spurs

Nietzsche or reveal what he was secretly up to. Derrida proceeds as though this carefully constructed web of loosely connected words and meanings were fortuitous, and just happened to correspond remarkably well with what Derrida wished to say about Nietzsche's style. Technically, his argument doesn't depend on any of these chance associations, and if they cannot be said to be merely ornamental or secondary in the text it is because they are bent into the service of an implicit metaphor of the truth as an ocean and style as that which cuts through and moves along her surface. Though the rock that breaks the waves is the only meaning attached to éperon, Derrida ensures that nautical imagery contaminates the entire lot. The rock is linked to the prow of a ship, which like a spur moves the boat forward, while like the rock it divides the oncoming waves. Derrida sets up an allegorical space that isn't quite Nietzsche's, and when he finally arrives at Nietzsche's metaphor of Truth as a woman truth will necessarily appear as a siren, and it will become both dangerous and foolhardy rushing straight toward her, as is done by philosophers and scientists without style, who lack any appreciation of distance and the play of surfaces. The veil that conceals, which was previously attached to 'sail', and the verb 'to spurn', which was attached to 'spur', have already been used to inscribe ideas of femininity and seduction into the association cluster built around éperon and voile. As new sets of associations are added, the old ones are not abandoned, but become more heavily motivated. The density of connection between the words and images Derrida chooses to bring together (the style/ stiletto that cuts the waves and dances like them, the veiled/ sailing woman truth, who glides along the surface and beckons forward with what she hides and promises, etc) and the astounding correspondence between the entire nexus and the vision of truth and philosophy presented by Nietzsche's writing all seem to belie the idea that their encounter is fortuitous. Through cross contamination and the folding of images into one another, not to mention a choice of objects (woman and ocean) that already present inexhaustible sets of associations, Derrida makes what is arbitrary seem necessary. Though the basic coherence of the image of the philosopher and his relation to truth is never abandoned, and the strong connection to Nietzsche's original texts is never lost, the number of ideas and images present in that one idea of the truth as woman/ siren proliferates to the point that they cannot all be held in mind at the same time, though they are all present in one another and do all work together to create a single tonality. Ideally, as with Kant's sublime, comprehension should break down, not because of the difficulty or obscurity of the ideas involved, but because of the number of parts that need to resonate all at once for the whole to function.