Contra el prejuicio que ve en la deconstrucción a una «enemiga» de las ciencias, este texto pretende exponer cómo la obra de Derrida tuvo siempre presente el conocimiento científico, y más aún, en qué sentido constituye una poderosa perspectiva para su «crítica y rectificación», eminentemente en el ámbito de las ciencias de la vida. Se intenta igualmente mostrar cómo la economía general de la deconstrucción tiene problemas para adecuarse al marco del neo-darwinismo imperante, y cómo una deconstrucción efectiva (...) de la biología actual, urgente y necesaria, deberá contar con las propuestas más «heterodoxas» que en el terreno biológico han ido surgiendo en los últimos cuarenta años, como las de Máximo Sandín o de Eric D. Schneider.  . (shrink)

Cosas tan diversas como el progreso de la mecánica cuántica y la caída del muro de Berlín han precipitado en una crisis a las filosofías materialistas, como el atomismo y el materialismo dialéctico. A la luz de estos hechos, el darwinismo, producto del siglo XIX que se sustenta en una visión materialista de la existencia, revela con mayor claridad sus inconsistencias epistemológicas. Sin embargo, los biólogos todavía no inventan un relato mejor que el propuesto por Darwin. Así, el presente trabajo (...) propone que es en el ámbito de la filosofía de la “deconstrucción” donde el darwinismo puede encontrar un marco epistemológico más acorde con el pensamiento contemporáneo. (shrink)

This volume reflects Derrida's engagement in the late 1970s with French political debates on the teaching of philosophy and the reform of the French university system. While addressing specific contemporary political issues, the essays deal mainly with much broader concerns. With his typical rigor and spark, Derrida investigates the genealogy of several central concepts which any debate about teaching and the university must confront. Thus there are essays on the 'teaching body', both the faculty corps and the strange interplay in (...) the French tradition between the mind and body of the professor; on the question of age in teaching, analyzed through a famous letter of Hegel; on the class, the classroom, and the socio-economic concept of class in education; on language, especially so-called 'natural languages' like French; and on the legacy of the revolutionary tradition, the Estates General, in the university. (shrink)

Completing the translation of Derrida’s monumental work Right to Philosophy (the first part of which has already appeared under the title of Who’s Afraid of Philosophy?), Eyes of the University brings together many of the philosopher’s most important texts on the university and, more broadly, on the languages and institutions of philosophy. In addition to considerations of the implications for literature and philosophy of French becoming a state language, of Descartes’ writing of the Discourse on Method in French, and of (...) Kant’s and Schelling’s philosophies of the university, the volume reflects on the current state of research and teaching in philosophy and on the question of what Derrida calls a “university responsibility.” Examining the political and institutional conditions of philosophy, the essays collected here question the growing tendency to orient research and teaching towards a programmable and profitable end. The volume is therefore invaluable for the light it throws upon an underappreciated aspect of Derrida’s own engagement, both philosophical and political, in struggles against the stifling of philosophical research and teaching. As a founding member of the Research Group on the Teaching of Philosophy and as one of the conveners of the Estates General of Philosophy, Derrida was at the forefront of the struggle to preserve and extend the teaching of philosophy as a distinct discipline, in secondary education and beyond, in the face of conservative government education reforms in France. As one of the founders of the Collège International de Philosophie, he worked to provide a space for research in and around philosophy that was not accepted or legitimated in other institutions. Documenting and reflecting upon these engagements, Eyes of the University brings together some of the most important and incisive of Derrida’s works. (shrink)

"I shall speak of ghost, of flame, and of ashes." These are the first words of Jacques Derrida's lecture on Heidegger. It is again a question of Nazism--of what remains to be thought through of Nazism in general and of Heidegger's Nazism in particular. It is also "politics of spirit" which at the time people thought--they still want to today--to oppose to the inhuman. "Derrida's ruminations should intrigue anyone interested in Post-Structuralism. . . . . This study of Heidegger (...) is a fine example of how Derrida can make readers of philosophical texts notice difficult problems in almost imperceptible details of those texts."--David Hoy, London Review of Books "Will a more important book on Heidegger appear in our time? No, not unless Derrida continues to think and write in his spirit. . . . Let there be no mistake: this is not merely a brilliant book on Heidegger, it is thinking in the grand style."--David Farrell Krell, Research in Phenomenology "The analysis of Heidegger is brilliant, provocative, elusive."--Peter C. Hodgson, Religious Studies Review. (shrink)

