The Light That Therefore I Give (to): Paleonymy and Animal Supplementarity in Clarice Lispector’s The Apple in the Dark

Abstract

In Of Grammatology, Derrida deconstructs the ideal/material dichotomy—especially in the speech/writing distinction—thereby locating a differential source to the distinction itself, which he calls arche-writing. Following his interest in “paleonymy,” the author proposes the paleonym arche-animality to understand animality in texts and the term zoogrammatology for a reading of zoopoetics, further arguing that zoopoetics must be approached with an eye toward paleonymy. Lispector’s The Apple in the Dark tells of the passage from nature to culture. Rather than a stage in such a journey, the animal is revealed as an arche-animal, an articulating supplement preceding and making possible the differentiation between evolutionary stages. Piskorski believes arche-animality is located in the poetics of light and dark prefigured in the title and in the novel’s concern with temporality and mortality.