FREUD TO DERRIDA Jacques Derrida, photographed after he had achieved iconic status in many circles we read: ‘And the Spirit and the bride say Come! And let him that heareth say Come!’ (22: 17) Derrida has written at length on this text, making great play with the double entendre that attaches, in French as in English, to the word ‘come’ If one were churlish enough to point out that the Greek word translated ‘come’ cannot possibly have the sense of ‘achieve orgasm’, one would no doubt be told that one had missed the whole thrust of the exercise It may appear unseemly to criticize Derrida in the manner just illustrated The reason for doing so is that such a parody of fair comment is precisely the method he adopted in his own later work: his philosophical weapons are the pun, the bawdy, the sneer, and the snigger Normally, the historian tries to identify some of the major doctrines of a philosopher, present them as clearly as he can, and then perhaps add a word of evaluation In the later Derrida there are no doctrines to present It is not just that an unsympathetic reader may fail to identify or understand them; Derrida himself rejects 95