What is at play in play? What does it mean to take play seriously? Or, in the case of Sigmund Freud, what does it means to take jokes seriously? This article argues that Sarah Kofman's reading of Jokes and Their Relation to the Unconscious, in her 1986 book Pourquoi rit-on? Freud et le mot d'esprit, provides us with one of the most serious and playful responses to these questions. It claims that a kind of Oedipal play leads Kofman to analyse Freud's book, to put it — and therefore him — on the couch.
{"title":"Freud's Jewish Jokes: The Case of Jokes and Their Relation to the Unconscious","authors":"Elizabeth Rottenberg","doi":"10.3366/PARA.2021.0357","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3366/PARA.2021.0357","url":null,"abstract":"What is at play in play? What does it mean to take play seriously? Or, in the case of Sigmund Freud, what does it means to take jokes seriously? This article argues that Sarah Kofman's reading of Jokes and Their Relation to the Unconscious, in her 1986 book Pourquoi rit-on? Freud et le mot d'esprit, provides us with one of the most serious and playful responses to these questions. It claims that a kind of Oedipal play leads Kofman to analyse Freud's book, to put it — and therefore him — on the couch.","PeriodicalId":44142,"journal":{"name":"PARAGRAPH","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2021-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48783507","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Since Sarah Kofman's death in 1994, many critics have investigated her friendship with Jacques Derrida, and have tried to make sense of its striking dissymmetry. Contrary to those merely deeming Kofman ‘an orthodox Derridean’ (Alice Jardine), thus ascribing to her the unrewarding role of the disciple, Penelope Deutscher and more recently Ginette Michaud, among others, have endeavoured to interpret Derrida's odd silences and omissions regarding Kofman's work in a more subtle manner. Drawing on these readings, this article questions the erasure of ‘Sarah Kofman’ from Derrida's oeuvre by comparing it to the paradoxical effacement of ‘woman’ in the philosopher's texts, arguing that ‘Sarah Kofman’ both as a proper name and as a corpus figures the ‘woman’ missing from Derrida's work. Drawing on the work of feminist critics like Jardine, Miller and Spivak, the article retraces the ambiguous function of ‘woman’ in Derrida's writing, before stressing parallels between ‘Sarah Kofman’ and the Derridean ‘woman’.
{"title":"Derrida's Missing Woman","authors":"Charlotte Thevenet","doi":"10.3366/PARA.2021.0354","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3366/PARA.2021.0354","url":null,"abstract":"Since Sarah Kofman's death in 1994, many critics have investigated her friendship with Jacques Derrida, and have tried to make sense of its striking dissymmetry. Contrary to those merely deeming Kofman ‘an orthodox Derridean’ (Alice Jardine), thus ascribing to her the unrewarding role of the disciple, Penelope Deutscher and more recently Ginette Michaud, among others, have endeavoured to interpret Derrida's odd silences and omissions regarding Kofman's work in a more subtle manner. Drawing on these readings, this article questions the erasure of ‘Sarah Kofman’ from Derrida's oeuvre by comparing it to the paradoxical effacement of ‘woman’ in the philosopher's texts, arguing that ‘Sarah Kofman’ both as a proper name and as a corpus figures the ‘woman’ missing from Derrida's work. Drawing on the work of feminist critics like Jardine, Miller and Spivak, the article retraces the ambiguous function of ‘woman’ in Derrida's writing, before stressing parallels between ‘Sarah Kofman’ and the Derridean ‘woman’.","PeriodicalId":44142,"journal":{"name":"PARAGRAPH","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2021-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44610573","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
This article examines the relationship that Jacques Derrida and Sarah Kofman developed throughout their lifetimes, both as close friends and as philosophers who shared many common research interests. In his tribute to Sarah Kofman, published in Les Cahiers du Grif in 1997, Derrida stated that ‘These interests and exercises go far beyond the limits of a short narrative, indeed of a terminable analysis’, thus challenging the reader to delve into these ‘elliptical greetings’. The numerous interactions present in Kofman's and Derrida's respective bodies of work are not without conflicts nor dissymmetry, and their often oblique modes of acknowledgement are far from any ‘balance’ on either side. Revisiting some of the différends among two great thinkers of différance, this article highlights the Derridean logic of gift and debt at work between them. Focusing on the posthumous tribute Derrida pays to his friend (left untitled, which is itself a revealing gesture), one can sense that there is much at stake in that piece that touches on the major question of forgiveness and the affirmation of survie or living on, thus setting a scene of reading where Derrida's debt towards Kofman turns out to be more telling than one may have expected.