This article aims at making a contribution within the framework of the new and renowned interest for Jacques Derrida's political thinking. The main objective is to clarify some specific contributions made to the discussion Derrida holds between phenomenology and structuralism. With this in mind, two central dimensions to think politics, found in the earliest texts of the author, are presented: on the one hand, by the discussion of a traditional definition of philosophy, exemplified here with phenomenology, a construction of a (...) different link between philosophy and politics seems to be possible; on the other, by the questioning of the formalism inherent in structuralism from notions like play and force a structural politicity, thought of as economy of violence, emerges. The methodological assumption that is taken here is that the texts where politics is an explicit subject are not necessarily those from which Jacques Derrida's contributions to think politics must be tracked. For this purpose we are going to narrow down our reading to just three texts: "Introduction to Husserl's Origin of Geometry", "Force and signification" and "Structure, Sign and Play in the Discourse of the Human Sciences".El artículo busca realizar un aporte en el marco del renovado interés por el pensamiento político de Jacques Derrida. El objetivo es precisar ciertas contribuciones en la discusión que Derrida tiene con la fenomenología y el estructuralismo. Para ello se muestran dos dimensiones centrales de los textos tempranos del autor para pensar la política: por una parte, al discutir una definición tradicional de filosofía, ejemplificada aquí con la fenomenología, se posibilita la construcción de otro vínculo entre filosofía y política; por otra parte, al cuestionar el formalismo inherente al estructuralismo desde nociones como juego o fuerza surge una politicidad estructural pensada como economía de la violencia. El presupuesto metodológico del cual partimos es que no necesariamente en los textos donde la política constituye un tema explicito es donde deben rastrearse sus aportes para pensar la política. Para ello, vamos a restringir nuestra lectura a tres textos: "Introducción a El Origen de la Geometría de Husserl" , "Fuerza y Significación" y "La estructura, el signo y el juego en el discurso de las ciencias humanas". (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Jacques Derrida INTERPRETING SIGNATURES (NIETZSCHE/HEIDEGGER): TWO QUESTIONS T1HE first question concerns die name Nietzsche, die second has to do with the concept of totality. Let us begin widi chapters 2 and 3 of Heidegger's Nietzsche — dealing with "The Eternal Recurrence of the Same" and "The Will to Power as Knowledge," respectively. We will be turning especially to the subsection on chaos ["The Concept of Chaos," I, pp. 562-70] (...) and to "The Alleged Biologism of Nietzsche" ["Nietzsches angeblicher Biologismus"]. In view ofme fact mat the same interpretation is regularly at work throughout, the risks involved in choosing diis strategy are, I hope, quite limited. In each instance, a single system of reading is powerfully concentrated and gadiered together. It is directed at gadiering togedier the unity and the uniqueness of Nietzsche's diinking, which, as a fulfilled unity, is itself in a fair way to being the culmination of occidental metaphysics. Nietzsche would be precisely at the crest, or ridge, atop the peak of diis fulfillment. And thus he would be looking at both sides, down both slopes. What about diis unity — diis doubled unity? What is its connection to the name — or rather, the signature — of Nietzsche? Does Heidegger take any account of this question — which others might call biographical, autobiographical, or autographical — of the singularity of a signature ostensibly the proper name of Nietzsche? To put the matter anodier way, if one can glimpse behind Heidegger's reading of Nietzsche the foundations of a general reading of Western metaphysics, men die question Translated by Diane Michelfelder and Richard E. Palmer. 246 Jacques Derrida247 arises: To what extent does this interpretation of metaphysics in its totality and as a whole contain an interpretive decision about die unity or singularity of thinking? And to what extent does this interpretive decision also presuppose a decision about die "biographical," about the proper name, the autobiographical, and about signature — about the politics of signature? ' Heidegger's position on this subject I will indicate first ofall widi a summarizing and simplifying statement, which one could, I hope, demonstrate is not wrong: there is a unity in Nietzschean thought even if it is not that of a system in the classical sense. This unity is also its uniqueness, its singularity. A thesis explicidy advanced by Heidegger is that every great thinker has only one thought. This uniqueness was neither constituted nor threatened, neither gadiered together nor brought about, through a name or proper name — nor by the life of Nietzsche, either normal or insane. This unique unity is something it draws from the unity of Western metaphysics which is gathered together mere at its crest, which one could also compare to the simple unity of a line created by a fold. The result of all this is that biography, autobiography, the scene or the powers of the proper name, of proper names, signatures, and so on, are again accorded minority status, are again given the inessential place diey have always occupied in the history ofmetaphysics. This points to the necessity and place of a questioning which I can only sketch here. Such would be a simplified version of the question. Now let us read Heidegger a little more closely and seek to confirm the strongest coherence of his interpretation or, beyond its coherence, his deepest thought. As a provisional concession to die classical norms of reading, let us take this book at its beginning, or even before its beginning at the beginning ofthe preface. Naturally, diis preface was, like so many odiers, written later. As we know, the book goes back to a series of lectures given between 1936 and 1940, and to some treatises written between 1940 and 1946. One should take most careful note of these dates if one is to bring this interpretation, as a whole and in detail, into connection with the historicopolitical and institutional field of its presentation. The preface, however, dates from 1961. The intention of the two pages in mis case, as almost always, is to justify the publication of this collection by reference to the essential unity ofits totality: "This publication, rethought (nachgedacht) as a whole (als Ganzes) should provide a glimpse ofthe path ofthought... (shrink)

