Le parti pris de la Chose. Sartre et Derrida lecteurs de Ponge.

Jean-Paul Sartre's and Jacques Derrida's literary criticism differ significantly as far as the two writers' theoretical approach is concerned. On the one hand, a historicist perspective that takes into account the author's life and milieu; on the other, a reading that does not exit the text's perimeter and only in the text can the interpretation be confirmed. Both philosophers deal with the poetry of Francis Ponge and with Le Parti pris des choses. Sartre focuses on the reifying aspect of things, on its dangerousness, on its will to substitute itself to the committed and responsible world. Derrida's analysis, instead, is purely textual, and it questions the function of signature as the author's transformation into object. This article, therefore, seeks to explore the extent to which the two philosophers - despite their different critical methodology - agree on the mineralization of things, on its power to make the human being inert, and on the object's radically non-significant trait. If non-signification brings forth nausea and existential anguish in Sartre, for Derrida the impossibility of determining a specific meaning preludes to the plurality of différance, to the play of trace that does not impose or censor. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]