Abstract

“I type very quickly, very badly, with many errors [fautes],” Jacques Derrida confessed in a late interview. This paper proposes that the typographical error —usually viewed as a mere “accident” to be corrected or normalized— may in fact be understood as a productive site for deconstructive reading and thought. Drawing on Nietzsche’s provocative suggestion that the typewriter acts as a “collaborator” in thinking, I examine Derrida’s use of the writing machine with an eye to his ubiquitous typos or fautes de frappe. I focus on Derrida’s readings of Heidegger in the Geschlecht series, analyzing the typescript of Derrida’s 1984-85 seminar “Le fantôme de l’autre” from which the texts of Geschlecht II and Geschlecht III are derived, in order to locate a Derridean thinking of the frappe or Schlag (that is, the blow, strike, or imprint) at the heart of every “type” (one of the many meanings of the German word “Geschlecht”). Following Derrida’s reading in the Geschlecht series and his own typographical practice, I argue that the typo should be thought of as the condition of possibility of every type —and as a defining difference between Derrida and Heidegger.