Friday, November 9, 2007

Derrida, and the sadness of not doing justice

Voulais prendre en compte: wanting to do justice to the text (and not work, and not author) requires "forms" that allow themselves to be "affected" (se laissent en... affecter), moved, touched, by the event (l’événement) of the text. It would be sad not to do this justice, not to demonstrate justice, by not demonstrating differently, demonstrating in another way, demonstrating the otherness in every way, demonstrating the other, by reducing justice to what demonstrably resists otherness and difference:

Interviewer: Of Spirit is taken from a lecture and its style is fairly demonstrative (démonstratif). But your preceding works,, such as Parages or Ulysse gramophone, tend to resemble literary studies of literary texts.
Jacques Derrida: I always try to be as demonstrative as possible. But it is true that the demonstrations are rendered in forms of writing that have their own rules, that are sometimes new, and most often produced and displayed. They are unable to completely satisfy traditional norms [normes traditionnelles], which these texts justifiably interrogate or displace.
Interviewer: Your book on Joyce is all the same a bit disconcerting [Votre livre sur Joyce était tout de même un peu déroutant].
Jacques Derrida: That has to do with Joyce. It would be sad to write in forms that didn't allow themselves to be affected by Joyce's languages, by his inventions, his irony, by the turbulence he introduces in the space of thought or literature. If one wants to do justice to the event called "Joyce," one must write, narrate, demonstrate in a different way [démontrer autrement], and thus risk a formal adventure.

-"Philosopher's Hell," in The Heidegger Controversy

2 comments:

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