This paper argues that in Derrida’s writings twentieth-century philosophy
of language takes a materialistic turn, whereby meaning is understood as sensible
and material in its origin and not as ideas pre-given in the mind. The work of
metaphysics, however, is one of erasing the originary material/metaphorical
meaning of signifiers and turns it into abstract idealistic meaning. Derrida is often
accused of linguistic idealism on the basis of a misrepresentation of his anthemic
catchphrase ‘‘there is nothing outside the text,’’ which seems to imply that he denies
the existence of the real-world outside language. This distortion fails to understand
the notion of the text and its materialistic underpinnings in the whole project of
Derrida. His linguistic materialism is more realistic than idealistic, though he dis-
avows such binary oppositions, and it is an improvement over all other forms of
materialism on account of the notion of différance and his strategy of deconstructive
reading. Derrida’s materialism is non-dialectical and non-predictive; it is centered
on the notion of messianicity without a Messiah. The erasure of the permanent
presence of the materiality of matter is as much important to this materialism as the
subversion of the immutable solidity of the metaphysical conception of meaning.
Post-metaphysical materialism understands body itself as text and text itself as
embodied.

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• Textualized Body, Embodied Text: Derrida’s Linguistic Materialism