Anagrammatology: Derrida before Saussure’s Anagram Notebooks
Anagrammatology: Derrida before Saussure’s Anagram Notebooks

Summary/Abstract: This article revisits Of Grammatology’s reading of Ferdinand de Saussure. It narrows attention onto Saussure’s cahiers d’anagrammes, which involved speculative work on arcane principles of composition in the poetry of antiquity, a hypothesis which Saussure pursued over several years (1905-1909) of extensive research that remained unresolved and unpublished. The article contends that Derrida’s guarded references to Saussure’s anagrams are more significant than is immediately apparent. The critical ideas and writing strategies they open onto in Derrida’s work might be thought of in terms that tie in not so much with a grammatology, but with an anagrammatology. Accordingly, the play of anagrammatism in Derridean modes of composition and argumentation is reviewed, particularly in relation to Glas. The conclusion is that the patterns of influence when Derrida places himself before the anagram notebooks make the suggestion of anagrammatology more complex than the mere esprit might convey.

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