“The Very Place of Apparition”: Derrida on Husserl’s Concept of Noema
Abstract In Specters of Marx, Derrida suggests that the most fundamental condition of phenomenality lies in the ambiguous status of the noema, defined as an intentional and non-real component of Erlebnis, neither “in” the world nor “in” consciousness. This “irreality” of the noematic correlate is conceived by Derrida as the origin of sense and experience. Already in his Of Grammatology, Derrida maintained that the difference between the appearing and the appearance, between the world and the lived experience, is the condition of all other differences. Unfortunately, Derrida limits himself to a few self-evident remarks, without further elaborating. The aim of this paper is twofold: on the one hand, to contextualize Derrida’s interpretation of the noema from a theoretical and historical perspective; on the other hand, to show its effects on the early moments of Derrida’s philosophy. The result will shed light on a neglected issue in the relationship between deconstruction and phenomenology.