Jacques Derrida "Autor tych podróży"

Abstract

The present essay is an attempt at matching some themes underlying what is now called „post-structuralism” (mainly on the basis of Jacques Derrida’s writings) against the problem of fictionality in literary studies. We present here a post-structural critique of traditional (de Saussurean) semiotics along with its diadic idea of the linguistic sign, whose main consequence is the secondary (supplementary) status of writing as opposed to speech, in order to simultaneously introduce Derrida’s suggestions concerning s i g n and m e a n i n g (actually their impossibility). This will lead us to the discussion and the critique of the term „fictionality” as a „by-product” of a certain metaphysics which Derrida calls the „metaphysics of presence” .