Work · Structuralism & Poststructuralism
Of Grammatology
Against the primacy of the voice: Saussure, Rousseau, Lévi-Strauss deconstructed.
Introduction
The book appeared in Paris in 1967, one of three that Derrida published that year. Its first part, a theory of writing “before the letter”, argues that Western philosophy has treated writing as a mere copy of speech and that a general “grammatology” must reverse this; its main reading is of Saussure. The second part examines Lévi-Strauss’s “Writing Lesson” and above all Rousseau, whose Essay on the Origin of Languages and Confessions describe writing as a “dangerous supplement”. The book contains the much-quoted and much-misunderstood sentence that there is no outside-text (il n’y a pas de hors-texte). Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak’s English translation of 1976, with a long preface, made Derrida known in the United States.
Connections
Criticizes
- Discourse on Inequality1755 · Jean-Jacques Rousseau
- Course in General Linguistics1916 · Ferdinand de Saussure
- Tristes Tropiques1955 · Claude Lévi-Strauss
Taken up in
- Can the Subaltern Speak?1988 · Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak
Criticized in
- The Philosophical Discourse of Modernity1985 · Jürgen Habermas
More works by Jacques Derrida
- 1968Plato's Pharmacy
As of November 2026 · Improve this page · How Agora is made