Dry Ink: Arguing (to) the Limits
(În C)erneală uscată. Dezbătând (până la) limite

Summary/Abstract: Framed within a discussion of what constitutes the limits between an uncritical joke and a serious argument, this essay revisits the polemic between Jacques Derrida and John Searle which ensues from the French philosopher’s initial criticism, in “Signature Event Context” (“Sec”), of Austin’s exclusion of non-serious utterances in his attempt to sketch a theory of performative speech acts. Derrida’s fully fledged response in “Limited Inc a b c . . .”, focusing on issues of iterability, citationality and parasitic versus normal speech acts, misunderstood by Searle in his “Reply” to Derrida’s “Sec”, will be examined in the light of other similar attempts by Derrida, especially in “Le Facteur de la vérité”, to highlight the underlying “economic” stakes in claiming proprietorial rights of interpretation to the thought of a (usually) dead philosopher or critic, whereby an author like Searle sets himself up as the copyright holder of a L(imi)ted (Inc)orporation (in French SARL). After an “Interlude” teasing out some of Derrida’s later musings on Austinian speech act theory through an intricate set of texts and references, the article will finally return to the issue of critical appropriations or even stealing (as in Poe’s “Purloined Letter”), and circle back to the limit to be observed between fun and seriousness, limited responsibility and unlimited irresponsibility, in an ethics and politics of academic exchange.

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