As they make their way through Louis Althusser’s and Jacques Derrida’s texts, readers will cross innumerable curtains – ‘the words and things’, as Derrida says, as many fabrics of traces. These curtains open onto a multiplicity of scenes and mises en scène, performances, roles, rituals, actors, plays – thus unfolding the space of a certain theatricality. This essay traces Althusser’s and Derrida’s respective deployments of the theatrical motif. In his theoretical writings, Althusser’s theatrical dispositive aims to designate the practical and material dimension of the scenes of ideology, materially enacted through roleplays, performances, acts, or discourses. At the horizon: a scientific discourse on ideology or, later, a strategic intervention in the class struggle. This scientific and/or strategic orientation echoes Althusser’s definition of materialism: ‘no more storytelling’. But Derrida’s ‘closure of representation’ reminds us that there’s no presence – even the most ‘material’ – no ‘truth’ or ‘correctness’ – in theoretical or strategic terms – without effects of re-presentation, differential repetition, narrative reconstruction: theatricality and materiality suppose a force of resistance, a secret heterogeneity, curtain foldings. Hence the irreducible necessity of reading, storytelling, transformative interpretation. What are the implications for thinking inheritance and debt – for example, the one binding Althusser and Derrida, and us to them?
{"title":"‘Rideaux rouges’: The Scene of Ideology and the Closure of Representation (Matter and Theatre in Althusser and Derrida)","authors":"Thomas Clément Mercier","doi":"10.3366/drt.2022.0273","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3366/drt.2022.0273","url":null,"abstract":"As they make their way through Louis Althusser’s and Jacques Derrida’s texts, readers will cross innumerable curtains – ‘the words and things’, as Derrida says, as many fabrics of traces. These curtains open onto a multiplicity of scenes and mises en scène, performances, roles, rituals, actors, plays – thus unfolding the space of a certain theatricality. This essay traces Althusser’s and Derrida’s respective deployments of the theatrical motif. In his theoretical writings, Althusser’s theatrical dispositive aims to designate the practical and material dimension of the scenes of ideology, materially enacted through roleplays, performances, acts, or discourses. At the horizon: a scientific discourse on ideology or, later, a strategic intervention in the class struggle. This scientific and/or strategic orientation echoes Althusser’s definition of materialism: ‘no more storytelling’. But Derrida’s ‘closure of representation’ reminds us that there’s no presence – even the most ‘material’ – no ‘truth’ or ‘correctness’ – in theoretical or strategic terms – without effects of re-presentation, differential repetition, narrative reconstruction: theatricality and materiality suppose a force of resistance, a secret heterogeneity, curtain foldings. Hence the irreducible necessity of reading, storytelling, transformative interpretation. What are the implications for thinking inheritance and debt – for example, the one binding Althusser and Derrida, and us to them?","PeriodicalId":42836,"journal":{"name":"Derrida Today","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2022-05-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47590184","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}
Because the pandemic has kept the world busy in the last two years, a revival of Derrida's writings on biology is an urgent prerequisite today. The tsunamic invasion of the Coronavirus or Covid-19 pandemic took more than two million lives and thousands are still being tested positive as I write. The speed of the virus and the seeming human inability to stop its spread necessitates a study on the relationship between Covid-19 and Derrida's deconstructive philosophy. Hence the portmanteau Coviderrida – inspired by Hélène Cixous’ ‘ derridevilishly’ ( Cixous 2004 , 16) – attempts to demonstrate how the pathogen operates as an event or (im) possibility to which Derrida's neologisms ‘différance’, ‘supplement’, ‘trace’, ‘archi-writing’, and ‘text’ testify. The main concern of this paper is to restore the deconstructive logic that Derrida advocates to restructure the relationship between life and death in his 1975-6 seminar La vie la mort, and reshape our notion of human survival in his 2001 interview with Giovanna Borradori, ‘Autoimmunity’. These two texts redefine the political and religious questions, which are ‘left hanging, uncertain, still in movement and therefore, yet “to come”’.
