Derrida & Cixous: Between and beyond, or "What to the Letter Has Happened"

Focusing on Jacques Derrida's reading of Helene Cixous in his H. C. for Life, Michaud explores the philosophical and literary exchange, indeed the "effects of countersignature" that arise, between Cixous and Derrida. She argues that Cixous's oeuvre is crucially important for Derridian deconstruction, and even that it freed Derrida from the limits traditionally recognized by philosophy. In turn, Derrida's reading strives to "free Cixous's oeuvre from literature itself," which is to say that the "other-omnipotence" of the letter, of which Cixous's work is for Derrida the paradigmatic example, will not stay put within the limits of any genre, even a relatively capacious one like literature.