Taking its point of departure in a childhood memory of Derrida around raising silkworms, this essay explores the urgency invoked in the same memory of ‘conjuring green’. Following the polysemy of the French verb ( conjurer means to ‘ward off’, ‘cause (a spirit or ghost) to appear’, ‘implore’, and literally, ‘swear together’), the conjured green binds the child and later the writer surreptitiously to both the community and language of Islam, in which the colour green evokes the gardens of paradise, and the infinitely differentiated proliferation of plants whose anthology encroaches upon and undermines any ontology. Along the meandering lines of Derrida’s meditation on the conjured, warded-off, mourned and celebrated green, the Qur’anic Muslim’s joy and radiance whose roots are the same as those for ‘vividness’ and ‘flourishing’, are grafted onto Hildegard von Bingen’s viriditas, the greening power or force which the German mystic Hildegard von Bingen understood as the living soul of creation; and Darwin’s discovery of the movement of plans as ‘circumnutation’, a Derridian term avant la lettre, that captures the dynamic of plants in Derrida’s Glas.
这篇文章以德里达关于养蚕的童年记忆为出发点,探讨了在同样的记忆中唤起的“变绿”的紧迫性。随着法语动词的一词多义(“魔术师”的意思是“避开”,“使(幽灵或鬼魂)出现”,“恳求”,字面上是“一起发誓”),被召唤出来的绿色将孩子和后来的作家秘密地与伊斯兰教的社区和语言联系在一起,在伊斯兰教中,绿色唤起了天堂的花园,以及无限分化的植物增殖,这些植物的集合蚕食和破坏了任何本体论。沿着德里达对被召唤的、被拒绝的、被哀悼的和被赞美的绿色的沉思的蜿蜒的线条,古兰经穆斯林的喜悦和光辉,其根源与“生动”和“繁荣”是一样的,被嫁接到希尔德加德·冯·宾根的“绿”上,绿色的力量或力量被德国神秘主义者希尔德加德·冯·宾根理解为创造的生命灵魂;达尔文发现了“圆周运动”,这是德里德里语中的一个术语“avant la letter”,它捕捉到了德里达玻璃中的植物动态。
{"title":"Conjuring Green: Jacques Derrida’s Plants","authors":"Elisabeth Weber","doi":"10.3366/drt.2023.0303","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3366/drt.2023.0303","url":null,"abstract":"Taking its point of departure in a childhood memory of Derrida around raising silkworms, this essay explores the urgency invoked in the same memory of ‘conjuring green’. Following the polysemy of the French verb ( conjurer means to ‘ward off’, ‘cause (a spirit or ghost) to appear’, ‘implore’, and literally, ‘swear together’), the conjured green binds the child and later the writer surreptitiously to both the community and language of Islam, in which the colour green evokes the gardens of paradise, and the infinitely differentiated proliferation of plants whose anthology encroaches upon and undermines any ontology. Along the meandering lines of Derrida’s meditation on the conjured, warded-off, mourned and celebrated green, the Qur’anic Muslim’s joy and radiance whose roots are the same as those for ‘vividness’ and ‘flourishing’, are grafted onto Hildegard von Bingen’s viriditas, the greening power or force which the German mystic Hildegard von Bingen understood as the living soul of creation; and Darwin’s discovery of the movement of plans as ‘circumnutation’, a Derridian term avant la lettre, that captures the dynamic of plants in Derrida’s Glas.","PeriodicalId":42836,"journal":{"name":"Derrida Today","volume":"1 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2023-05-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42228212","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}
Was Derrida a mama’s boy? Was he not hiding or indeed manifesting, ostensibly displaying even, mommy issues? Let us posit that Derrida had a substantial, perhaps an inordinate amount of things to say about mothers in general, about surrogate mothers too, and about his own mother in particular. Derrida did confess having taken the side of his mother. Yet, what I really want to ask is whether, from Plato to Nancy and, more obviously, from Rousseau to Freud and beyond, mothers can, in fact, be confined to bounded registers of life, of Derrida’s life and, more formally, to the biographical and autobiographical (as ‘Circumfession’ and before it Spurs and The Ear of the Other might suggest). Or even to the psychoanalytical (as The Post Card and, in it, the famous fort/da scene would certainly indicate). A concern — shall I already call it a solicitude — for mothers, on Derrida’s part, might raise a distinct set of questions.
