Plus ça change: A Response to Toril Moi’s and Catherine Malabou’s Critiques of Derrida

This article argues that, despite their differences as thinkers, Toril Moi and Catherine Malabou offer surprisingly similar critiques of Derrida. Both doubt the political utility of Derridean thought. Both have also expressed reservations about the coherence and ongoing interest of his philosophy. By describing the unacknowledged similarities in their arguments, and by contextualizing them, this article tries to uncover what is and is not original in these "new" critiques. Ultimately, grappling with these challenges provides a useful means of rediscovering what remains unthought and exciting about Derrida

Echoes of the Absent: Hauntology, Narratology, and the Spectral Art of Translation

The aim of this article is to examine the relevance of Jacques Derrida\u27s concept of hauntology to literary criticism and translation studies, with a focus on Edgar Allan Poe\u27s The Raven and its French translations. It demonstrates how hauntology—emphasizing the spectral interplay between presence and absence, origin and trace, and meaning and deferral—reframes texts as sites of revenance: haunted spaces of fragmented meanings and deferred interpretations. By analyzing the challenges of translating The Raven\u27s rhythmic complexity, phonetic resonance, and iconic refrain, "nevermore," this study highlights the text\u27s spectral nature and resistance to closure. Additionally, the paper seeks to provide a new perspective on the dispersion of meaning in translation. It shows how French translations by Baudelaire, Mallarmé, and others exemplify Derrida\u27s notion of dissemination, contributing to contemporary discussions in literary studies, translation theory, and philosophical criticism

Kafka’s Access: A Phenomenological Analysis

Franz Kafka\u27s "Before the Law" distills his longer works, like The Trial and The Castle, into a single theme: Access. In "Before the Law," the main character seeks entrance into the law. The doorkeeper apathetically refuses while instigating the man\u27s need. Often, in Kafka\u27s works, the main character seeks access to some part of his life, but is prohibited, sometimes in a material way and, at other times, in an epistemic way. This paper will explore this access problem using Martin Heidegger\u27s Being and Time. It will phenomenologically interrogate the concept of "access" within Kafka, using an early Heideggerian distinction between ready-to-hand and present-at-hand, the former marked by thoughtless availability (thereness) and the latter by a sustained and thoughtful suspension, the result of a break from the regular availability of life\u27s tools (the lack of thereness), forcing Kafka\u27s main characters to dwell in the negation of access

A Passion for the Margins: Relativism and Writing after the "Deconstruction of Metaphysics"

This paper reviews the complex and nuanced treatment of metaphysics in the first major works of Jacques Derrida (1967-72), and it supplements deconstruction with existential themes in order to safeguard it from the accusation of nihilistic relativism. The critique of logocentrism, often systematized through a paradoxical \u27ontology of the trace\u27, has been embraced by phenomenology and post-deconstruction, but also seen as insufficient for today\u27s challenges. Returning to Derrida\u27s demonstrations, I explore why metaphysics must be textual if it is to produce two operations constitutive of thinking: a certain technology of forgetting and an experience of meaning as singularized in words. This textuality is, specifically, that of writing, which reveals how, beyond truth, it is meaning-making that is sought by metaphysics and its writers. The techne of writing, then, plays a special role in individual, existential empowerment, but this interpretation of the history of ideas as a power struggle does not amount to moral relativism, because writing can help us sustain a unique and constructive passion for the margins

Agamben Reading Kafka: The Animal Way to Paradise

The aim of this paper is to revisit the theme of paradise and animality in the work of Kafka, whilst at the same time elucidate Agamben\u27s complex understanding of these notions with the help of the literary imagery of Kafka. In a world where many find themselves crushed by the anthropological machine, Agamben outlines an intuition Kafka had about animals, that can help humans to reconcile with their animal nature, and let them guide us back to paradise. If animals have never left paradise, and the human realm is not substantially different for the animal realm, then like the animals we have never truly left paradise but only think we did. It is only in trying to uphold a higher, human sphere, through self-subjection and exclusion, that we leave the paradisical realm. Kafka\u27s creatures show us the ridiculousness of these divisions between human and animals

Kafka critique du monde social contemporain : les formes concretes de l’oppression de l’individu occidental

