Prepositions: The Metaphysics of “Closeness”

Abstract

This article offers a polemical response to Patryk Szaj’s text, titled Tracking the (Traces of) Sense: Text and Reading in Modern Hermeneutics. In his article, Szaj demonstrates how the category of “closeness” he uses to define the ontology of reading practiced in modern hermeneutics is metaphysically charged. The specific conception of deconstruction we encounter in Szaj’s analysis frames it as an inversion of modern hermeneutics, which not only implies that “closeness” privileges the interior (at the expense of the exterior) and the signifiant (at the expense of the signifié). It also implies that the “trace” is an inversion of “meaning.” We might say that their result is merely the text.