{"title":"Coviderrida: The Pandemic in Deconstructive Philosophy","authors":"A. Al-Khafaji","doi":"10.3366/drt.2022.0276","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3366/drt.2022.0276","url":null,"abstract":"Because the pandemic has kept the world busy in the last two years, a revival of Derrida's writings on biology is an urgent prerequisite today. The tsunamic invasion of the Coronavirus or Covid-19 pandemic took more than two million lives and thousands are still being tested positive as I write. The speed of the virus and the seeming human inability to stop its spread necessitates a study on the relationship between Covid-19 and Derrida's deconstructive philosophy. Hence the portmanteau Coviderrida – inspired by Hélène Cixous’ ‘ derridevilishly’ ( Cixous 2004 , 16) – attempts to demonstrate how the pathogen operates as an event or (im) possibility to which Derrida's neologisms ‘différance’, ‘supplement’, ‘trace’, ‘archi-writing’, and ‘text’ testify. The main concern of this paper is to restore the deconstructive logic that Derrida advocates to restructure the relationship between life and death in his 1975-6 seminar La vie la mort, and reshape our notion of human survival in his 2001 interview with Giovanna Borradori, ‘Autoimmunity’. These two texts redefine the political and religious questions, which are ‘left hanging, uncertain, still in movement and therefore, yet “to come”’.","PeriodicalId":42836,"journal":{"name":"Derrida Today","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2022-05-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"41828772","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}
{"title":"On the Genesis of Monkey Trouble: The Scandal of Posthumanism","authors":"Christopher Peterson","doi":"10.3366/drt.2022.0277","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3366/drt.2022.0277","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":42836,"journal":{"name":"Derrida Today","volume":"1 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2022-05-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"41324731","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 examines Jacques Derrida's analysis of Walter Benjamin's ‘Critique of Violence’ in the context of their respective theories of the university. Whereas Derrida foregrounds the complex ways that the university and law are intertwined, Benjamin claims that the ‘educative power’ stands removed from the law by identifying the university with ‘divine violence’. ‘Force of Law’ not only questions the possibility of a neutral, pre-legal space that Benjamin's theory warrants, ‘Force of Law’ also draws attention to the laws structuring the colloquia that gave rise to Derrida's text. This paper claims that Derrida's analysis of justice, law, violence, and justesse is thus informed by a theory of the university, and that the ways in which Derrida's theory of law stands opposed to Benjamin's parallels the ways in which Derrida's theory of the university questions Benjamin's understanding of the ‘educative power’. This paper concludes by drawing attention to the demand posed by the absence of justice in the academy. Although the laws of the academy produce justesse in the present, this negatively affirms justice in the future, which cannot wait.
{"title":"Justice, Law, and the Educative Power: Revisiting ‘Force of Law’","authors":"G. Quigley","doi":"10.3366/drt.2021.0265","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3366/drt.2021.0265","url":null,"abstract":"This paper examines Jacques Derrida's analysis of Walter Benjamin's ‘Critique of Violence’ in the context of their respective theories of the university. Whereas Derrida foregrounds the complex ways that the university and law are intertwined, Benjamin claims that the ‘educative power’ stands removed from the law by identifying the university with ‘divine violence’. ‘Force of Law’ not only questions the possibility of a neutral, pre-legal space that Benjamin's theory warrants, ‘Force of Law’ also draws attention to the laws structuring the colloquia that gave rise to Derrida's text. This paper claims that Derrida's analysis of justice, law, violence, and justesse is thus informed by a theory of the university, and that the ways in which Derrida's theory of law stands opposed to Benjamin's parallels the ways in which Derrida's theory of the university questions Benjamin's understanding of the ‘educative power’. This paper concludes by drawing attention to the demand posed by the absence of justice in the academy. Although the laws of the academy produce justesse in the present, this negatively affirms justice in the future, which cannot wait.","PeriodicalId":42836,"journal":{"name":"Derrida Today","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2021-11-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42444717","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 this article, I consider the role of institutions in Jacques Derrida's political engagement. In spite of Derrida's significant involvement with political causes throughout his life, his engagements have received little sustained attention, and this is particularly true of his work with institutions. I turn to two such cases, the Collège international de philosophie and the Parlement international des écrivains and argue that these represent an alternative mode of institutionalisation. These institutions seek to destabilise other institutions as well as themselves. Looking closely at the institutions that Derrida founded, we see three common characteristics emerge. These institutions are anti-hegemonic, self-reflexive and international. I then connect these to Derrida's thought, offering a reading of the undecidable, which brings forth the importance of conventions in the decision. Finally, I demonstrate that the three shared characteristics of Derrida's institutions form part of an effort to open up space for the possibility of alterity. Through this, and beyond a distinction between theory/practice, we come to see Derrida's institutional engagements as an active form of critique, both of other institutions and themselves.