In this series of dialogues, Derrida discusses and elaborates on some of the central themes of his work, such as the problems of genesis, justice, authorship and death. Combining autobiographical reflection with philosophical enquiry, Derrida illuminates the ideas that have characterized his thought from its beginning to the present day. If there is one feature that links these contributions, it is the theme of singularity - the uniqueness of the individual, the resistance of existence to philosophy, the temporality of the (...) singular and exceptional moment, and the problem of exemplarity. The second half of this book contains an essay by Maurizio Ferraris, in which he explores the questions of indication, time and the inscription of the transcendental in the empirical. A work of outstanding philosophy and scholarship, the essay is developed in close proximity to Derrida and in dialogue with figures such as Plato, Aristotle, Plotinus, Kant, Hegel and Heidegger. It thereby provides a useful introduction to the philosophy of one of Italy's most prominent philosophers as well as an excellent complement to Derrida's own ideas. A Taste for the Secret consists of material that has never before appeared in English. It will be of interest to second-year undergraduates, graduate students and academics in philosophy, modern languages, literature, literary theory and the humanities generally. (shrink)

Linguists are becoming more and more interested in the genealogy of linguistics. And in reconstituting the history or prehistory of their science, they are discovering numerous ancestors, sometimes with a certain astonished recognition. Interest in the origin of linguistics is awakened when the problems of the origin of language cease to be proscribed and when a certain geneticism—or a certain generativism—comes back into its own. One could show that this is not a chance encounter. This historical activity is no longer (...) elaborated solely at the margins of scientific practice, and its results are already being felt. In particular, we are no longer at the stage of the prejudice according to which linguistics as a science was born of a single "epistemological break"—a concept, called Bachelardian, much used or abused today—and of a break occurring in our immediate vicinity. We no longer think, as does Maurice Grammont, that "everything prior to the nineteenth century, which is not yet linguistics, can be expedited in several lines."1 Noam Chomsky, in an article announcing his Cartesian Linguistics, which presents in its major lines the concept of "generative grammar," states: "My aim here is not to justify the interest of this investigation, nor to describe summarily its procedure, but instead to underline that by a curious detour it takes us back to a tradition of ancient thought, rather than constituting a new departure or a radical innovation in the domain of linguistics and psychology."2If we are to set ourselves down in the space of this "curious detour," we could not help encountering the "linguistics" of Jean-Jacques Rousseau. We would have to ask ourselves, then, in what ways Rousseau's reflections on the sign, on language, on the origin of languages, on the relations between speech and writing, and so on announce what we are so often tempted to consider as the very modernity of linguistic science, that is, modernity as linguistic science, since so many other "human sciences" refer to linguistics as their particular model. And we are all the more encouraged to practice this detour in that Chomsky's major references, in Cartesian Linguistics, are to the Logi cand General and Reasoned Grammar of Port-Royal, works that Rousseau knew well and held in high esteem.3 For example, on several occasions Rousseau cites Duclos' commentary on the General and Reasoned Grammar. The Essay on the Origin of Languages even closes with one of these citations. Thus Rousseau acknowledges his debt.1. Maurice Grammont, cited by Noam Chomsky, Cartesian Linguistics , p. 1.2. Chomsky, "De quelques constantes de la théory linguistique," Diogène, no. 51 ; my italics. See also Chomsky, Current Issues in Linguistic Theory , p.15 ff. There is an analogous gesture in Jakobson, who refers not only to Peirce and, as does Chomsky, to Humboldt but also to John of Salisbury, to the Stoics, and to Plato's Cratylus: see Jakobson, "A la recherche de l'essence du langage," Diogène, no. 51 .3. "I began with some book of philosophy, like the Port-Royal Logic, Locke's Essay, Malebranch, Leibniz, Descartes, etc." .Jacques Derrida, professor of the history of philosophy at the Ècole Normale Supérieure in Paris, is the author of, among other works, Writing and Difference, Of Grammatology, and Marges de la philosophie, from which the present essay is taken. His previous contribution to Critical Inquiry, "The Law of Genre," appeared in the Autumn 1980 issue. Alan Bass, a psychoanalyst, has published essays on deconstruction and psychoanalytic theory and practice. (shrink)

Until relatively recently, Jacques Derrida was seen by many as nothing more than the high priest of Deconstruction, by turns stimulating and fascinating, yet always somewhat disengaged from the central political questions of our time. Or so it seemed. Derrida's "political turn," marked especially by the appearance of Specters of Marx, has surprised some and delighted others. In The Politics of Friendship Derrida renews and enriches this orientation through an examination of the political history of the idea of friendship pursued (...) down the ages. Derrida's thoughts are haunted throughout the book by the strange and provocative address attributed to Aristotle, "my friends, there is no friend" and its inversions by later philosophers such as Montaigne, Kant, Nietzsche, Schmitt and Blanchot. The exploration allows Derrida to recall and restage the ways in which all the oppositional couples of Western philosophy and political thought--friendship and enmity, private and public life--have become madly and dangerously unstable. At the same time he dissects genealogy itself, the familiar and male-centered notion of fraternity and the virile virtue whose authority has gone unquestioned in our culture of friendship and our models of democracy. The future of the political, for Derrida, becomes the future of friends, the invention of a radically new friendship, of a deeper and more inclusive democracy. This remarkable book, his most profoundly important for many years, offers a challenging and inspiring vision of that future. (shrink)

