“Plato and Hegel always recognized the importance of the gap:
they invoke the gap (the opening, the separation, the division)
and they put it to work. The inescapable gaps that cannot be bridged,
that cannot be filled, play a central role in Derrida’s thought and in
our response to his death. The gaps in Derrida’s work resist the gap;
they swerve, deviate and wander (écarter ) – gaps move . When someone
or something takes pre-cedence (goes first, goes before, goes on ahead
and gives up its place ) a gap is opened. There (are) only gaps, the gaps
that Jacques Derrida has left behind him and in front of him: the
pre-cedence of gaps. This tracing of gaps (écarts ) is a preface to an
impossible mourning, a mourning that one must at once avoid and
affirm. It keeps returning to Derrida’s Dissemination (1972)….”
— Page vii of The Impossible Mourning of Jacques Derrida ,
by Sean Gaston (Continuum Books, London/New York, 2006)
Later in the same book —
