εφημερεύον

The dissimulation of the woven texture can in any case take centuries to undo its web:a web that envelops a web, undoing the web for centuries, reconstructing it too as an organism, indefinitely regenerating its own tissue behind the cutting trace, the decision of each reading.There is always a surprise in store for the anatomy or physiology of any criticism that might think it had mastered the game, surveyed all the threads at once, deluding itself, too, in wanting to look at the text without touching it, without laying a hand on the "object", without risking-which is the only chance of entering into the game, by getting a few fingers caucht-the addition of some new thread.Adding here, is nothing other than giving to read.One must manage to think this out:that it is not a question of embroidering upon a text, unless one considers that to know how to embroider still means to have the ability to follow the given thread.That is, if you follow me, the hidden thread. If reading and writing are one, as is easily thought these days, if reading is writing, this oneness designates neither undifferentiated (con)fusion nor identity at perfect rest; the is that couples reading with writing must rip apart.
   One must then, in a single gesture, but doubled, read and write.And that person would have understood nothing of the game who, at this {du coup} , would feel himself authorized merely to add on;that is, to add any old thing.He would add nothing:the seam wouldn't hold.Reciprocally, he who  through "methodological prudence," "norms of objectivity," or "safeguards of knowledge" would refrain from committing anything of himself, would not read at all.The same foolishness, the same sterility, obtains in the "not serious" as in the "serious".The reading or writing supplement must be rigorously prescribed, but by the necessities of a game, by the logic of play, signs to which the system of all textual powers must be accorded and attuned.
 

[J. Derrida, Plato's pharmacy]