Derrida: Derrida and the test of secrecy

Jacques Derrida¹ ends his 1993 essay “Passions: ‘An Oblique Offering’” by confessing his taste in books. “Literature I could, fundamentally do without, in fact, rather easily,” writes Derrida there. “If I had to retire to an island, it would be particularly history books, memoirs, that I would doubtless take with me, and that I would read in my own way, perhaps to make literature out of them.”² What fascinates Derrida is not literature itself but rather the potential of the nonliterary text to become literary. Derrida explains this idea of the becoming-literary of the nonliterary text in one of his...