| The King takes all my time; I give the rest to Saint-Cyr... |
Derrida is citing Mme de Maintenon, who, of course, is not doing philosophy, but writing a letter. "She did not mean to say that, you will say," Derrida will say (5). Obviously. She wants to be a benefactor of Saint-Cyr, not a Jacques Derrida avant la lettre. But even if we grant that solid piece of common sense (and why not?) something remains: nothing at all, just the merest possibility, the very fact of possibility, still unaccounted for:
How, where, on the basis of what and when can we read this letter fragment as I have done? How could we even divert it as I have done, while still respecting its literality and its language? (Derrida 5)
Just the fact that that solid piece of common sense can be cited, taken out of one place and genre and put into another, is something over which Mme de Maintenon’s letter has no control. There is always, left over, the possibility of its meaning something else, something yet to come. Whatever else it is--time, the gift--that there is of the remainder is also what makes citation itself possible.