本文考察了雅克·德里达和莎拉·科夫曼在他们的一生中发展起来的关系,他们既是亲密的朋友,也是有着许多共同研究兴趣的哲学家。德里达在1997年发表于《格里夫日记》(Les Cahiers du Grif)上的对莎拉·科夫曼(Sarah kaufman)的致敬中说,“这些兴趣和练习远远超出了简短叙述的范围,实际上超出了可终止分析的范围”,从而挑战读者深入研究这些“隐晦的问候”。在科夫曼和德里达各自的作品中,无数的互动并非没有冲突,也不是不对称的,他们经常以倾斜的方式承认,这与任何一方的“平衡”相距甚远。本文回顾了两位伟大的异质交换思想家之间的一些异质交换,强调了他们之间的礼物和债务的德里德里逻辑。专注于德里达对他的朋友的死后致敬(没有标题,这本身就是一种揭示的姿态),人们可以感觉到,在那篇文章中,有很多利害攸关的问题,涉及宽恕和对生存或生活的肯定,从而设置了一个阅读场景,德里达对科夫曼的债务比人们预期的更有意义。
{"title":"Reading Derrida Reading Kofman","authors":"G. Michaud","doi":"10.3366/PARA.2021.0353","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3366/PARA.2021.0353","url":null,"abstract":"This article examines the relationship that Jacques Derrida and Sarah Kofman developed throughout their lifetimes, both as close friends and as philosophers who shared many common research interests. In his tribute to Sarah Kofman, published in Les Cahiers du Grif in 1997, Derrida stated that ‘These interests and exercises go far beyond the limits of a short narrative, indeed of a terminable analysis’, thus challenging the reader to delve into these ‘elliptical greetings’. The numerous interactions present in Kofman's and Derrida's respective bodies of work are not without conflicts nor dissymmetry, and their often oblique modes of acknowledgement are far from any ‘balance’ on either side. Revisiting some of the différends among two great thinkers of différance, this article highlights the Derridean logic of gift and debt at work between them. Focusing on the posthumous tribute Derrida pays to his friend (left untitled, which is itself a revealing gesture), one can sense that there is much at stake in that piece that touches on the major question of forgiveness and the affirmation of survie or living on, thus setting a scene of reading where Derrida's debt towards Kofman turns out to be more telling than one may have expected.","PeriodicalId":44142,"journal":{"name":"PARAGRAPH","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2021-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44026921","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
One of a handful of texts written by Sarah Kofman in the interim between the publication of her Explosion (1992, 1993), a 700-page analysis of Ecce Homo, and her sudden death in 1994, ‘And Yet It Q...
{"title":"And Yet It Quakes! (Nietzsche and Voltaire)","authors":"Sarah Kofman","doi":"10.3366/PARA.2021.0358","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3366/PARA.2021.0358","url":null,"abstract":"One of a handful of texts written by Sarah Kofman in the interim between the publication of her Explosion (1992, 1993), a 700-page analysis of Ecce Homo, and her sudden death in 1994, ‘And Yet It Q...","PeriodicalId":44142,"journal":{"name":"PARAGRAPH","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2021-02-10","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45596290","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Mindful that philosophy is for Kofman always sublated (releve) by literature and psychoanalysis, this essay examines Kofman's rarely discussed text ‘Conversions: The Merchant of Venice under the Si...
{"title":"Of Metals and Men: Kofman, Conversion and The Merchant of Venice","authors":"D. Large","doi":"10.3366/PARA.2021.0352","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3366/PARA.2021.0352","url":null,"abstract":"Mindful that philosophy is for Kofman always sublated (releve) by literature and psychoanalysis, this essay examines Kofman's rarely discussed text ‘Conversions: The Merchant of Venice under the Si...","PeriodicalId":44142,"journal":{"name":"PARAGRAPH","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2021-02-10","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45248565","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
This article considers Sarah Kofman's interpretation of Moliere's Dom Juan in ‘The art of not paying one's debts’. It argues that this neglected text addresses important questions of moral debt and...
{"title":"Kofman's Affirmative Creation: Moral Law, Dom Juan and the Limits of Maternal Debt","authors":"Cillian Ó Fathaigh","doi":"10.3366/PARA.2021.0351","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3366/PARA.2021.0351","url":null,"abstract":"This article considers Sarah Kofman's interpretation of Moliere's Dom Juan in ‘The art of not paying one's debts’. It argues that this neglected text addresses important questions of moral debt and...","PeriodicalId":44142,"journal":{"name":"PARAGRAPH","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2021-02-10","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44601749","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
A pivotal fusion of philosophy and life-writing, Sarah Kofman's Comment s'en sortir ? (1983) concludes with a highly experimental essay that uses medieval language as a means of recalling traumatic...
{"title":"The Margins of a Nightmare","authors":"Joseph R. Johnson","doi":"10.3366/PARA.2021.0356","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3366/PARA.2021.0356","url":null,"abstract":"A pivotal fusion of philosophy and life-writing, Sarah Kofman's Comment s'en sortir ? (1983) concludes with a highly experimental essay that uses medieval language as a means of recalling traumatic...","PeriodicalId":44142,"journal":{"name":"PARAGRAPH","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2021-02-10","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47463783","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Gaston Bachelard distinguishes the radical novelty and newness of the imagination from pre-existing sensory impressions (memory, perception). In this article, I explore Bachelard's connections between time, the imagined image and poetic form, and I consider their implications for the cinema. Concentrating my analysis on Ildikó Enyedi's Testről és lélekről/ On Body and Soul (2017) — a film that alternates between doubled worlds, depictions of human and animal life — I draw out the temporality and the diversity of Bachelard's imagined images. Bringing Bachelard's instant, vertical time and the crystalline to bear on Enyedi's film, I argue that, under the pretext of sleep, rest and dreaming, On Body and Soul engages the temporality and attentiveness of the Bachelardian imagination, together with its poetic effects.
{"title":"Sleeping away the Factory, Healing with Time: Gaston Bachelard, the Poetic Imagination and Testről és lélekről/ On Body and Soul (2017)","authors":"Saige Walton","doi":"10.3366/para.2020.0345","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.3366/para.2020.0345","url":null,"abstract":"Gaston Bachelard distinguishes the radical novelty and newness of the imagination from pre-existing sensory impressions (memory, perception). In this article, I explore Bachelard's connections between time, the imagined image and poetic form, and I consider their implications for the cinema. Concentrating my analysis on Ildikó Enyedi's Testről és lélekről/ On Body and Soul (2017) — a film that alternates between doubled worlds, depictions of human and animal life — I draw out the temporality and the diversity of Bachelard's imagined images. Bringing Bachelard's instant, vertical time and the crystalline to bear on Enyedi's film, I argue that, under the pretext of sleep, rest and dreaming, On Body and Soul engages the temporality and attentiveness of the Bachelardian imagination, together with its poetic effects.","PeriodicalId":44142,"journal":{"name":"PARAGRAPH","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2020-11-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46557831","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}