Deconstruction and pragmatism constitute two of the major intellectual influences on the contemporary theoretical scene; influences personified in the work of Jacques Derrida and Richard Rorty. Both Rortian pragmatism, which draws the consequences of post-war developments in Anglo-American philosophy, and Derridian deconstruction, which extends and troubles the phonomenological and Heideggerian influence on the Continental tradition, have hitherto generally been viewed as mutually exclusive philosophical language games. The purpose of this volume is to bring deconstruction and pragmatism into critical confrontation with (...) one another through staging a debate between Derrida and Rorty, itself based on discussions that took place at the College International de Philosophie in Paris in 1993. The ground for this debate is layed out in introductory papers by Simon Critchley and Ernesto Laclau, and the remainder of the volume records Derrida's and Rorty's responses to each other's work. Chantal Mouffe gives an overview of the stakes of this debate in a helpful preface. (shrink)

For Strasbourg consists of a series of essays and interviews about the city of Strasbourg and the philosophical friendships Jacques Derrida developed there over a period of some forty years. Written just months before his death, the opening essay, “The Place Name: Strasbourg,” recounts in detail, and in very moving terms, Derrida’s deep attachment to this French city on the border between France and Germany. More than just a personal narrative, however, the essay is a profound interrogation of the relationship (...) between philosophy and place, philosophy and language, and philosophy and friendship. As such, it raises a series of philosophical, political, and ethical questions that might all be placed under the aegis of what Derrida once called “philosophical nationalities and nationalism.” The other three texts included in the book are long interviews/conversations between Derrida and his two principal interlocutors in Strasbourg, Jean-Luc Nancy and Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe. These interviews are significant both for the themes they focus on and for what they reveal about Derrida’s relationships to Nancy and Lacoue-Labarthe. Filled with sharp insights into one anothers’ work and peppered with personal anecdotes and humor, the interviews bear witness to the decades-long intellectual friendships of these three important contemporary thinkers. This collection thus stands as a reminder of and testimony to Derrida’s unique relationship to Strasbourg and to the two thinkers most closely associated with that city. (shrink)

Jacques Derrida’s Cinders is among the most remarkable and revealing of this distinguished author’s many writings. White Derrida customarily devotes his powers of analysis to exacting readings of texts from Plato and Aristotle to Freud and Heidegger, readers of Cinders will soon discover that here Derrida is engaged in a poetic self-analysis. Ranging across his numerous writings over the past twenty years, Derrida discerns a recurrent cluster of arguments and images, all involving in one way or another ashes and cinders. (...) First published in 1982, revised in 1987, and printed here in a bilingual edition, Cinders enables readers to follow the development of Derrida’s thinking from 1968 to the present as it defines itself as a persistent questioning of origins that invariably leads to the thought of ash and cinder. Written in a highly condensed poetic style, Cinders reveals some of Derrida’s most probing etymological and philosophical reflections on the relation of language to the human. It also contains some of his most essential elaborations of his thinking on the feminine and on the legacy of the Holocaust in contemporary poetry and philosophy.Uniquely accessible to readers who have only recently begun to read Derrida and essential for all those familiar with Derrida’s work, Cinders is an evocative and thoughtful contribution to our understanding of deconstruction. (shrink)

"A supposer que nous disposions, dans notre tradition dite occidentale (juive, grecque, romaine, chrétienne, islamiquè), d'un concept unifié, stabilisé, donc fiable du mensonge, il ne suffirait pas de lui reconnaître une historicité intrinsèquement théorique, à savoir ce qui le distinguerait d'autres concepts dans d'autres histoires et d'autres cultures. Il faudrait aussi examiner l'hypothèse d'une historicité pratique, sociale, politique, juridique, technique qui l'aurait transformé, voire marqué de ruptures à l'intérieur de notre tradition. C'est à cette dernière hypothèse que je voudrais accorder (...) ici, provisoirement, quelque privilège. Mais pourra-t-on jamais distinguer entre ces trois choses, à savoir 1) une histoire (Historie) du concept de mensonge, 2) une histoire (Geschichte) du mensonge, faite de tous les événements qui sont arrivés au mensonge ou par le mensonge, et, d'autre part, enfin, 3) une histoire vraie qui ordonne le récit (Historie, historia rerum gestarum) de ces mensonges ou du mensonge en général? Comment dissocier ou alterner ces trois tâches?". (shrink)

