Derrida's concept--which he denies is a concept , because it is the recursive ground for all conceptualization--emerges from his engagement with J. L. Austin's problematic claim that a "nonserious" performative utterance, as uttered in a play or a poem, say, is "parasitic" upon the true performative and cannot be considered legitimate.See Austin, How To Do Things With Words (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1962): 104. Thus, as Austin put it, if an actor playing a minister in a play says to two actors playing a bride and groom, "I now pronounce you husband and wife," the actors are not thereby married. As Derrida recognizes, this is not only a non-problem--the actors are not thereby married, obviously, but the characters are--but the very nature of citing, reiterating, reusing a phrase, reperforming a performative utterance is at the heart of the communicative function of language.
Derrida's concept--which he denies is a concept simply because from the moment that the concept enters the game, it has become motivated--emerges from his engagement with J. L. Austin's problematic claim that a "nonserious" performative utterance, as uttered in a play or a poem, say, is "parasitic" upon the true performative and cannot be considered legitimate.See Austin, How To Do Things With Words (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1962): 104. Thus, as Austin put it, if an actor playing a minister in a play says to two actors playing a bride and groom, "I now pronounce you husband and wife," the actors are not thereby married. As Derrida recognizes, this is not only a non-problem--the actors are not thereby married, obviously, but the characters are--but the very nature of citing, reiterating, reusing a phrase, reperforming a performative utterance is at the heart of the communicative function of language.
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, because it is the recursive ground for all conceptualization--emerges
simply because from the moment that the concept enters the game, it has become motivated--emerges