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 […]

Voiding the touch: on love and haptic mediation
Imagine: You’re 16. You’re in school. You’re sitting in class. You have a crush on another student — you’ve fallen hard. You can’t stop thinking about them. You suspect the feelings are mutual — but you don’t know. You’re afraid to just come right out and ask, verbally — afraid of the crushing weight of […]

“What We Leave Behind – Jean-Luc Godard Archives”, Stephan Crasneanscki, 2014
☛ Paris Photo 2014: What We Leave Behind – Jean-Luc Godard Archives, “Study 7”, chromogenic color print by Stephan Crasneanscki. Images retrieved from L’Oeil de la Photographie. The manuscript text in the photo is Godard’s reworking of an excerpt –glued bellow– from Jean Anouilh’s Antigone. Here, I reproduce a longer version of the excerpt, as […]

Jacques Derrida 2004-2014: “Is my death possible?”
Is my death possible? Can we understand this question? Can I, myself, pose it? Am I allowed to talk about my death? What does the syntagm “my death” mean? And why this expression “the syntagm ‘my death’”? You will agree that it is better, in this case, to name words or names, that is, to […]