In Hospitality, Volume I, Jacques Derrida continues a seminar series he inaugurated in 1991 under the general title of "Questions of Responsibility." Delivered at the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales (EHESS) in Paris from November 1995 through June 1996, the seminar is guided by questions that focus on responsibility and "the foreigner": How is the foreigner welcomed and/or repressed? What does the notion of the foreigner reveal about kinship, ethnicity, the city, the state, and the nation? What (...) are the stakes of the opposition between friend and enemy? How should we think of this in relation to borders, citizenship, displaced populations, immigration, exile, asylum, integration, assimilation, xenophobia, and racism? Derrida approaches these questions through readings of several classical texts as well as more modern texts from Heidegger, Arendt, and Camus, among others. Central to his project is a rigorous distinction between conventional hospitality (always finite and conditional) and the idea of a hospitality open unconditionally to the newcomer. (shrink)

Las ciencias de la vida, a la luz de la teoría de la evolución, están aportando, según A. Moya, un territorio mestizo que obliga a pensar desde la ciencia cuestiones que parecían patrimonio exclusivo de las humanidades: la naturaleza y sentido del ser humano y de la vida. Las preguntas metafísicas sobre el ser humano y la vida, propias de la tradición humanista, pasan ahora inexorablemente por la ciencia, por los hallazgos recientes en biología molecular y evolutiva, biogénetica, bioquímica, neurobiología, (...) sociobiología, psicología evolutiva, biocomputerización, etc. Entre cientificismo antihumanista y humanismo espiritualista, entre el desprecio de las humanidades y el desprecio de las ciencias —desprecio basado en la ignorancia mutua y/o en presupuestos ideológicos—, cabe un cientismo humanista, fiel a la mejor tradición intelectual de nuestra cultura. Contra este desencuentro, poco ilustrado, Moya muestra su convencimiento de que se debe y se puede superar ese hiato profundo, a partir, sobre todo, de los avances que la biología evolutiva, y en general las ciencias de la vida, podrían proporcionar como territorio común sobre el que pensar y desde el que pensar tanto la misma ciencia como la vida, tanto el sentido de la ciencia como el sentido de la vida humana. La aventura intelectual de A. Moya se presenta como un ejemplo de honestidad y de rigor, abogando contra cualquier reduccionismo por mantener abiertas las tensiones creativas entre biología y espíritu. (shrink)

En este trabajo me ocuparé de reconstruir los diferentes paradigmas de lectura de Zur Kritik der Gewalt de Benjamin que proponen Jacques Derrida y Werner Hamacher alrededor de 1989. En primer lugar, se analizará cómo de diferente manera ambos autores definen la violencia en los términos de la performatividad del lenguaje: Derrida como una “fuerza diferencial” y Hamacher con el concepto de “afformativo”. En segundo lugar, cómo estos conceptos de performatividad consideran dos ejemplos políticos contrapuestos de la Kritik: la “policía” (...) y la “huelga general proletaria”. Finalmente, cómo el estrecho diálogo entre Derrida y Hamacher, más allá de la Kritik benjamineana, interroga los alcances ético-políticos del método de la deconstrucción. (shrink)

El objetivo primordial de este artículo es poner en valor las contribuciones de Jacques Derrida a la filosofía del derecho. En esa línea, una de las tareas más importantes que se abordan en él es mostrar que la labor de deconstrucción, se refiera ésta a cualquier ámbito filosófico o jurídico, es ante todo poner en evidencia los límites, carencias e incoherencias internas que se dan en dicho ámbito. Además de ello, se expone en este trabajo cómo Jacques Derrida, el creador (...) de este método de análisis, al aclarar el sentido y operatividad de la deconstrucción nos explica que ésta se plantea la tarea de desmontar lo que se presenta como construido con una inconmovible solidez. Se pone asimismo de manifiesto en este artículo que la deconstrucción puede contribuir a la concreción de la justicia, en diversos contextos, que van desde el mismo proceso judicial a la dimensión colectiva de las acciones que conducen a la materialización de un orden justo. (shrink)

Abordamos la primera configuración de la tesis del trabajo de duelo (travail du deuil) en la filosofía de Jacques Derrida, desarrollada en el texto Glas de 1974, en directa relación con la filosofía de Hegel. Dicha tesis es central para la deconstrucción y alude a un esquema especulativo que puede relacionarse tanto con las tempranas propuestas sobre la auto-afección como proceso de constitución del sí mismo, como también con la operación de consumación idealizante que está a la base de las (...) teorías sobre el origen del sentido en la tradición filosófica occidental. En ambos casos, se trata de configurar una tesis deconstructiva sobre la relación con la alteridad en general, cuestión que constituye para Derrida el núcleo del problema epistemológico de la historicidad del sentido. Sostenemos que la configuración del trabajo de duelo es el resultado de una serie de decisiones teóricas en relación con la filosofía de Hegel, que implican considerar el lugar de la vida y la muerte en sistema, así como también una relación incorporativa entre una y otra, mediada por la dinámica de la Aufhebung. (shrink)

