Deconstruction

"Incurable Haunting: Saluting Michel Deguy"

by Kas Saghafi

Purloining Derrida? Authority, materiality and the right to philosophy in Argentina

by Francis Jervis

This paper examines the prosecution of an Argentine philosophy professor, Horacio Potel, for sharing a number of texts... more This paper examines the prosecution of an Argentine philosophy professor, Horacio Potel, for sharing a number of texts by Jacques Derrida online. By reading his own critique of copyright and the charges brought against him in conjunction with Derrida’s own work, I consider how Potel challenges understandings of authorship, law, and the ethics of copying, and how it has influenced popular discourse on copying. I also examine how his critique of the printed book as technology of transmission, in contrast to the liberatory potential of digital technologies, complicates our understanding of the materiality of cultural forms in resistances to neoliberalism in Argentina. Potel’s project can best be understood, I argue, as the construction of a reading subject whose orientation to the author and text is radically distinct from those seen either in other forms of “piracy” or liberal discourses of “open access” or “fair use.”

Conventions and intentions: Speech Act Theory in an intercultural context

by Gregory Bornmann

Journal of Kibi International University, 4, 199-208. March 1994.

An ideological critique of speech act theory may help us to understand some of the differences that exist between... more An ideological critique of speech act theory may help us to understand some of the differences that exist between American and Japanese communicative contexts. Cross-cultural studies of particular speech acts suggest an ongoing conflict between politeness and sincerity, convention and intention. Convention and intention are logically incompatible, as they can offer conflicting explanations for the same utterance. But as Derrida (1977) demonstrates, determinations of meaning oscillate unstoppably between these two models. The model which is emphasized will vary from context to context, and from culture to culture. We may infer th at the Japanese interpret many speech acts by reference to social conventions, with little regard for sincerity. However , we may also infer that Americans, focusing on intention, often have an idealized and therefore unrealistic view of their own speech behavior due to what Pratt (1986) calls "the ideology of sincerity:'

Josef Fulka: Roland Barthes—od ideologie k fantasmatu (recenze)

by Tomáš Jirsa

Munteanu, D. G. (2011). Nuances of ‘Culture’, ‘Islam’ and ‘Conflict’: A Selective Constructivist Analysis of International Newspaper Discourses in the Year 2008.

by Dinu Munteanu

Presented at the "5th Annual Interdisciplinary Postgraduate Conference, Social Science and Cultural Politics", University of Warwick, March 12th, 2011.

Deconstruction and Psychoanalysis: 'A Problematic Proximity'

by Robert Trumbull

Derrida Today 5.1 (2012)

This essay explores Derrida’s work on repetition in psychoanalysis and what Freud, in Beyond the Pleasure Principle,... more This essay explores Derrida’s work on repetition in psychoanalysis and what Freud, in Beyond the Pleasure Principle, called the ‘compulsion to repeat’. Revising the model of the psyche that had to that point dominated his theory, Freud began in 1920 to ascribe greater significance to experiences of trauma and unpleasure, and to their recurrence in the analytic treatment. This type of repeated repetition ultimately suggested to Freud the existence of a ‘death drive’ antithetical to life. I examine here how Derrida re-reads Beyond in The Post Card, analysing the way uncontrollable effects of repetition repeatedly undo Freud’s efforts to make any progress on what lies beyond the pleasure principle. Another ‘logic’ of repetition, other than the one Freud invokes, inhabits Freud’s text, threatening the fundamental opposition between the life drives and the death drive. But in reading Freud in this way, Derrida himself cannot quite ‘do justice to’ Freud, to the ambivalence at work in Freud’s text. At certain key moments in his reading of Beyond the Pleasure Principle, I show, Derrida seems to restrict an ambiguity in Freud’s thinking around the relation between life and death. What Derrida’s reading makes legible in part, then, is Derrida’s resistance to psychoanalysis, the tension inhabiting Derrida’s dealings with Freud in The Post Card and beyond.

Science and Transcendence: Westphal, Derrida, and Responsibility

by Nathan Kowalsky

published in 'Zygon:  Journal of Religion and Science', March 2012.

A full copy of the paper is available from the author upon request.

On the naive reading, “radical social constructivism” would be the result of “deconstructing” science. Science would... more On the naive reading, “radical social constructivism” would be the result of “deconstructing” science. Science would simply be a contingent construction in accordance with social determinants. However, postmodernism does not necessarily abandon fidelity to the objects of thought. Merold Westphal's Derridean philosophy of religion emphasizes that even theology need not eliminate the transcendence of the divine other. By drawing an analogy between natural and supernatural transcendence, I argue that science is similarly called to responsibility in the encounter with that which lies outside its horizon of expectation. Science's rational autonomy is overcome by the heteronomy of realities that precede it. Understanding species as homeostatic property clusters is an example of nonessentialist, postmodern, and scientific realism. Science is still a vehicle for encountering natural alterity, thus decentering the relativism thought to characterize postmodernism. However, natural science must not attempt to place the whole of being at human disposal if it is to fulfill the potential of Westphal's philosophy of religion.

Die ‚grandiose Relativität‘ – Zur Deutung des Todes der Charite (Apul. met. 8,1-14)

by Matthias Stern

Paper from a seminar on Apuleius' "Metamorphoses" held by Dr. Marcus Beck at the Martin-Luther-University of Halle-Wittenberg in 2010.

Following the research on the tale about Charite‘s death in Apul. met. 8,1-14, one is able to find many and very... more Following the research on the tale about Charite‘s death in Apul. met. 8,1-14, one is able to find many and very different interpretations of its message.

