1 Daniel Haines The Impossible in Writing “The madman.—Have you not heard of that madman who lit a lantern in the bright morning hours, ran to the market place, and cried incessantly: “I seek God! I seek God!” – As many of those who did not believe in God were standing around just then, he provoked much laughter. Has he got lost? asked one. Did he lose his way like a child? asked another. Or is he hiding? Is he afraid of us? Has he gone on a voyage? emigrated? –Thus they yelled and laughed.” – Friedrich Nietzsche, The Gay Science Abstract Modernity is generally associated with a move towards abstraction in the arts. But alongside visual art, architecture, and music, there is an apparently empty place – the place which ought to be occupied by a literary abstract writing. Why is this so? The obvious answer, if we consider what is conventionally meant by “the literary”, seems to be that this concept is a contradiction-in-terms, and that an abstract literature is, a priori, impossible. In an ordinary sense, this is undoubtedly the case: literary abstract writing is impossible. However, by examining this impossibility, with the help in particular of the conceptual tools provided by Derrida’s Of Grammatology—which is, at the same time, to be forced to revise our notions of what is meant by the idea of the impossible—it can be argued that we must begin to think beyond this conclusion. Not to reverse it, but to probe what determines, and what might be at stake in, this impossibility. By considering the logic of the supplement, between writing and speech and also in the opposition of sign and thing, we can attempt to think the