Identity is derivative of a prior ipseity irreducible to saying I

Evidence

Still, why would it be impossible to identify the ‘T’ spoken here, the “I” that speaks and asserts, in Monolingualism of the Other, for example, that it is as, comme, the “most” or the “only” (among a group of two)? Isn’t Derrida, Derrida himself, affirming a new identity after all, and, with the Abrahamic, affirming a new hyphen to be added to the already long list of hyphenated identities? Derrida seems to insist and lean in this direction: He speaks, and says that he speaks, of a hyphen, one that would signify identity. It seems necessary therefore to return to the issue of following and pursuing, “je suis,” as an alternative to being, “je suis,” as an otherwise than identity. Indeed, the “I” that I am trying to follow, I have said, is not meconnaissable—it is never a matter of saying that “I” is not-but remains difficult to arrest and to contain to the extent that ‘T’ follows and pursues an identity and prior to it an ipseity: “What is identity” asks Derrida, “this concept of which the transparent identity to itself is always dogmatically presupposed by so many debates … and before the identity of the subject, what is ipseity? The latter is not reducible to an abstract capacity to say ‘I,’ which it will always have preceded.” Identity is therefore not denied, but affirmed insofar as it remains a question (“Our question is still identity”) and to the extent that it is secondary and derivative because it is preceded-to the extent that it therefore follows-by an ability to say “I” to which it is not reducible. — Gil Anidjar, The Jew, the Arab, 267

Categorization

• DEFINE: Distinguishes Derrida’s ipseity (the prior capacity to say ‘I’) from identity (a secondary, derivative concept), reorienting how ‘I’ is used.
• XREF: Connects to the chapter’s larger argument about ‘je suis’ as follow/pursue rather than being, and to deconstruction’s rethinking of the subject.