There is nothing outside of the text.
If there is any one single quote that defines Derrida’s book more than any other, it is this. Alas, if there is one quote which is subject to an exceeding number of interpretations which or may not be anywhere near to being correct it would also be this quote. The author himself has been pressed on many occasions into clarifying what he means since the interpretative chasm here is so wide. This quote has become something of a mantra for postmodernists who stake the claim that there is no such thing as reality, but only each individual’s perception. Derrida took especially strong exception to this characterization. His clarifications have since included an expansion of the idea to mean that there is nothing outside of context. In other words, context is everything. Some may have heard that before.
The operation of femininity—and that femininity, the feminine principle, may be at work among women just as much as among those whom society calls men and whom, Rousseau says, "women turn to women"— consists therefore in capturing energy to attach it to a single theme, a sole representation.
This example from the extended section in which the author analyzes an essay by Rousseau demonstrates how the book is not designed for the beginner studying linguistics and language theories. And this particular quote is actually one of the least abstruse and most forthright. Derrida is not exactly usually situated along the same plane as a writer like Kant or Wittgenstein, but he is far from being Nietzsche. His theoretical arguments are fascinating, but not easy to understand. Readers coming fresh to his work with this particular text should be prepared to go on easy themselves if they do not succeed in entirely understanding everything. Parsing the vernacular is tough enough, but getting at the core of what is being argued here is even tougher work.
On what conditions is a grammatology possible? Its fundamental condition is certainly the undoing of logocentrism.
An elemental foundation of this text is the author’s objection to the elevation of the spoken word as having primacy over the written word. Much of the text is comprised and constructed upon this fundamental idea. It is from this supposition of this primacy of speech that arguments are drawn and analysis is made for the purpose of providing evidence backing Derrida’s contention. Because his rejection of the necessity for binary oppositions in every aspect of life, he is not moved to the point of suggesting that the written word be handed the primacy. He instead is arguing against one and not in favor the other with the conclusion being that both speech and the written word are equally deserving of agency.
