Leaving a trace in the world (II): Deconstruction and the history of life

This article tests the hypothesis that the history of life can be told only by assuming the ultra-transcendental conception of life as leaving a trace in the world. It draws together two moments in the work of Jacques Derrida that are chronologically distant and yet develop that hypothesis and its consequences: the deconstruction of the phenomenological concept of consciousness, and the deconstruction of the Cartesian narrative of life. The article demonstrates that the first moment allows us to elaborate the ultra-transcendental conception of life presupposed by phenomenological consciousness, which oers new ways to analyze biological questions of the origin and evolution of life, and ethico-political questions of responsibility.