Sound Research WIKINDX

"This poses the question of the usage of the word “supplement”: of Rousseau’s situation within the language [langue] and the logic that assures to this word or to this concept sufficiently surprising resources so that the presumed subject of the sentence should always say, using the “supplement,” more, less, or something other than what he would wish to say [voudrait dire]. This question is therefore not only of Rousseau’s writing but also of our reading. We should begin by taking rigorous account of this being held within [prise] or this surprise: the writer writes in a language [langue] and in a logic whose proper system, laws, and life his discourse by definition cannot dominate absolutely. He uses them only by letting himself, in a certain way and up to a point, be governed by the system. And the reading must always aim at a certain relationship, unperceived by the writer, between what he commands and what he does not command of the patterns of the language that he uses. This relationship is not a certain quantitative distribution of shadow and light, of weakness or of force, but a signifying structure that critical reading should produce.

What does produce mean here? Attempting to explain that, we would initiate a justification of our principles of reading. A justification, as we shall see, entirely negative, outlining by exclusion a space of reading that we will not fill here: a task of reading."