Jacques Derrida’s doctoral defense
Around 1957, then, I had registered, as the saying goes, my first thesis topic. I had entitled it The Ideality of the Literary Object. Today this title seems strange. To a lesser degree it seemed so even then, and I will discuss this in a moment. It received the approval of Jean Hyppolite, who was […]
70 years ago: atomic bombing of Hiroshima
☛ LIFE magazine: from the article “When Atom Bomb Struck–Uncensored”, Sept. 29, 1952, p. 19. “Ten minutes after the blast Yoshito Matsushige snapped Hiroshima’s “Walking Dead,” later washed this developed film in a creek near city”. Yoshito Matsushige was a 32 year old cameraman for the Chugoku Newspaper at that time. He was at his […]
Bataille’s “unemployed negativity” as an opening with no issue
If action (“doing”) is –as Hegel says– negativity, the question arises as to whether the negativity of one who has “nothing more to do” disappear or remains in a state of “unemployed negativity.” Personally, I can only decide in one way, being myself precisely this “unemployed negativity” (I would not be able to define myself […]
Giorgio Agamben on gesture
The third stage of action is, they say, that in which they faciunt ‘make’ something: in this, on account of the likeness among agere ‘to act’ and facere ‘to make’ and gerere ‘to carry or carry on,’ a certain error is committed by those who think that it is only one thing. For a person […]