In this paper I made use of a rather constructivist approach in interpreting Apuleius and developed the thesis that the author deliberately confuses his audience and thoroughly refuses to present a message of his tale. Apuleius does so by:
- purposefully loosing the tale‘s connection the rest of the novel,
- s y s t e m a t i c a l l y  establishing discordant or even contradicting pictures of his figures in intra-, extra-, and intertextual ways,
- and also by wittingly undermining the sub-narrator‘s authority.

So, if one is allowed to modify a statement of Fuhrmann‘s about Tacitus, one can allude to the story of Charite‘s death as a tale of ‚profuse relativity‘.

"Phantasmaphotography"

by Kas Saghafi

"The Ghost of Jacques Derrida"

by Kas Saghafi

"Salut-ations"

by Kas Saghafi

"'A Certain Spirit of a Certain Marx': Blanchot's Revolutionary Return in Specters of Marx"

by Kas Saghafi

Abstract of my PhD dissertation

by Natali Bogosyan Esayan

INVENTION OF LAW AS EXAMPLE IN THE DERRIDA-EVENT

by Enis Memisoglu

article soon to be published Darkmatter Online Journal

THE POSITION OF THE SUBLIME IN THE DERRIDEAN CONCEPTION OF UNDECONSTRUCTIBLE LAW

by Enis Memisoglu

Paper presented in the 2. Derrida Today Conference

Ecocriticism: Review of 2010

by Greg Garrard

Draft essay for 'The Year's Work in Critical and Cultural Theory'.

In my last annual roundup for YWCCT, I review:
1. Timothy Morton's 'The Ecological Thought', Stacy Alaimo's... more In my last annual roundup for YWCCT, I review:
1. Timothy Morton's 'The Ecological Thought', Stacy Alaimo's 'Bodily Natures' and John Parham's 'Green Man Hopkins'.
2. A whole bunch of eco-poco collections and monographs.
3. Ecofeminism and queer ecology, including Greta Gaard, Carol Adams and the Sandilands and Erickson anthology.
4. The Oxford Literary Review selection of deconstructive ecocriticism (including Morton and Timothy Clark). I hope people find it useful.

Popes through the Looking-glass, or «Ceci n’est pas un Pape», «Reti Medievali Rivista», 13 (2012), 1

by Tommaso di Carpegna Falconieri

This paper introduces Clement III (Wibert of Ravenna) in the context of the general phenomenon of the antipopes, a... more This paper introduces Clement III (Wibert of Ravenna) in the context of the general phenomenon of the antipopes, a vast and fundamentally medieval subject. The theme can be approached in two substantially different ways: from the well-established, official position, which condemns the antipopes as schismatics and subverters of the divine order; or from the perspective of an observer who attempts to examine the phenomenon from the inside. This study opts for the latter vantage point, as do the three papers that it introduces. In them, the antipopes take shape as historical personages who believed in their own legitimacy as popes, who often had large followings, and who received their mark of infamy—that is, the title of antipope—because they were defeated by their opponents.

With the first of the two methods (the official, well-established one), history is interpreted in reverse, giving events after-the-fact justifications. With the second analytical strategy, the interpreter instead views history in the historical present and tries to comprehend how events unfolded within the dynamics of the myriad possibilities, changes, and inversions of course that life presents. In this sense, the essays in this collection look not at «anti-popes» but rather at «other-popes» reflected in the mirrors of their adversaries—adversaries who won their respective struggles and were thus able to transmit their own visions of events as the sole vehicles of truth. In the same spirit, these essays consider not antipopes but rather individuals who, like the pipe in Magritte’s painting, come down to us not in their authentic dimension but rather through the filters of representation.

Review of: Emmanuel Rubio, Towards a Cathartic Architecture

by Denis Bocquet

Published in: Il Giornale dell'arcbitettura, 104, April 2012, p.28

A review of: Vers une architecture cathartique (1945-2011) by Emmanuel Rubio, Paris, Donner Lieu, 2011, 325p.
more A review of: Vers une architecture cathartique (1945-2011) by Emmanuel Rubio, Paris, Donner Lieu, 2011, 325p.

Key words:

Frank Gehry, Michael Graves, James Wines, brutalism, World War II, Cold War, Hiroshima, Kenzo Tange, Arata Isozaki, Charles Moore, Ring, Vienna, Wien, Biedermaier, Coop Himmelb(l)au, Dresden, Berlin, Behnisch, Le Corbusier, London, brutalismo, brutalista, Eisenman, Foster, Giulio Romano, Mantova, Mantoue, teoria dell'architettura, architecture theory, théorie

Deconstructive Religious Education

by Khosrow Bagheri Noaparast

Khosrow Bagheri Noaparast & Zohreh Khosravi. Deconstructive Religious Education. Journal: Religious Education. Volume 106, Issue 1, January 2011, pages 82-104.

The article argues that even though deconstruction has indications for action in religious education, the action... more The article argues that even though deconstruction has indications for action in religious education, the action should be subordinated to the notion of deconstruction as event. Three strategies can be used in the curriculum of religious education inspired by deconstruction. The first strategy is to emphasize the spirit of religion as different from the corpus of rituals. The second strategy concentrates on the common core of religions as a basis for translatability among different religions. Finally, the third strategy deals with providing compatibility between faith and knowledge.

Dos alegorías femeninas del texto postmoderno

by Miriam Fernández-Santiago