The tension between the absence of identity and the feeling of presence theorised in Jacques Derrida's philosophy is revealed in D'ailleurs Derrida, a film by Safaa Fathy (1999) . Fathy's film has had limited scholarly attention, yet it makes a distinctive contribution both to understanding and questioning Derridean thought. I argue that the not-meness of identity is revealed by Fathy through the theme of ‘elsewhere’ (ailleurs) in the film and yet it allows the audience to experience the tone and cadence of Derrida's speaking voice, in counterpoint with contemporary and archival images, thus providing a sense of his philosophy in relation to his life. The film shows how forms of absence such as silence, the not-said, and even pauses are essential to his work. Ultimately the film operates by giving Derrida the location, space, and time to articulate his views on identity, the close relationship between writing and filming, the experience of being ‘the Marrano's Marrano, circumcision, forgiveness and hospitality, and absence and presence. Nevertheless, Fathy's film both reflects and questions his philosophical focus on absence and spectrality through a range of cinematic techniques, including reverse shots and cross-cutting between locations.
{"title":"‘I've Never Met A Me’: Identity and Philosophy in D'Ailleurs, Derrida","authors":"M. Caze","doi":"10.3366/drt.2019.0207","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3366/drt.2019.0207","url":null,"abstract":"The tension between the absence of identity and the feeling of presence theorised in Jacques Derrida's philosophy is revealed in D'ailleurs Derrida, a film by Safaa Fathy (1999) . Fathy's film has had limited scholarly attention, yet it makes a distinctive contribution both to understanding and questioning Derridean thought. I argue that the not-meness of identity is revealed by Fathy through the theme of ‘elsewhere’ (ailleurs) in the film and yet it allows the audience to experience the tone and cadence of Derrida's speaking voice, in counterpoint with contemporary and archival images, thus providing a sense of his philosophy in relation to his life. The film shows how forms of absence such as silence, the not-said, and even pauses are essential to his work. Ultimately the film operates by giving Derrida the location, space, and time to articulate his views on identity, the close relationship between writing and filming, the experience of being ‘the Marrano's Marrano, circumcision, forgiveness and hospitality, and absence and presence. Nevertheless, Fathy's film both reflects and questions his philosophical focus on absence and spectrality through a range of cinematic techniques, including reverse shots and cross-cutting between locations.","PeriodicalId":42836,"journal":{"name":"Derrida Today","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2019-10-25","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"49380733","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Countering the common assumption in affect theory that deconstruction is incompatible with studies of affect, this essay theorises a deconstructive approach to reading for affect in texts and examines the role affect has always played in deconstructive reading. It reads Derrida alongside Deleuze who has been influential in affect theory in order to explicate what deconstruction adds to existing poststructural theories of affect: namely, how affect functions at the scene of reading, shaping the reading itself and coming into view through textual forms. In its second half, the essay turns to Cixous' ‘Savoir,’ demonstrating through a reading of that text what a deconstructive reading of affect looks like in practice and exploring the ethics of such an approach.
{"title":"Deconstructing Affects and Affects of Deconstruction","authors":"J. Zappa","doi":"10.3366/drt.2019.0209","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3366/drt.2019.0209","url":null,"abstract":"Countering the common assumption in affect theory that deconstruction is incompatible with studies of affect, this essay theorises a deconstructive approach to reading for affect in texts and examines the role affect has always played in deconstructive reading. It reads Derrida alongside Deleuze who has been influential in affect theory in order to explicate what deconstruction adds to existing poststructural theories of affect: namely, how affect functions at the scene of reading, shaping the reading itself and coming into view through textual forms. In its second half, the essay turns to Cixous' ‘Savoir,’ demonstrating through a reading of that text what a deconstructive reading of affect looks like in practice and exploring the ethics of such an approach.","PeriodicalId":42836,"journal":{"name":"Derrida Today","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2019-10-25","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47350424","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
The paper provides a critical review of Martin Hägglund's influential Radical Atheism. The paper focuses on what Hägglund calls ‘radical atheism’: the view that according to Derrida ‘the best is the worst’. First, the paper critically examines Hägglund's reconstruction of Derrida's argument for the structure of the trace or ‘the spacing of time’. This analysis clarifies one of the central premises in Hägglund's argument for radical atheism: the ‘contamination’ claim, according to which anything temporal is open as such to the future and is thus alterable in some way. The paper then turns to highlight some of Hägglund's rhetorical slippages that seem to be supported by the contamination claim but actually move beyond what it licenses. Next, the paper focuses critically on the argument for radical atheism and shows how it relies on an unwarranted premise that lies hidden in the discussion of the structure of the trace. Finally, the second central argument that informs Hägglund's work is questioned, that is, the argument for the view that what we are always and already committed to is to live on, that is, survive, so that it is this desire for the mortal that lies behind all our desires.
