The friends of intertextuality and Derrida

on theoretical-critical discrepancies around genealogical retrospects and teleological apogees

Abstract

The article revisits the debate within Brazilian criticism regarding the understanding of literature as a national construction versus its comprehension outside the identity paradigm. Pursuing a philosophical investigation, it focuses on Olgária Matos's reception of the metaphysics of presence in Jacques Derrida. The objective is to show how, by highlighting Derridean heterophilia, the author's political philosophy not only deepens our understanding of such misunderstandings—well summarized in an ironic formulation by Roberto Schwarz, which is also to be judged—but also supports the school of thought that challenges the thesis of cultural dependency inherent to us. The investigation extends to the theoretico-critical tensions within the very Department of Philosophy where the author works, a symbolic place beset by the same issue of the privative place of ideas and accused of being French. It engages with the hypothesis of the endless siege of Sociology upon Literature and with the properly intertextual presupposition of the influence of great writers on their own sources. Besides the noted philosophical foundations, the theoretical references include the new criticisms related to Derrida, namely those of the Yale deconstructionists and the Brazilian concretists.