This article shows how the social criticism that unfolds in Kafka’s The Trial and then The Castle was able to guess the majority of the political ills of the contemporary West as they developed mainly from the 20th century onwards. Not restricting oneself to the usual analysis of oppression by the gigantic structures of justice and administration, it focuses more on concrete examples of mistreatment of the individual and underlines the major role of the complicity of admiring people of the totalitarian system. The servile citizens complete the aggression of the State by reducing the private sphere to a minimum. Certain more recent excesses of social networks, notably the growing confusion between the public sphere and the private sphere, are also announced by Kafka’s satire, which depicts the modern Westerner as denied his fundamental freedoms

« Loi de la chair » – « loi du phallus » : d’une généalogie déconstructrice du concept de « carno – phallogocentrisme »

The concept of "carno-phallogocentrism", introduced by Derrida in the late 1980s, is receiving significant attention today. However, commentators have noted that Derrida’s account of this concept is incomplete and not explicitly linked to the history of "anthropocentric subjectivity." The commonly proposed genealogy of this concept attempts to remediate these two unclarities by tracing the term’s definition back to its first appearance in 1989 in an interview with Jean-Luc Nancy, titled "‘Il faut bien manger’ ou le calcul du sujet". In this article, we suggest unfolding a new genealogy that examines the context in which this concept first appeared in the text "‘Il faut bien manger’ ou le calcul du sujet" and connects this first appearance to a set of other Derridean concepts and texts implicitly evoked on the same the occasion. This genealogy will reveal the speculative, "hetero-tautological" construction of the concept: the "hyphen" interposed between "carno" and "phallogo" indicates that the "law of the phallus" must speculatively oppose another law, which we call the "law of the flesh". The aim is to devise a deconstructive gesture capable of both revoking the presumed tautological omnipotence of the "anthropocentric subjectivity" (as dominant, virile, carnivorous and logocentric) and free the "law of the flesh" from its subjection to it

"Wie viel \u27ich\u27 verträgt ein \u27wir\u27"? - Funktioniert Gesellschaft auch mit egozentrischen Individualist:innen?

When one "I" claims the entire "we" for itself, is there room left for other "I\u27s"? How much "I" can a society endure? The author addresses these questions in three steps. First, she discusses the historical mediation of ideas between the "I" and the "we." Next, she addresses the process of liberating the individual from contexts of domination and provision. Finally, she explores the path from external responsibility to self-responsibility.&nbsp

Walter Benjamin and Günther Anders on Kafka and the Role of Literature

What is the political significance of literature? How, if at all, can fictional narratives interact with issues of social and legal justice? This paper addresses these questions and proposes four models of literature\u27s intervention in political reality based on Walter Benjamin’s and Günther Anders’ readings of Kafka. According to Benjamin’s 1930s Kafka essays, fictional narratives have the power to unsettle hitherto established legal decisions and thus partake in the exercise of justice. Anders, in his 1951 book Kafka: Pro und Contra, criticises Kafka for authoring narratives that—complacent with existing power—lend themselves to being used to morally absolve acts of oppression. Taken together, the four models—two of which are based on Benjamin\u27s Kafka reading and two on Anders\u27—offer a complex view of the role of literature as a political actor, recognising its positive value while warning against its potential abuse

La grammatologie comme science positive : Maurizio Ferraris lecteur de Derrida

Gramatology as a positive science: Maurizio Ferrari\u27s Derrida Reception Maurizio Ferraris is developing a realist ontology that severely criticizes the main theses of postmodernity for philosophical, ethical, and political reasons. Paradoxically, however, Derrida plays an important role in his thinking. By distinguishing natural objects from ideal objects and, ultimately, from social objects, the author shows that, rather than a criticism of Derrida, Ferraris’ realist ontology aims to limit Derridean thought to the field of social objects, which are above all written and inscribed objects. Through arche-writing and the theory of the trace, Ferraris demonstrates that writing carries the social, because the trace exists only insofar as it is recognized and therefore in a relation. In this way, Derrida\u27s philosophy finds itself at the heart of a field from which we might have thought it had been excluded: contemporary realist ontology