{"title":"Critical Institutions: Alternative Modes of Institutionalisation in Derrida's Engagements","authors":"Cillian Ó Fathaigh","doi":"10.3366/drt.2021.0264","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3366/drt.2021.0264","url":null,"abstract":"In this article, I consider the role of institutions in Jacques Derrida's political engagement. In spite of Derrida's significant involvement with political causes throughout his life, his engagements have received little sustained attention, and this is particularly true of his work with institutions. I turn to two such cases, the Collège international de philosophie and the Parlement international des écrivains and argue that these represent an alternative mode of institutionalisation. These institutions seek to destabilise other institutions as well as themselves. Looking closely at the institutions that Derrida founded, we see three common characteristics emerge. These institutions are anti-hegemonic, self-reflexive and international. I then connect these to Derrida's thought, offering a reading of the undecidable, which brings forth the importance of conventions in the decision. Finally, I demonstrate that the three shared characteristics of Derrida's institutions form part of an effort to open up space for the possibility of alterity. Through this, and beyond a distinction between theory/practice, we come to see Derrida's institutional engagements as an active form of critique, both of other institutions and themselves.","PeriodicalId":42836,"journal":{"name":"Derrida Today","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2021-11-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46492526","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}
Some scholars claim that in Derrida's Of Grammatology the author presents China and its script as essentially and radically Other when compared to the West. In this paper, I argue that Derrida's discussion of Leibniz, his critique of the notions of ‘phonetic writing’ and ‘ideograph’, and the distinction he makes between ‘logocentrism’ and ‘phonocentrism’, enables him to deconstruct an essentialist conception of China or Chinese writing. However, far from conceiving China in a relativist or ethnocentric manner, Derrida also pays attention to the historicity of the encounter between European philosophy and China. In order to underline the transcultural potential of deconstruction, I discuss the concept of ‘crypt’ in light of the Chinese translation of the word ‘ différance’. This allows me to reinterpret what I claim to be Derrida's problematic reference to Chinese writing as ‘outside of all logocentrism’ from the point of view of his philosophy of translation. 1
{"title":"A Chinese Word by Jacques Derrida","authors":"Héctor G. Castaño","doi":"10.3366/drt.2021.0263","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3366/drt.2021.0263","url":null,"abstract":"Some scholars claim that in Derrida's Of Grammatology the author presents China and its script as essentially and radically Other when compared to the West. In this paper, I argue that Derrida's discussion of Leibniz, his critique of the notions of ‘phonetic writing’ and ‘ideograph’, and the distinction he makes between ‘logocentrism’ and ‘phonocentrism’, enables him to deconstruct an essentialist conception of China or Chinese writing. However, far from conceiving China in a relativist or ethnocentric manner, Derrida also pays attention to the historicity of the encounter between European philosophy and China. In order to underline the transcultural potential of deconstruction, I discuss the concept of ‘crypt’ in light of the Chinese translation of the word ‘ différance’. This allows me to reinterpret what I claim to be Derrida's problematic reference to Chinese writing as ‘outside of all logocentrism’ from the point of view of his philosophy of translation. 1","PeriodicalId":42836,"journal":{"name":"Derrida Today","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2021-11-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47219062","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 his recently published seminar Life Death (1975–76), Derrida engages in a close reading of Heidegger's refutation of the biologistic interpretation of Nietzsche. Derrida explains that, building on his interpretation of Nietzsche as the peak of metaphysics, Heidegger wishes to rescue the latter's metaphysical discourse from its biologizing character. In this article, I argue that Derrida's reading centres on the ontological regionalism undergirding Heidegger's refutation. To develop this argument, I test the following three hypotheses. First, I show that the later exploration offered in Life Death draws on the schematic reading of Heidegger's question of being provided in Of Grammatology (1967). Second, I explain that, for Derrida, through his refutation of Nietzsche's supposed biologism, Heidegger reaffirms ontological regionalism in order to secure the whole interpretative system that interweaves together his reading of Nietzsche and Western metaphysics and his thinking of being. Finally, I highlight Derrida's emphasis on the relentlessness of Heidegger's denunciation of biologism. I demonstrate that, for Derrida, this can be explained as biology, which is a discourse on life and nature that since its beginnings touches on the blind point of regionalism.
