Derrida's revealing, detailed interview about the “mechanics” of writing with Daniel Ferrer, “Entre le corps écrivant et l’écriture,” was published in Genesis, manuscrits, recherche, invention 17 (2001): 59–72.

Jacques Derrida is without doubt the philosopher who has taken the most interest in writing. For the first time, he has agreed to describe here in detail his own work practices and the concrete organization of this scene of writing (and of reading) that has always preoccupied him.

Daniel Ferrer: Two years ago we launched the first session of this seminar, “Writers’ Libraries,” with a very nice quote from one of your texts on the “invention of the other,” and we set out from the hypothesis that the writer's library, whether real or virtual, was the privileged site for observing how the writer “lets the other come through the economy of the same.” We would have many questions for you on this subject, but today you have agreed to speak to us, in a more personal mode, about your own library and your own practice of writing and reading.

Jacques Derrida: The exercise I’ve been invited to is a formidable one. It is a call for a quite indecent gesture, a gesture that some might interpret as narcissistic, exhibitionist, or even nudist. At issue is speaking of what, in each of our lives, represents the most secret, the most intimate: what we do in solitude, at home, when, in a space that is highly eroticized and, I would say, almost autoeroticized, we prepare with all sorts of instruments and media [supports] something that is already an exhibition: publications.