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From the Author
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
The original interview, of which this is an edited transcript, took place in Laguna Beach over two days in April 1989. Read the first page
Concordance
Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Index | Back Cover
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Customer Reviews
This book is arranged into chapters, each featuring a long essay on one writer. Generally these writers are from the (post)modernist, European side of the tracks - Kafka, Joyce, Mallarme - but also include more traditional greats such as Rousseau (regarding his "Confessions") and Shakespeare (on "Romeo and Juliet"). Be warned, however: even if you enjoy these writers, Derrida can be an impenetrable writer if you are new to him, for both his method and his style lead him to be what some regard as obscure (while for others his verbal play is intoxicating). That said, there is also a long interview with Derrida at the beginning of the book (as well as an introduction which goes over the central premises of Derrida's thought on writing and literature) which highlight and explain certain key topics and words. These include deconstruction, differance, the supplement and iterability. Typically for Derrida, the interview is little easier to understand than the writtem texts - quite how he managed to speak in such lengthy, complex sentences I'll never know.
These book is essentially for literary students, or those studying Derrida. As said above, even for fans of the writers mentioned above, this book would be very hard going for people not already someway inducted into the methodology (though Derrida would denounce that word) of deconstruction (he'd denounce that one too). But if you seek a book where Derrida investigates, critiques, deconstructs and generally sets forth upon literature, this is the best of its kind.
This is not the first book by or about Jacques Derrida that I have tried to read. An interview, "This Strange Institution Called Literature" (pp. 33-75) establishes that it is possible for the editor, Derek Attridge, and J.D. to talk to each other about literature and philosophy, though few people might be aware of what J.D. means by "Anamnesis would be risky here, because I'd like to escape my own stereotypes." (p. 34). Forgetting about Nam (Nam amnesia?) might be risky for me, because I have so many things that I always consider Namlike in their stupidity to remind me, but J.D. was actually saying that recollecting his past would be risky. Anyone who thinks ought to be able to escape his prior conditions or convictions, and it's much easier if no one remembers what they are.
There are only a few mentions of Nietzsche in this book, and the index says they are on pages 9, 26n, 34, 37, 39, 81, 287, 293, 326n, but I say they are on pp. 9, 26n, 35, 37, etc. and also in the title of the essay, "Rhetoric of Persuasion (Nietzsche)" by Paul de Man, and its conclusion: "This by no means resolves the problem of the relationship between literature and philosophy in Nietzsche, but it at least establishes a somewhat more reliable point of `reference' from which to ask the question." (p. 327).
There is a chapter of this book on "Before the Law" by Kafka. In addition to thoroughly explaining everything in that short work, there are a number of suggestions, like "Under these conditions literature can play the law, repeating it while diverting or circumventing it." (p. 216). Those who are not familiar with Kafka might underestimate how much this book attempts to make the law seem less practical than Chapter 9 of THE TRIAL. "This entire chapter is a prodigious scene of Talmudic exegesis, concerning `Before the Law,' between the priest and K. It would take hours to study the grain of it, its ins and outs." (p. 217). Then J.D. offers an explanation, but then starts talking about Prague and "my officially appointed lawyer told me: . . . `Don't take this too tragically, live it as a literary experience.' And when I said that I had never seen the drugs that were supposed to have been discovered in my suitcase before the customs officers themselves saw them, the prosecutor replied: `That's what all drug traffickers say.'" (p. 218). The priest is called, "a kind of Saint Paul, the Paul of the Epistle to the Romans who speaks according to the law, of the law and against the law." (p. 219). Closer to the end, "'You are the prison chaplain,' said K." (p. 220).
Chapter 10, "From Shibboleth for Paul Celan" (pp. 370-413) is dated Seattle, 1984. Much of the discussion is of the German words used in Celan's poems. My favorite first line is of the poem, IN EINS, "Dreizehnter Feber. Im Herzmund" which is translated: "In One, Thirteenth of February. In the heart's mouth" (p. 397). It appears again on page 399, with the second line, and a discussion of "Shibboleth, this word I have called Hebrew, is found, as you know, in a whole family of languages: Phoenician, Judaeo-Aramaic, Syriac. It is traversed by a multiplicity of meanings: river, stream, ear of grain, olive-twig. But beyond these meanings, it acquired the value of a password."
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