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This article seeks to locate the seminar series that Derrida delivered at the École normale superieure during the mid-seventies within the broader political and theoretical aspirations of the Groupe de recherches sur l’enseignement philosophique (GREPH), particularly considering the group’s thematization and politicisation of pedagogy in the history of philosophy and the philosophical establishment. It also aims to contextualise Derrida’s recourse to a Marxian and Marxist problematic as part of these aspirations in view of his longer-term engagement with the question of philosophy in Marx and Marxism. The article brings together these two contextual dimensions of Derrida’s teaching activities at the ENS through a close reading of the seminar series he delivered on the agrégation topic of Theory and Practice in 1976–7. This reading focuses specifically on how Derrida mobilised the Althusserian problematic to attempt to transform the role and function of the agrégés-répétiteur (a position he shared with Althusser at the ENS) within the frame of reference of his political work with GREPH.
本文试图将德里达在1970年代中期在École normale superieure举办的系列研讨会定位在哲学研究小组(GREPH)更广泛的政治和理论愿望中,特别是考虑到该小组在哲学史和哲学建立中的主题化和教育学政治化。它还旨在将德里达对马克思主义和马克思主义问题的求助作为这些愿望的一部分,考虑到他长期参与马克思主义和马克思主义的哲学问题。这篇文章通过仔细阅读德里达在1976 - 1977年就《理论与实践》(Theory and Practice)的农业组织主题发表的系列研讨会,将德里达在法国高等教育学院的教学活动的这两个语境维度结合在一起。这篇阅读特别关注德里达如何在他与GREPH的政治工作的参考框架内,动员阿尔都塞的问题,试图改变农业(他与阿尔都塞在ENS分享的立场)的角色和功能。
{"title":"GREPH, Marx and the Politics of Teaching Philosophy","authors":"R. Mozzachiodi","doi":"10.3366/drt.2022.0291","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3366/drt.2022.0291","url":null,"abstract":"This article seeks to locate the seminar series that Derrida delivered at the École normale superieure during the mid-seventies within the broader political and theoretical aspirations of the Groupe de recherches sur l’enseignement philosophique (GREPH), particularly considering the group’s thematization and politicisation of pedagogy in the history of philosophy and the philosophical establishment. It also aims to contextualise Derrida’s recourse to a Marxian and Marxist problematic as part of these aspirations in view of his longer-term engagement with the question of philosophy in Marx and Marxism. The article brings together these two contextual dimensions of Derrida’s teaching activities at the ENS through a close reading of the seminar series he delivered on the agrégation topic of Theory and Practice in 1976–7. This reading focuses specifically on how Derrida mobilised the Althusserian problematic to attempt to transform the role and function of the agrégés-répétiteur (a position he shared with Althusser at the ENS) within the frame of reference of his political work with GREPH.","PeriodicalId":42836,"journal":{"name":"Derrida Today","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2022-11-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48045575","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 paper revisits one of the least understood elements of Derrida’s corpus: his sustained critique of Lacan’s conception of the letter operative in the unconscious. Showing where and how this critique has been misconstrued, the paper demonstrates that the ultimate significance of Derrida’s intervention lies in how it brings forward the uncritical conception of heterogeneity found in Lacan. In this way, Derrida’s engagement with Lacan, from ‘Positions’ all the way up to the late seminars on The Beast and the Sovereign, sheds crucial light on how the core ‘ultra-transcendental’ structures of deconstruction are to be understood. Above all, it allows us to see how the ultra-transcendental logic of différance entails the thinking of finitude Derrida came to call la vie la mort, life death.
{"title":"Revisiting Derrida’s Critique of Lacan, Beyond the Misunderstandings","authors":"R. Trumbull","doi":"10.3366/drt.2022.0293","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3366/drt.2022.0293","url":null,"abstract":"This paper revisits one of the least understood elements of Derrida’s corpus: his sustained critique of Lacan’s conception of the letter operative in the unconscious. Showing where and how this critique has been misconstrued, the paper demonstrates that the ultimate significance of Derrida’s intervention lies in how it brings forward the uncritical conception of heterogeneity found in Lacan. In this way, Derrida’s engagement with Lacan, from ‘Positions’ all the way up to the late seminars on The Beast and the Sovereign, sheds crucial light on how the core ‘ultra-transcendental’ structures of deconstruction are to be understood. Above all, it allows us to see how the ultra-transcendental logic of différance entails the thinking of finitude Derrida came to call la vie la mort, life death.","PeriodicalId":42836,"journal":{"name":"Derrida Today","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2022-11-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44528303","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}
Deconstruction and duration are arguably the two most important theories of time to emerge from French philosophy in the twentieth century. Yet, despite the resurgence of interest in Bergson, scholars have ignored Derrida’s own discussions of Bergson, both positive and negative, throughout his career. This lack of attention obscures an important influence on Derrida’s early thought, and hampers our ability to understand the nature of Derrida’s relationship to fields such as new materialism, posthumanism, and affect studies, that frequently turn to Bergson for inspiration. This paper addresses this gap by tracking Derrida’s readings of Bergson and comparing two related pairs of their concepts: duration and différance, and intuition and spacing. The paper concludes by arguing that Derrida’s critical engagement with Bergson leads to an anti-presentist model of life, which gains new relevance in the Anthropocene.
