Blindness and Insight of Reading: Deconstruction Between Jacques Derrida and Paul de Man

This paper reexamines the complex relationship between Jacques Derrida and Paul de Man by focusing on their divergent approaches to deconstruction, particularly through readings of Rousseau’s Confessions. While de Man emphasizes a “philological” mode of reading grounded in the text’s self-deconstructive structure, Derrida interrogates the epistemological and performative distinctions underpinning de Man’s approach. By analyzing Derrida’s misreading of de Man’s modulation between confessional modes, the paper clarifies the implications of de Man’s claim regarding the undecidability between excuse and truth-statement. It concludes that de Man’s “thinking of the law” makes a decisive contribution to the ethico-political trajectory of Derrida’s deconstruction in his later works.