R.S.V.P.

Abstract

This paper contends that in the ongoing exchange between Jacques Derrida and Emmanuel Levinas, culminating in Derrida's oration at Levinas's funeral in 1995, the issues of 'correspondence' and 'timeliness' continually emerged as obstacles to be surmounted in achieving anything like an ethical relationship with the other writer. In Derrida's writings, in particular, there is a sense of being left always struggling to address his words adequately -- and ethically -- to Levinas due to a delay in publishing one of his earlier pieces in the exchange.