Mycrophysics of Sex. Sexual Differences between Biology and Deconstruction

In the unpublished seminar Life Death (La vie la mort, 1975), Derrida devotes a careful reading to the treatment of sexual difference and reproduction offered by the French biologist François Jacob in The Logic of Life (1970). A reading that offers us the opportunity to focus on the grounding role that sexual difference plays in Derrida’s deconstruction of the determination of life in our cultural tradition rooted into the “metaphysics of presence,” beyond any distinction between the so-called “hard sciences” and “humanities.” But before to account for this Derrida’s reading, it is necessary to clarify its context in the seminar La vie la mort, and more generally Derrida’s position concerning the relationship that deconstruction can establish with sciences in general and biology in particular.