{"title":"Biologists also do Literature: Derrida, Heidegger, and the Danger of Scientism","authors":"M. Senatore","doi":"10.3366/drt.2021.0266","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3366/drt.2021.0266","url":null,"abstract":"In his recently published seminar Life Death (1975–76), Derrida engages in a close reading of Heidegger's refutation of the biologistic interpretation of Nietzsche. Derrida explains that, building on his interpretation of Nietzsche as the peak of metaphysics, Heidegger wishes to rescue the latter's metaphysical discourse from its biologizing character. In this article, I argue that Derrida's reading centres on the ontological regionalism undergirding Heidegger's refutation. To develop this argument, I test the following three hypotheses. First, I show that the later exploration offered in Life Death draws on the schematic reading of Heidegger's question of being provided in Of Grammatology (1967). Second, I explain that, for Derrida, through his refutation of Nietzsche's supposed biologism, Heidegger reaffirms ontological regionalism in order to secure the whole interpretative system that interweaves together his reading of Nietzsche and Western metaphysics and his thinking of being. Finally, I highlight Derrida's emphasis on the relentlessness of Heidegger's denunciation of biologism. I demonstrate that, for Derrida, this can be explained as biology, which is a discourse on life and nature that since its beginnings touches on the blind point of regionalism.","PeriodicalId":42836,"journal":{"name":"Derrida Today","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2021-11-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"49526945","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 takes up the blurred distinction between performative and constative utterances in an effort to develop a quotidian and idiomatic conception of prayer as perjurious testimony. Focusing on a passage in the recently published Le parjure et le pardon seminars, I argue that a quotidian and idiomatic conception of prayer is one whose function interminably oscillates between constative and performative, rendering the distinction between these two uses of language indiscernible. This oscillation plays not to prayer's detriment, but instead serves as the animating force behind prayer and the impossible ethical desire prayer expresses. The impossibility of a prayer whose desire is rendered perjurious by the state of affairs from which it emerges opens onto a number of political, ethical, and theological concerns that the second half of the paper addresses. By reading Simone Weil's reflections on the ‘Our Father’ in light of Derrida's considerations above, I argue that prayer's impossibility is a condition of possibility for its ability to produce real effects in the world it betrays.
{"title":"An Impossible Prayer: Ethics between Performative and Constative","authors":"Eric Aldieri","doi":"10.3366/drt.2021.0262","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3366/drt.2021.0262","url":null,"abstract":"This article takes up the blurred distinction between performative and constative utterances in an effort to develop a quotidian and idiomatic conception of prayer as perjurious testimony. Focusing on a passage in the recently published Le parjure et le pardon seminars, I argue that a quotidian and idiomatic conception of prayer is one whose function interminably oscillates between constative and performative, rendering the distinction between these two uses of language indiscernible. This oscillation plays not to prayer's detriment, but instead serves as the animating force behind prayer and the impossible ethical desire prayer expresses. The impossibility of a prayer whose desire is rendered perjurious by the state of affairs from which it emerges opens onto a number of political, ethical, and theological concerns that the second half of the paper addresses. By reading Simone Weil's reflections on the ‘Our Father’ in light of Derrida's considerations above, I argue that prayer's impossibility is a condition of possibility for its ability to produce real effects in the world it betrays.","PeriodicalId":42836,"journal":{"name":"Derrida Today","volume":"36 S152","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2021-11-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"41256367","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}
{"title":"Stella Gaon (2019), The Lucid Vigil: Deconstruction, Desire and the Politics of Critique","authors":"Ryan A. Gustafson","doi":"10.3366/drt.2021.0267","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3366/drt.2021.0267","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":42836,"journal":{"name":"Derrida Today","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2021-11-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46552798","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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