Rastrear en la escritura de Jacques Derrida la existencia de un pensamiento otro de la materialidad no es tarea sencilla. Sin embargo, es la tarea que se propone delinear, al menos en sus coordenadas generales, el presente artículo. Ello, inicialmente, implicaría seguir una serie de elementos propios de la tradición presocrática que estarían inscritos a modo de huellas en la escritura deconstructiva. En tal sentido, nociones como las de átomo, vacío y movimiento serán consideradas, en diversos momentos del presente texto, (...) en el marco de una interpretación contemporánea de la divisibilidad y fragmentación de lo existente. A partir de estas consideraciones y su relación con la escritura en el pensamiento de la deconstrucción se sostendrá el carácter cuasi-trascendental de la materia. (shrink)

Resumen: El siguiente trabajo aborda la relación que tiene la violencia con el lenguaje y el discurso en la obra de Derrida, específicamente desde las nociones tempranas de violencia originaria, archi-violencia y violencia trascendental, con el fin de abrir la perspectiva de su análisis hacia una reflexión desde el problema del origen del sentido y su despliegue textual.La cuestión de la violencia será enfocada en torno a dos aspectos de la obra de Derrida: 1) la tesis general sobre la (...) economía en la que la violencia de origen está expuesta y se despliega, cuestión que desarrollaremos a partir de la relación teórica de Derrida con Lévi-Strauss; y 2) algunas notas más detalladas sobre la génesis del concepto de violencia, que es adoptado por Derrida en discusión directa con la tradición fenomenológica, especialmente con Husserl y Levinas. Todo, además, en el contexto de ciertas notas metodológicas sobre la herencia que no son periféricas, sino que permiten una aproximación más completa desde una idea de génesis de la violencia de la génesis.: In this paper, I approach the concept of violence in connection with deconstruction as a condition of possibility of meaning. I track the genesis and structure of different formulations of the concept presented in the early works of Derrida, such as ‘original violence’, ‘transcendental violence’, and ‘archi-violence’. I present some key points on this topic emphasizing two features: 1) the overall thesis about the economy in which violence is exposed and developed, in dialogue with the ideas of Lévi-Strauss; and 2) some more detailed notes about the genesis of the concept of violence, which is adopted by Derrida in direct discussion with the phenomenological tradition, especially with Husserl and Levinas. Both subjects are also involved with certain methodological elements that I think cannot be avoided in Derrida’s philosophy, because they are integral to deconstruction itself. This will give us a full view of the problem of the idea of a genesis of the violence of genesis. (shrink)

El artículo se propone elucidar la lectura deconstructiva que Derrida lleva a cabo de la filosofía de Marx y, más ampliamente, de los presupuestos metafísicos de la filosofía marxista. Espectros de Marx (1993) funciona como el punto de partida de un análisis histórico y conceptual que rastrea algunas de las principales hipótesis de este libro en publicaciones, entrevistas, cursos y seminarios fechados entre 1964 y 2004. La pregunta que sirve como hilo conductor de este trabajo es cómo interpretar filosófica y (...) políticamente la deconstrucción de la ontología marxista. (shrink)

RESUMEN El presente artículo pretende definir y comparar las distintas “deconstrucciones de lo trágico” de Lacoue-Labarthe y Derrida con vistas a precisar los términos a través de los cuales han concebido la relación entre filosofía y literatura y marcar la diferencia con la que abordan el poder de lo negativo propio de la instancia trágica. El estudio de esos focos permite también aclarar el rendimiento político de la cuestión literaria en ambos autores, enfatizando las distintas herencias a la que se (...) refieren y las distancia que estas herencias producen en sus respectivos planteamientos. ABSTRACT This article aims to define and compare the different “deconstructions of the tragic” of Lacoue-Labarthe and Derrida in order to clarify the terms through which they have conceived the relationship between philosophy and literature, and in order to precise the difference in approaching the power of the negative, that is a distinctive instance of the tragic. The study of these notions also makes it possible to clarify the political impact of the literary issue in both authors, emphasizing the different inheritances to which they refer and the distance that these inheritances produce in their respective approaches. (shrink)

La obra de Harari es una proyección hacia el futuro de la situación actual de la humanidad. Está fundada en tres supuestos básicos: materialismo, cientificismo y ateísmo. Debido al fuerte reduccionismo de sus supuestos, su explicación de lo humano y del futuro de lo humano queda en una especulación interesante de conocer pero que carece de objetividad.

El objetivo del presente texto es realizar un acercamiento a las diferentes corrientes de pensamiento económico feminista en función de sus propuestas de redefinición del objeto de estudio de la economía; propuestas que pueden entenderse como intentos de deconstrucción de las dicotomías económico/no-económico, trabajo/no-trabajo propias de los marcos teóricos androcéntricos. Se identifican dos estrategias de deconstrucción, con diferentes implicaciones tanto para el ámbito de la teoría económica como para el del análisis empírico y la propuesta política. La primera de (...) ellas está basada en el descubrimiento y revalorización del “otro” económico, el trabajo doméstico. La segunda, en proporcionar un “término bisagra”, el de sostenibilidad de la vida, que permita trascender las dicotomías y a partir del cuál se revisan conceptos asociados, como el de trabajo. Finalmente, se argumentará que se está produciendo un desplazamiento teórico hacia esta última estrategia. (shrink)

