Limited Inc

Limited Inc

Cover of the first edition
Author	Jacques Derrida
Subject	J. L. Austin
Published	1988
Media type	Print

Limited Inc is a 1988 book by the French philosopher Jacques Derrida, containing two essays and an interview.

The first essay, "Signature Event Context," is about J. L. Austin's theory of the illocutionary act outlined in his How To Do Things With Words.^[1] The second essay, "Limited Inc a b c...", is Derrida's response to John Searle's "Reply to Derrida: Reiterating the Differences," which criticizes Derrida's interpretation of Austin. The book concludes with a letter by Derrida, written in response to questions posed by Gerald Graff in 1988: "Afterword: Toward an Ethic of Discussion". Searle's essay is not itself included: he denied Northwestern University Press permission to reprint it. A summary is included between the two Derrida essays, and Derrida quotes the essay extensively.^[2]

"Signature Event Context" was originally delivered at a Montreal conference entitled "Communication," organized by the Congrès international des Sociétés de philosophie de langue française in August 1971. It was subsequently published in the Congrès' Proceedings and then collected in Derrida's Marges de la philosophie in 1972. It first appeared in English translation in the inaugural issue of the journal Glyph in 1977 and was followed in the same issue by Searle's "Reply to Derrida: Reiterating the Differences". Derrida's reply to Searle's reply, "Limited Inc a b c...", was published in Glyph's second issue later in 1977. A French edition of Limited Inc was published by Éditions Galilée under that same title (but with a point added after Inc) in 1990.