Critical Inquiry — Volume 31, Number 2

When I had contracted with the University of Massachusetts Press—in 1967 or 1968—to translate De la grammatologie, my editor sent me a copy of Edward Said's "Abecedarium culturae: Structuralism, Absence, Writing" that had just appeared in TriQuarterly and was later included as a chapter in Beginnings. It must have been 1971. Later that year I found out that my contract was with Hopkins and that J. Hillis Miller, who was then at Yale, and had already started organizing Derrida's U.S. career, had something to do with it. I never solved that puzzle. The editor at Massachusetts had stuck a note on the article, something like, What on earth is going on here? Perhaps he was beginning to realize, in giving me a contract for translating and introducing Jacques Derrida, that the press had bitten off more than it could chew.

Well, I read the piece. I had ordered Derrida off a catalogue, on impulse, not knowing his name, or anything about the French scene. It was a sort of self-help project, to which I still subscribe, shamefacedly. I have no general education, whereas Edward's piece seemed to be incredibly knowledgeable in just that way. I read the piece carefully, made notes in the margin, and filed it.

GAYATRI SPIVAK, Avalon Foundation Professor in the Humanities and director of the Center for Comparative Literature and Society at Columbia University, teaches English and the politics of culture. Her most recent book is Chotli Munda and His Asnow (2002).