Derrida: Iterability

This paper contests a point that Jacques Derrida and John Searle actually agree on, within their infamous debate: that a sign must be repeatable. I focus on a situation involving dissent when evaluating this claim.

This monograph uses deconstruction—a philosophical movement originated by Jacques Derrida—to read the most authoritative book in Judaism: the Talmud. Examining deconstruction in comparison with Kant’s and Hegel’s philosophies, the volume argues that the movement opens an innovative debate on Jewish Law. -/- First, the monograph interprets deconstruction within the major streams of continental philosophy; then, it criticizes many aspects of Foucault’s and Agamben’s philosophy, rejecting their notion of law. On these premises, the research delivers a close examination of many fundamental (...) aspects of the Talmud. Consequently, it provides a short history of Rabbinic literature, a history of the dissemination of the Talmud from Babylon to Northern France, and an analysis of Talmudic vocabulary from a deconstructive perspective. Each key concept of the Talmud is analysed according to the deconstructive dialectics between orality and writing. Closing with a comparison between the Talmud and Derrida’s most enigmatic text, Glas, the study argues that deconstruction dismantles the traditional notion of the Talmud to outline a new approach to Jewish Law. -/- Reading the Talmud through deconstruction, this new angle makes the volume an essential resource for students and scholars interested in Jewish studies, continental philosophy, and the Middle East. (shrink)

The sensory dimension of writing, which is never fully neutralised in the process of semiosis, remains aporetic in Derrida’s philosophy. I show how Barthes’ observations on pseudo-writing lead to his understanding of writing as a gesture, opening up post-structuralism to the body as absolutely non-repeatable, as the opposite of semiosis. The examination of Barthes’ account of the relationship between writing and the body leads to an aesthetic of physical responsiveness, which challenges the distinction between work, creator and viewer. In this (...) regard ‘seeing’ can neither be reduced to the infinite decoding of signs nor to an immediate perception, but rather can be understood as the playful contact with signs. Barthes’ notion of writing contributes to overcoming the limits of Derrida’s account of the sensory quality of writing without jeopardiz- ing the philosophical gain of deconstruction. (shrink)

Der Gedanke, der im Folgenden artikuliert und entfaltet werden soll, besagt, dass Sinn und Gedächtnis in einem internen Zusammenhang stehen. Das heißt näherhin: Sinn ist gedächtnishaft, und Gedächtnis ist nur richtig zu verstehen, wenn es von der zeitlichen Tiefenstruktur des Sinns aus expliziert wird. Die Weise, in der dieser Gedanke ausgeführt und begründet werden soll, ist eine systematische Entwicklung in zwei Zügen: Zum einen gilt es, die basale und implizite Gedächtnishaftigkeit des Sinns zu charakterisieren; zum anderen werden Formen des expliziten (...) Gedächtnisses auf dieser Grundlage neu verstanden und als Reflexionsfiguren der Zeitlichkeit des Sinns ausgewiesen. Die Absicht, die ich dabei verfolge, ist eine doppelte: die irreduzible, in der jüngeren Sprachphilosophie auffällig ignorierte Zeitlichkeit des Sinns ins Licht zu setzen; die Bedeutung und den Wert von Formen des Gedächtnisses zu erschließen, die auch Teilen der jüngeren kulturwissenschaftlichen Diskussion als defizient oder irrelevant erscheinen. (shrink)

In Memoires for Paul de Man Derrida acknowledges the urgency, for any rigorous deconstruction, of closely confronting Austin's notion of the performative. This study aims to countersign Derrida' s acknowledgement by elaborating a certain deconstructive tradition of thinking the performativity of the performative and, thus, of retracing the performative back to the modem philosophical tradition of positing. In particular, it focuses on Derrida's thought of the iterability of the performative, as the speech act of self-positing. The chapters investigate Derrida's elaboration (...) of the notion of positing by bringing to light his engagement with a certain French and continental tradition of the Hegelian concepts of recognition and mastery, as they are exposed in the Phenomenology's chapter on self-consciousness. My argument is that Derrida understands positing as always caught up in a struggle for recognition, what he calls war in the infinite and among finite ipseities, as the self's positing itself as such or imposing itself and, thus, as making itself recognized, mastery, ipseity, etc. This positing always admits iterability to the extent that it calls for repetition. It originally allows the movement that replaces and supplements it by granting to it the possibility of repetition. This movement is understood by Derrida as the text of the recognition that the self posits or gives to itself and, therefore, as the text that the self writes or posts to itself. In fact, this text accounts for the slave or the representative of self-positing, for those who have given up the desire for recognition, but also for the other to come, for the absolutely other, for the unconditioned risk of death or non-sense. As I will attempt to demonstrate by following Derrida's reading of the master/slave dialectic and of its tradition, he understands the relation between the master and the slave as the structural relation between positing and iterability. It is from this perspective that I propose looking at Derrida's elaboration of the performative as the speech act of positing, mastery and ipseity. It can be described as the engagement that the self takes with itself, as the act of faith toward the representative, as the appeal for credit and preservation addressed to others. Therefore, as Derrida suggests, it is always threatening or making itself fear by necessarily admitting its enforceability. (shrink)