LA GRAMMATOLOGIE COMME SCIENCE POSITIVE: MAURIZIO FERRARIS LECTEUR DE DERRIDA

Maurizio Ferraris is developing a realist ontology that severely criticizes the main theses of post-modernity for philosophical, ethical, and political reasons. Paradoxically, however, Derrida plays an important role in his thinking. By distinguishing natural objects from ideal objects and, ultimately, from social objects, the author shows that, rather than a criticism of Derrida, Ferraris’ realist ontol-ogy aims to limit Derridean thought to the field of social objects, which are above all written and inscribed objects. Through arche-writing and the theory of the trace, Ferraris demonstrates that writ-ing carries the social, because the trace exists only insofar as it is recognized and therefore in a rela-tion. In this way, Derrida's philosophy finds itself at the heart of a field from which we might have thought it had been excluded: contemporary realist ontology.