Thoughtprints Anne E. Berger andMarta Segarra I admit to it in the name of autobiography and in order to confide in you the following: [...] I have a particularly animalist perception and interpretation of what I do, think, write, live, ...

Hélène Cixous is more than an influential theorist. She is also a groundbreaking author and playwright. Combining an idiosyncratic mix of autobiographical and fictional narrative with a host of philosophical and poetic observations, Cixous's writing matches the kaleidoscopic nature of her thought, offering new ways of conceptualizing sex, relationships, identity, and the self, among other topics. Yet, as Jacques Derrida once observed, a "profound misunderstanding" hangs over the accomplishments of Cixous, with many believing the intellectual excelled only at theoretical exploration. (...) Providing a truly liberal selection of her writings from throughout her career, Marta Segarra rediscovers Cixous's acts of invention for a new generation to enjoy. Divided into thematic concerns, these works fully capture Cixous's genius for merging fiction, theory, and the experience of living. They discuss dreaming in the feminine, Algeria and Germany, love and the other, the animal, Derrida, and the theater. They defy classification, locking literature, philosophy, and psychoanalysis into thrilling new patterns of engagement. Whether readers are familiar with Cixous or are approaching her thought for the first time, all will find fresh perspectives on gender, fiction, drama, philosophy, religion, and the postcolonial. (shrink)

Demenageries, Thinking (of) Animals after Derrida is a collection of essays on animality following Jacques Derrida's work. The Western philosophical tradition separated animals from men by excluding the former from everything that was considered “proper to man”: laughing, suffering, mourning, and above all, thinking. The “animal” has traditionally been considered the absolute Other of humans. This radical otherness has served as the rationale for the domination, exploitation and slaughter of animals. What Derrida called “la pensée de l'animal” (which means both (...) thinking concerning the animal and “animal thinking”) may help us understand differently such apparently human features as language, thought and writing. It may also help us think anew about such highly philosophical concerns as differences, otherness, the end(s) of history and the world at large. Thanks to the ethical and epistemological crisis of Western humanism, “animality” has become an almost fashionable topic. However,Demenageries is the first collection to take Derrida's thinking on animal thinking as a starting point, a way of reflecting not only on animals but starting from them, in order to address a variety of issues from a vast range of theoretical perspectives: philosophy, literature, cultural theory, anthropology, ethics, politics, religion, feminism, postcolonialism and, of course, posthumanism. (shrink)

If we consider the role of psychoanalysis in Hélène Cixous's and Jacques Derrida's writing, we must assume that both differ considerably. Derrida's work, from its beginning, includes several essays on psychoanalysis. Cixous, faithful to her conception of writing as philosophical fiction, prefers to present the father of psychoanalysis, Sigmund Freud, as a character in many texts, above all in her famous Portrait of Dora, but also in others like OR, Les lettres de mon père. I have chosen this book by (...) Cixous for my analysis, since, in my view, OR proposes a performative way of thinking about ‘life death’ which Derrida conceptualizes in several of his books. (shrink)

Differences in Common engages in the ongoing debate on ‘community’ focusing on its philosophical and political aspects through a gendered perspective. It explores the subversive and enriching potential of the concept of community, as seen from the perspective of heterogeneity and distance, and not from homogeneity and fused adhesions. This theoretical reflection is, in most of the essays included here, based on the analysis of literary and filmic texts, which, due to their irreducible singularity, teach us to think without being (...) tied, or needing to resort, to commonplaces. Philosophers such as Arendt, Blanchot, Foucault, Agamben or Derrida have made seminal reflections on community, often inspired by contemporary historical events and sometimes questioning the term itself. More recently, thinkers like Judith Butler, Gayatri Spivak or Rada Ivekovic—included in this volume are essays by all three—have emphasized the gender bias in the debate, also problematizing the notion of community. Most of the essays gathered in Differences in Common conceive community not as the affirmation of several properties which would unite us to other similar individuals, but as the “expropriation” of ourselves (Esposito), in an intimate diaspora. Community does not fill the gap between subjects but places itself in this gap or void. This conception stresses the subject’s vulnerability, a topic which is also central to this volume. The body of community is thus opened by a “wound” (Cixous) which exposes us to the contagion of otherness. The essays collected here reflect on different topics related to these issues, such as: gender and nation; nationalism, internationalism, transnationalism; nationalism’s naturalization of citizenship and the exclusion of women from citizenship; the violent consequences of a gendered nation on women’s bodies; gendering community; preservation of difference(s) within the community; bodily vulnerability and new politics; community and mourning; community and the politics of memory; fiction, historical truth and (fake) documentary; love, relationality and community; interpretive communities and virtual communities on the Web, among others. Joana Sabadell-Nieto is Professor of Contemporary Spanish Literature (Gender and Feminist Studies) at Hamilton College (USA) and Researcher at the Center for Women and Literature at the University of Barcelona. Marta Segarra is Professor of French and Francophone literature and Gender Studies at the University of Barcelona (Spain), Director of the UNESCO Chair Women, Development and Cultures and co-founder and director of the Center for Women and Literature (2003-2012). (shrink)

¿Qué tenemos en común y qué nos separa de los animales? ¿Somos un animal más? Las humanidades clásicas, basadas en el excepcionalismo humano, han dado paso a las posthumanidades, que incluyen los estudios animales, así como otras perspectivas que desafían la noción tradicional del sujeto humano, como los estudios de género, poscoloniales y decoloniales, la ecocrítica o la teoría queer. Pensarnos en nuestra relación con los animales tiene consecuencias filosóficas en ámbitos como la ciencia, los afectos, el trabajo y el (...) desarrollo de políticas concretas de salud y de alimentación; todas ellas, zonas de contacto entre humanos y animales. Sobre estos encuentros, aunque nunca reparemos en ello, edificamos nuestro mundo. Este ensayo imprescindible aglutina parte de los conocimientos desarrollados hasta ahora por quienes se han acercado a la relación humano-animal, y los vincula con la historia, los movimientos políticos y sociales, las nuevas concepciones del género, de la ciencia y del conocimiento. Los argumentos, contradicciones, contextos e incluso tabúes que acoge este debate interdisciplinar ayudan a imaginar y a matizar unos presupuestos éticos posibles sobre los que replantear nuestra relación con los animales y, en último término, con nosotros mismos. [Resumen del editor]. (shrink)