Notes towards a Discussion of Method and Metaphor in Glas

At several moments Glas proposes what it is hard not to see as methodological comments on its own procedure. These comments are usually quite difficult, and often involve dense figurative characterizations of the way the work proceeds, always folding any apparent metalinguistic position back on to the object text. After detailed discussion of several of these moments, a second section examines Derrida's deconstruction of Hegel's account of metaphor, and suggests it entails a non-teleological thinking of life. In all these cases, it is suggested that Derrida is consistently showing up an instability of the 'meta-' in general, even in apparently meta-physical texts.