This is the first full-length study devoted to Roger Laporte whose lifelong exploration of the stakes of writing has produced a body of work on the borderline of literature and philosophy. Charting the development of Laporte s writing in relation to the work of Heidegger Levinas Blanchot and Derrida this study offers both a comprehensive reading of Laporte s oeuvre and a new perspective on an important strand of recent thinking about literature. In particular it is claimed here that the imperfect reflexivity of Laporte s Ophic texts effects a singular opening to reading and that in doing so it illuminates the ethical dimension of literature which has been the subject of much recent discussion.