ABSTRACT This article aims to analyze the problem of violence, as tackled by Derrida in his dialogue with Levinas. It is asked in particular how it is possible to think critically about violence if we assume that violence constitutes us. In order to do this, it dwells on the diference that Derrida establishes between criticism and deconstruction and on his analysis of the relationship between violence and silence. One of the main theses of this article is that what allows a (...) critique of violence refers to what Derrida calls “trace”, that is, a silence that inhabits language and that does not refer to a previous meaning. In addition, this article focuses on the critic Derrida addresses to Levinas in “Violence and metaphysic”. It shows that far from fitting this critique, Levinas’s analysis of the relation between language and silence implies a radicalization of Derrida’s thesis on what he calls the “worst violence”. (shrink)

Jacques Derrida resignificó el concepto de escritura, que pasó de describir la transliteración de la voz, a ser un fenómeno de inscripción de sentido previo a cualquier signo. Esta extensión conceptual es la base de la deconstrucción. En este artículo se analizan los planteamientos centrales del proyecto filosófico de Derrida y se plantea una reflexión sobre el desenlace de la filosofía de la (archi)escritura en el contexto actual de la renovación de los nuevos materialismos y, en particular, el proyecto de (...) Catherine Malabou. (shrink)

El debate entre la filosofía hermenéutica de Hans Georg Gadamer y la deconstrucción de Jacques Derrida está lejos de haber concluido. A la luz de Carneros, el texto poco estudiado aún de la conferencia leída por Derrida en memoria de Gadamer, pretendemos reanudar aquí el intenso diálogo entre estos dos pensadores emblemáticos de la filosofía continental de finales del siglo pasado. Partiendo de las distintas significaciones que en cada caso toman nociones como ‘diálogo’ o ‘mundo’, pero también de la manera (...) diversa como cada uno de ellos interpreta la filosofía platónica o la poesía de Paul Celan, nos proponemos iluminar el profundo desacuerdo ontológico y ético que existe entre las dos propuestas. La cuestión del otro, central para ambos autores, se mostrará al final como el punto donde se condensan y agudizan las tensiones entre ellos. (shrink)

La deconstrucción de Derrida sitúa el concepto «futuro» en el interior del programa de lo que, parafraseando a Heidegger, llama la metafísica de la presencia. Como potencialidad el futuro es ya presente en su indivisibilidad con la presencia, con el ahora (instante, nûn) desde donde, de Aristóteles a Hegel, se articula. Mas para Derrida un acontecimiento debe venir de lo incontrolable, del porvenir mismo. El «pensar el porvenir» arranca, pues, desde su imposibilidad, desde la aporía de su no-lugar; y la (...) única categoría que no le resulta ontológicamente obscena será, parafraseando a Nietzsche, quizá: el quizá. (shrink)

This article seeks to explore some issues regarding the different modes of generality at stake in the formation of transdisciplinary concepts within the production of ‘theory’ in the humanities and social sciences. Focused around Jacques Derrida’s seminal account of ‘writing’ in his 1967 book Of Grammatology, the article outlines what it defines as a logic of generalization at stake in Derrida’s elaborations of a quasi-transcendental ‘inscription in general’. Starting out from the questions thereby raised about the relationship between such (...) forms of generality and those historically ascribed to philosophy, the article concludes by contrasting Derrida’s generalized writing with more recent returns to ‘metaphysics’ in the work of Bruno Latour and others. Against the immediately ‘ontological’ orientation of much recent ‘new materialist’ or ‘object-oriented’ thought, the article argues for the necessity of ‘different levels of writing in general’ through a continual folding back of absolute generalization into historically specific disciplinary crossings and exchanges; something suggested by but never really developed in Derrida’s own work. (shrink)

Cómo articular un discurso que dé cuenta de “las peores violencias” que son justamente “aquellas que reconocemos demasiado sin haberlas aún pensado” (11). Esta es la pregunta declarada que abre el texto Violencia. Una lectura desde la deconstrucción de Jacques Derrida, de Miriam Jerade. El libro nos entrega así ciertas claves para ahondar en violencias que parecen todavía insuficientemente problematizadas por la filosofía y el pen-samiento político, apostando a que una lectura desde la deconstrucción podría ofrecernos nuevos y más críticos (...) puntos de vista. Al menos tres términos se agol-pan en estas primeras formulaciones que es necesario señalar antes de continuar, con el fin de sopesar desde sus primeras líneas los alcances de la investigación: en primer lugar, el de violencia, que es el objeto del estudio; en segundo lugar, el de deconstrucción, que parece ser el médium en el que dicha violencia aparece y se complejiza; y, por último, el de los fines que se sitúan como horizonte de las reflexiones, señalados por la noción de “justicia”; pues la pregunta inaugural sobre el abordaje crítico de la “peores vio-lencias” también puede formularse así: ¿“cómo desarticular los discursos que las deniegan para dar lugar a la justicia” (11)? (shrink)

