Donner le sens

This paper is concerned with the problem of giving meaning, from the standpoint of the deconstructivist critique that Jacques Derrida conducts regarding hermeneutics: if hermeneutics puts forth a reign of meaning, deconstruction essays to reveal that a certain irreducible outside-the-meaning deferral always escapes the theoretic hermeneutical meaning. Based on Derrida’s questioning of how a repetitive universal meaning is given for an absolutely unique event, our paper explores how we may understand meaning within the duplicitous threshold between the two slopes of singularity and universality and in the same time remain true both to the gift of the universal meaning in thematic, theoretical, linguistic and conceptual experiences, as well as to the leak implied by the inaccessible deferral pertaining to the secret of singularity.