Phenomenology 2005

Volume 1, Issue Part 2, 2007

Selected Essays from Asia Part 2

Retrait à traduire
(vers une confrontation entre Heidegger et Derrida)

In the 1978 essay “Le retrait de la metaphore” – a text that constitutes a part of his well-known debate on the notion of metaphor with Paul Ricoeur – Jacques Derrida discusses the peculiar translatability of the French word “retrait.” It is a word that plays an important role in the French reception of Heidegger's thought, not only as a translation for “Entzug” (withdrawal, removal), but also as an indicator of the very translatability of Heidegger’s thought. This paper discusses the challenge proposed by Derrida to Heidegger’s thought on translation, on the basis of a reflection – and translation – of the word “retrait.” Derrida adopts a strategy of re-translating and counter-translating the word “retrait.” Such a praxis of (re- and counter-) translation is profoundly related to the movement of the “retrait” itself, which opens up a space for the general transformability in language and in the history of metaphysics.