The [text], accordingly is marked by an irreducible “undecidability,” the written word being, as Plato wrote, an orphan whose father/author is no longer on hand to resolve whatever difficulties the written word may get itself into. As orphans, texts do not interpret themselves. (198)

Founding intentions are never unambiguous and cannot be kept absolutely safe. As soon as something is entrusted to the safety of language, is committed to words, an argument breaks out about the right interpretation—about the syntax, the etymology of the words, the usage, the context, the intention of the author, what the original audience would have been assuming, what the common presuppositions of everyone involved were, etc. As soon as something is said or written down, the play of traces is engaged and there is no dodging the difficulties one has bought for oneself… A deconstructive analysis forces a textual tradition back to its founding or originary acts but invariably in such a way as to bring us to see that an absolutely originary act eludes it, that it always recedes behind the trace it leaves behind, and necessitates constant interpretation and reinterpretation. Put more polemically, there never was an absolute Origin. (198)

The point, however, is that the deferral and undecidability surround the Origin does not have the effect of destroying or undermining the tradition or the traditional faith, of proving that it is a fraud or sleight of hand. Rather, it produces it, by necessitating a constant rereading and reinterpretation of the founders and their founding acts, which never were quite foundational, never quite what they are made out to be by those who invoke the authority of the Origin, usually for their own ends. Deferral and undecidability do not destroy the tradition or the common faith but make us responsible for them in a way that is not otherwise possible. (198-9)