Deconstruction is no game of mirrors, revealing the text as a play of surface against surface. Its more radical philosophical effort is to get behind the mirror and question the very nature of reflection. The Tain of the Mirror (tain names the tinfoil, or lusterless back of the mirror) explores that gritty surface without which no reflection would be possible. Gasche does what no one has done before in many discussions of Derrida, namely to tie his work in an authoritative way to its origins in the history of the criticism of reflexivity.

Rodolphe Gasché is the Eugenio Donato Professor of Comparative Literature at the State University of New York, Buffalo.

Read More by Rodolphe Gasché:

• The Wild Card of Reading: On Paul de Man
• Inventions of Difference: On Jacques Derrida