14 Quotes by Nicholas Royle

Everyday life would be impossible without metalanguage. But the notion of metalanguage entails a logic of the supplement. There is something ‘maddening’ about the notion: metalanguage is, in short, both necessary and impossible. We cannot do without it, but there is no metalanguage as a discrete language: it is both part of and not part of its so-called object language.

Derrida encourages us to be especially wary of the notion of the centre. We cannot get by without a concept of the centre, perhaps, but if one were looking for a single ‘central idea’ for Derrida’s work it might be that of decentring.

The uncanny is not a literary genre. But nor is it a non-literary genre. It overflows the very institution of literature. It inhabits, haunts, parasitizes the allegedly non-literary. It makes 'genre' blink.

Differance brings together the two notions of differing and deferring.

Even the most apparently simple statement is subject to fission or fissure.