Writing as flesh

I've long been fascinated by the bodily connection that we often feel that we have with our writing. This is as true of writing done on a computer as of manuscript or print. Aaron just wrote a thoughtful post describing pieces of writing as his children (although, come on Aaron, the whole Abraham/Ishmael thing is kind of creepy). It's a common enough metaphor. And of course, there is the proverbial "bleeding on" a draft, as if to suggest corrections were tantamount to taking a pen and slicing open the text's flesh.

In Of Grammatology, Derrida puts his finger on a value judgment that runs through discourses on writing:

There is therefore a good and a bad writing: the good and natural is the divine inscription in the heart and the soul; the perverse and artful is technique, exiled in the exteriority of the body. [...] The good writing has therefore always been comprehended.

The kind of writing that gets the same ontological status as speech, Derrida suggests, is the kind that is not really writing at all, but rather a metaphorical "inscription" defined by interiority and presence. The writing that is writing per se, the kind defined by its portability, its capacity to circulate alienated from the body, is the kind that is considered fallen, a mere sorry simulacrum of speech.

But the writing that I encounter in my workaday life, both as a critic and as a teacher, doesn't quite fit into this schema. Our writing really is alienable, but the process of alienation is painful. You can "develop a thick skin" when it comes to criticism (of your writing, not of you personally!), but it's still never easy to "take." That's why Aaron's metaphor of children feels so apt (even as it feels excessive): flesh of your flesh, it eventually leaves you to circulate in the world on its own. You can't control it, you can't protect it, and it sometimes sends you resentful text messages about how you always liked that other essay better.