The Presumption of Writing: Between Ovid’s Children

Montaigne undertakes explicitly to write about himself, but, after my discussion of textual progeny, of imposing texts and obtrusive readers, we might want to say that all writers write about themselves, whatever else they may write about. The work produced always reproduces the writer, however much he is “found” or “lost” there, it represents him as his offspring and speaks in his name in his absence and after his death. The diverse examples of the affection of fathers for their metaphorical children at the end of “De l’affection des peres aux enfans” imply that all “work,” all actions and all