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 […]

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 […]