{"title":"Presencing the Past: Materiality and the Experience of Time in Derrida and Bergson","authors":"Austin Lillywhite","doi":"10.3366/drt.2022.0290","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3366/drt.2022.0290","url":null,"abstract":"Deconstruction and duration are arguably the two most important theories of time to emerge from French philosophy in the twentieth century. Yet, despite the resurgence of interest in Bergson, scholars have ignored Derrida’s own discussions of Bergson, both positive and negative, throughout his career. This lack of attention obscures an important influence on Derrida’s early thought, and hampers our ability to understand the nature of Derrida’s relationship to fields such as new materialism, posthumanism, and affect studies, that frequently turn to Bergson for inspiration. This paper addresses this gap by tracking Derrida’s readings of Bergson and comparing two related pairs of their concepts: duration and différance, and intuition and spacing. The paper concludes by arguing that Derrida’s critical engagement with Bergson leads to an anti-presentist model of life, which gains new relevance in the Anthropocene.","PeriodicalId":42836,"journal":{"name":"Derrida Today","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2022-11-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48665488","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}
In January 2001 I received a letter from Jacques Derrida. The letter was a response to an article I had written about the concept of disinterest. What I did not know at the time was that he was in the midst of his seminar on the death penalty, which includes his most sustained interrogation of disinterest and interest. This essay examines the history of disinterest as a death penalty. Derrida challenges the possibility of such a history, arguing both for the madness of disinterest and the tenacity of another kind of interest. The essay also addresses Derrida’s letter and the problem of taking an interest in the interests of the other, of the right to interest, not least in Derrida’s own interests.
{"title":"A History of Disinterest: The Death Penalty and the Right to Interest","authors":"S. Gaston","doi":"10.3366/drt.2022.0289","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3366/drt.2022.0289","url":null,"abstract":"In January 2001 I received a letter from Jacques Derrida. The letter was a response to an article I had written about the concept of disinterest. What I did not know at the time was that he was in the midst of his seminar on the death penalty, which includes his most sustained interrogation of disinterest and interest. This essay examines the history of disinterest as a death penalty. Derrida challenges the possibility of such a history, arguing both for the madness of disinterest and the tenacity of another kind of interest. The essay also addresses Derrida’s letter and the problem of taking an interest in the interests of the other, of the right to interest, not least in Derrida’s own interests.","PeriodicalId":42836,"journal":{"name":"Derrida Today","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2022-11-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43962873","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}
Derrida’s thought is a dynamic dimension, a movement beyond any attempt of conclusive definition. However, is there any possibility to grasp this task of endless destabilization? This paper brings up the proposal of reading Derrida’s work from the close but at the same time aporetical relation between place and space. In this sense, we question the common understanding of space as uniform and empty continuum where place would be just a ‘limit’, a perimeter. In order to do so, we will pay attention to the particular Topology that ‘translation’ illustrates in Derrida’s work, just as the reality of the spectre and mourning, stating these two dimensions as examples of Derrida’s strategy. In this sense, through translation and mourning, we manage to make out that Derrida’s work, even though cannot be summarized in a single object or idea, it might be understood as the endless question about the place of and for deconstruction, that is, about place as deconstruction of space. Thus, Derrida’s Topology may constitute a new and radical way to read not only his own work, but to question ourselves.
{"title":"Mourning and Translation as Topological Events","authors":"Pablo B. Sanchez Gomez","doi":"10.3366/drt.2022.0292","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3366/drt.2022.0292","url":null,"abstract":"Derrida’s thought is a dynamic dimension, a movement beyond any attempt of conclusive definition. However, is there any possibility to grasp this task of endless destabilization? This paper brings up the proposal of reading Derrida’s work from the close but at the same time aporetical relation between place and space. In this sense, we question the common understanding of space as uniform and empty continuum where place would be just a ‘limit’, a perimeter. In order to do so, we will pay attention to the particular Topology that ‘translation’ illustrates in Derrida’s work, just as the reality of the spectre and mourning, stating these two dimensions as examples of Derrida’s strategy. In this sense, through translation and mourning, we manage to make out that Derrida’s work, even though cannot be summarized in a single object or idea, it might be understood as the endless question about the place of and for deconstruction, that is, about place as deconstruction of space. Thus, Derrida’s Topology may constitute a new and radical way to read not only his own work, but to question ourselves.","PeriodicalId":42836,"journal":{"name":"Derrida Today","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2022-11-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44970000","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}