Troubling Lines: The Process of Address in Derrida's The Post Card

There is a line in The Post Card that has always bothered me. Now, to be clear, I do not hate this line. It does not keep me up at night. I do not have to suppress the urge to burn the book every time I read it. But I have never understood its phrasing or placement. It is, for me, in tension with the constellation of claims and concepts around which it circulates. This line comes in the second entry marked 6 June 1977 (PC, 16–17/20–22). In this passage, Derrida gives a reading of the postcard that in-spires his text. One will recall that the image on this card is of Socrates seated at a writing desk, pen in hand, with a smaller Plato standing behind him, seemingly dictating. Derrida spends the majority of this passage analyzing a number of the peculi-arities of this image (the positioning of the figures, the fact that it is Socrates writing and not Plato, the seeming confusion of master and pupil, teacher and student, etc). In the middle of this analysis, however, Derrida interjects the following state-ment, apparently in response to the question, “[t]o whom do you think he [Socrates] writes?” Derrida states, “[f ]or me it is always more important to know that [to whom one writes] than to know what is being written; moreover I think it amounts to the same, to the other finally” (PC, 17/21). This is the line that has always troubled me, particularly because of the privilege it grants to knowledge of addressees over that of content. Allow me to elaborate.