In this paper, in the first place, I aim to enquire into Bernard Stiegler’s critical appropriation of his mentor Jacques Derrida’s notion of différance, emphasizing how Stiegler’s philosophy of technology stems from an original interpretation of the main tenets of deconstruction. From this perspective, I will investigate Stiegler’s definition of technology as tertiary retention, i.e., exosomatized, artificial memory interrelating with biological memory, testing its hermeneutic strengths as well as possible weaknesses. In the second place, I aim to contrast Stiegler’s understanding (...) of technology with the concept of multistability brought forward by postphenomenological philosophies of technology such as those elaborated by Don Ihde and Peter-Paul Verbeek. This investigation will enable me to submit that Stiegler’s approach represents a peculiar and innovative way to conceive of technology. On the one hand, indeed, it does not seem to fall prey to the criticisms raised by postphenomenology against traditional philosophies of technology such as Martin Heidegger’s or Jacques Ellul’s, deemed to be overly deterministic, abstract and pessimistic in their understanding of technology. On the other, it retains important methodological precautions from deconstruction, thereby pointing at some possible blind spots of postphenomenology, especially concerning the vexed question of the empirical-transcendental divide, which Stiegler aims to develop beyond both Derrida’s and postphenomenology’s stances. (shrink)

El artículo expone la contraposición entre dos posiciones filosóficas (deconstrucción y reconstrucción), dos autores (Jacques Derrida, Jean Luc Ferry) y dos libros (Apprendre à vivre enfin, Apprendre à vivre). En última instancia, dos formas de entender las relaciones entre filosofía y vida. Más allá del logocentrismo, objeto de la deconstrucción, el biocentrismo es el eje de la tarea de reconstrucción de una filosofía articulada como ontología o teoría de lo real, filosofía moral o teoría de la justicia y sabiduría o (...) teoría de la salvación. En suma, una forma renovada de asumir la necesidad de la filosofía. (shrink)

The work of Jacques Derrida can be seen to reinvent most theories. In this book Robert Smith offers both a reading of the philosophy of Derrida and an investigation of current theories of autobiography. Smith argues that for Derrida autobiography is not so much subjective self-revelation as relation to the other, not so much a general condition of thought as a general condition of writing - what Derrida calls the 'autobiography of the writing' - which mocks any self-centred (...) finitude of living and dying. In this context, and using literary-critical, philosophical, and psychoanalytical sources, Smith thinks through Derrida's texts in a new, but distinctly Derridean, way, and finds new perspectives to analyse the work of classical writers including Hegel, Nietzsche, Kierkegaard, Freud, and de Man. (shrink)

The present article proposes a reading of the novel Elfriede Jelinek’s The Piano Teacher as a deconstruction of the configuration of female sexuality in Freud. For this, it investigates the theoretical elaborations of Foucault and Derrida and the main elements of the differentiation of Freudian female sexuality: preoedipal phase, mother-daughter bond, castration fantasy. Finally, we try to show that The Piano Teacher deconstructs the way in which psychoanalytic discourses install subjectivation regimes that place women in a position of inferiority.

El presente artículo se propone evaluar los posibles aportes de la deconstrucción a la filosofía de la ciencia. Esta tarea aparece enfrentada con cierta visión de la deconstrucción como charlatanería, discurso vacío o escepticismo. Se lleva a cabo una revisión de las implicaciones filosóficas de la deconstrucción con el objetivo de elaborar una definición de la misma y elucidar la posición que ella tiene respecto del conocimiento científico. Dicha revisión revela que se la debe entender como una práctica contextualista y (...) crítica. Es una práctica porque aparece como un acto y no bajo la unidad de una teoría. Es contextualista porque no tiene contenido ni forma, sólo el mandato de leer y explorar contextos. Es crítica porque pretende desarmar la violencia contra la alteridad presente en toda ontología. Se establece que la deconstrucción puede aportar un abordaje estratégico capaz de relacionar y poner en tensión cada una de las instancias del trabajo científico. Esta aproximación problematiza las nociones clásicas de tiempo y espacio, cuestionando la perspectiva antropocentrista en pos de una defensa de lo que Derrida denomina alteridad. ARK: ark:/s18537960/rxmvh:/e8. (shrink)

El presente trabajo contribuye al debate sobre la actualidad estética, abordando diferentes enfoques del polémico concepto de deconstrucción, introducido por Jacques Derrida. Esta categoría es de referencia casi obligatoria cuando se habla sobre teoría estética contemporánea, forma parte de su nuevo..

Derrida and the Inheritance of Democracy provides a theoretically rich and accessible account of Derrida's political philosophy. Demonstrating the key role inheritance plays in Derrida’s thinking, Samir Haddad develops a general theory of inheritance and shows how it is essential to democratic action. He transforms Derrida’s well-known idea of "democracy to come" into active engagement with democratic traditions. Haddad focuses on issues such as hospitality, justice, normativity, violence, friendship, birth, and the nature of democracy as he reads these deeply (...) political writings. (shrink)