從認知的邊緣出發：德希達和摩里森的文學秘密

This essay reads Jacques Derrida and Toni Morrison side by side, with a view to meditating on the meaning (or non-meaning) of the secret, and exploring literature’s symbiotic relationship with secrecy. Reading a series of Derrida’s and Morrison’s works related to the topic of ＂the secret,＂ which include Derrida’s ＂Responding to/Answering for: The Secret＂ (1991b), ＂Passions: ‘An Oblique Offering’＂ (1992) and ＂Literature in Secret＂ (1999b); and Morrison’s ＂A Knowing So Deep＂ (1985), Playing in the Dark (1992), her Nobel Lecture in Literature (1993) and ＂The Future of Time＂ (1996), I argue that secrecy does not pose an epistemic obstacle or hermeneutic limit to either Morrison or Derrida. Rather, comparing the process of literary creation to ＂playing in the dark,＂ Morrison finds in the darkness of the secret a threshold time-space of literary ＂becoming,＂ while Derrida explicitly advocates the idea that literature is ＂in place of the secret＂ or literature ＂responds to the secret＂ in order to drive forward a future dimension of avenir. Derrida is concerned about a secret that hides nothing, a secret without depth. For him, literature is capable of keeping (the life of) the secret not because literature has to conceal knowledge but because ＂literarity＂ makes literature as unfathomable and elusive as the secret in relationship to meaning. Contentions like these find strong resonance in Morrison’s works. Indeed, both Morrison and Derrida seek in ＂the secret＂ the force to cut open existing cognitive systems; both also consider literary practices valuable as long as these practices are able to ride on the cognitive opening of the secret for generating movement from the edge of knowledge.