Derrida, Jacques. 1976. Of Grammatology. Trans. Gayatri Chakravortry Spivak. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.
Derrida has brought the idea of the parergon one step closer to anthropology by threading together anthropology and the logic of the supplement in Claude Lévi-Strauss's Tristes Tropiques. Lévi-Strauss, placing his work in a direct line of descent from Rousseau, makes Tristes Tropiques “at the same time The Confessions and a sort of supplement to the Supplément au voyage de Bougainville,” Derrida notes (1976: 107). The supplement, Derrida continues, replaces and intervenes (tient-lieu), as its presence is as dangerous to the structure as is its absence (1976: 141–64, 216–69).
It is precisely this critical texture of the parergon, its capability to contain text that is both explanatory and indispensible, that raises the stakes of the reading experience that I am exploring here.