{"title":"The Arguments of Radical Atheism – Some Critical Reflections","authors":"Guy Elgat","doi":"10.3366/drt.2019.0206","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3366/drt.2019.0206","url":null,"abstract":"The paper provides a critical review of Martin Hägglund's influential Radical Atheism. The paper focuses on what Hägglund calls ‘radical atheism’: the view that according to Derrida ‘the best is the worst’. First, the paper critically examines Hägglund's reconstruction of Derrida's argument for the structure of the trace or ‘the spacing of time’. This analysis clarifies one of the central premises in Hägglund's argument for radical atheism: the ‘contamination’ claim, according to which anything temporal is open as such to the future and is thus alterable in some way. The paper then turns to highlight some of Hägglund's rhetorical slippages that seem to be supported by the contamination claim but actually move beyond what it licenses. Next, the paper focuses critically on the argument for radical atheism and shows how it relies on an unwarranted premise that lies hidden in the discussion of the structure of the trace. Finally, the second central argument that informs Hägglund's work is questioned, that is, the argument for the view that what we are always and already committed to is to live on, that is, survive, so that it is this desire for the mortal that lies behind all our desires.","PeriodicalId":42836,"journal":{"name":"Derrida Today","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2019-10-25","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48992636","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
This article tracks Derrida's readings of Kant and Husserl as they explore the relation between, on the one hand, faith and knowledge, and on the other, theory and practice (theoretical and practical reason). Kant had to limit the scope of theoretical knowledge in order to make room for a practical faith in the rational ideas of the unconditioned (God, freedom, and immortality), generated through the unconditionality of the moral law. Husserl deployed the figure of ‘the Idea in the Kantian sense’ at those crucial moments in the exposition of his transcendental phenomenology where the unconditioned comes into play, a problematic strategy that Derrida judges to have revealed the limits of the phenomenological project. While Husserl's call for an unconditional theoretical and practical renewal of faith in reason appears to offer him an out, Husserlian faith is ultimately dependent on an untenable circularity, to which the Kantian variety also succumbs. Only Derrida's unconditional gift of faith can save the honour of reason from its mortal crisis, but in a manner that is itself not wholly a matter of reason.
{"title":"Faith in/as the Unconditional: Kant, Husserl, and Derrida on Practical Reason","authors":"Dylan Shaul","doi":"10.3366/drt.2019.0208","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3366/drt.2019.0208","url":null,"abstract":"This article tracks Derrida's readings of Kant and Husserl as they explore the relation between, on the one hand, faith and knowledge, and on the other, theory and practice (theoretical and practical reason). Kant had to limit the scope of theoretical knowledge in order to make room for a practical faith in the rational ideas of the unconditioned (God, freedom, and immortality), generated through the unconditionality of the moral law. Husserl deployed the figure of ‘the Idea in the Kantian sense’ at those crucial moments in the exposition of his transcendental phenomenology where the unconditioned comes into play, a problematic strategy that Derrida judges to have revealed the limits of the phenomenological project. While Husserl's call for an unconditional theoretical and practical renewal of faith in reason appears to offer him an out, Husserlian faith is ultimately dependent on an untenable circularity, to which the Kantian variety also succumbs. Only Derrida's unconditional gift of faith can save the honour of reason from its mortal crisis, but in a manner that is itself not wholly a matter of reason.","PeriodicalId":42836,"journal":{"name":"Derrida Today","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2019-10-25","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.3366/drt.2019.0208","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47013093","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
The work of Jacques Derrida is often characterized as anti-scientific, and his philosophy of language taken to mean we are sealed off from empirical reality, confined to our metaphysical prison. This position is reinforced by the fact that his forerunners, Heidegger and Nietzsche, did diminish the importance of the sciences, and argued that we are enclosed within the limits of language. Today, philosophy continues to deconstruct the nature/culture distinction, and challenge the meaning of materialism, but in recent decades has realized that this work requires, in addition to a critique of the modern concept of science, a rehabilitation of the sciences outside their metaphysical definition. The fact that Derrida continues to be understood as an anti-science thinker has led to the exclusion of his work from this project. In this paper, I show that Derrida, while deconstruction the metaphysical concepts of science, nature and empiricism, in fact takes the mathematical sciences as an important force of deconstructing, and develops an interpretation of empiricism that points to a non-metaphysical understanding of it. From this perspective, Derrida's work is useful for thinking through the relation of the human to language and nature in the age of globalization and anthropogenic climate change.
{"title":"Deconstructive Empiricism: Science and Metaphor in Derrida's Early Work","authors":"Jeremy Butman","doi":"10.3366/drt.2019.0205","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3366/drt.2019.0205","url":null,"abstract":"The work of Jacques Derrida is often characterized as anti-scientific, and his philosophy of language taken to mean we are sealed off from empirical reality, confined to our metaphysical prison. This position is reinforced by the fact that his forerunners, Heidegger and Nietzsche, did diminish the importance of the sciences, and argued that we are enclosed within the limits of language. Today, philosophy continues to deconstruct the nature/culture distinction, and challenge the meaning of materialism, but in recent decades has realized that this work requires, in addition to a critique of the modern concept of science, a rehabilitation of the sciences outside their metaphysical definition. The fact that Derrida continues to be understood as an anti-science thinker has led to the exclusion of his work from this project. In this paper, I show that Derrida, while deconstruction the metaphysical concepts of science, nature and empiricism, in fact takes the mathematical sciences as an important force of deconstructing, and develops an interpretation of empiricism that points to a non-metaphysical understanding of it. From this perspective, Derrida's work is useful for thinking through the relation of the human to language and nature in the age of globalization and anthropogenic climate change.","PeriodicalId":42836,"journal":{"name":"Derrida Today","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2019-10-25","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.3366/drt.2019.0205","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47738410","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
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