Becoming a Monstrous Text? The Process of Grafting in the Work of Jean Genet and Jacques Derrida’s Glas

In this paper I will analyse the connections between grafting and writing in both the work of Jean Genet and also Jacques Derrida’s analysis (synthesis?) of Genet’s work. Grafting and writing share a common etymological root: the Greek graphein (‘to write’). It is particularly interesting to examine the relationship between these terms in Genet’s biographical works (mainly The Thief’s Journal and Miracle of the Rose), as his writing involves a many-layered grafting process. In addition, Derrida’s book on Genet, Glas, besides reflecting on the link between writing and grafting in Genet’s work, is essentially constructed out of quotations from Genet’s texts that Derrida grafts onto his own writing. In the first part of my paper, I will consider the different modalities of grafting that are used in Genet’s and Derrida’s writing. Subsequently, I will examine the reasons why such a process is at the core of their respective texts. Finally, I will consider the extent to which this process leads these texts, made as they are from imported, sutured limbs, to become monstrous – examples of what we could call a ‘teratography’.