Abstract

For the time being, however, we are disoriented by his derivativeness. His allusions extend back through the history of philosophy and rhetoric. Thus topique not only may imply "topological," but it may also suggest that "places allude to topoi. Derrida goes on to refer to the use of trace by Nietzsche, Freud, Levinas. Elsewhere he refers to Plotinus, Condillac, Blanchot and Heidegger. Derrida is notorious for his discounting of univocal usage, and one suspects that the difficulty of tracing "trace" to any single predecessor may have guided him to his choice of this term.