"But one thing knows the flower"
Whistler, Swinburne, Derrida
pp. 41-54
in: John Brannigan, Ruth Robbins, Julian Wolfreys (eds), Applying: to Derrida, Berlin, Springer, 1996Abstract
As Jacques Derrida has shown us, this is not a simple question, but one into which ambiguity and multiplicity are already written. "About", as a preposition, offers us at least two modes of qualification — of time and space — which are also merely approximations.2 "About" also suggests, in this idiomatic phrase, "what is this essay about?" that the question is really: "What is the subject of this essay?", though the first formulation disrupts the possibility of a knowable "subject" in the vagueness of "about". I point to these possible ambiguities, not as a mode of parody, but because it is essential to the investigation I want to undertake here. This essay is about "aboutness"; it talks about the subject of what is "about" a text, in perhaps a roundabout, periphrastic way. It discusses the questions of circumlocution (talking about) and circumscription (writing about) in order to think about the ways in which a subject may be circumlocated — placed in terms of what is (spoken or written) around or about it.
