary complexity or the trace, through the pervasive deconstructive logic of necessary possibility, to the quasi-transcendental structures exemplified here by the complex relation of ‘universal structure’ and ‘historical instantiation’ in what Derrida calls a ‘messianicity without messianism’.