Latour v. Derrida

Over at my Latour reading group blog, I explain that wonderful first thesis of "Irreductions"--nothing is, by itself, either reducible or irreducible to anything else--and say the following:

In other words, Latour is saying that nothing is singular (irreducible) because it always needs others. Derrida would say everything is singular (irreducible) because it (a thing) needs others. Both, yes, say nothing is reducible to anything else. But such a statement comes from two different concerns. Latour is interested in saying that the misunderstanding ["translation is by definition always a misunderstanding, since common interests are in the long term necessarily divergent"--Latour] comes in to affirm the fact that a thing needs others. While Derrida is interested in undercutting how a thing needs others precisely through misunderstanding.

Of course it's much more complex than that--as the rest of the post(s) should make evident.