Signature Pieces

Some contemporary approaches to literature still accept the separation of historical, biographical, external concerns from formal, internal ones. On the borderline that lends this division between inside and outside its apparent coherence is signature. In Peggy Kamuf’s view, studying signature will help us to rediscover some of the stakes of literary writing beyond the historicist/formalist opposition. Drawing on Derrida’s extensive work on signatures and proper names, Kamuf investigates authorial signature in key writers from Rousseau to Woolf, as well as the implications of signature for the institutions of authorship and criticism

The Wake

Entre dos lenguas, la traducción de veille o veiller por wake o to wake produce una convergencia inesperada entre la vigilia (veille) y la estela (sillage). A partir de ella la autora traza en la obra de Derrida una escritura del wake que teje en ella otro modo de vigilancia crítica como escucha atenta a la interrupción, al cambio de tono y a la irrupción del otro. Esa vigilancia no se queda en la hiper-crítica ilustrada sino que, más allá de la oposición metafísica entre el sueño y la vigilia, vigila el sueño para velar por el porvenir.Between two languages, the translation of veille or veiller as wake or to wake creates an unexpected convergence between wake (veille) and wake (sillage). Based on it, the author traces in Derrida’s work a writing of the wake which weaves in it another form of critical vigilance as attentive listening to interruption, change in tone and the irruption of the other. This watchfulness does not end in the enlightened hyper critique, but, beyond the metaphysical opposition between dream and wake, it looks after the dream to take care of what is “to-come”

The Gift and the meaning-giving subject: A Reading of Given Time

In this essay the relation between justice and the gift in Derrida’s thinking is explored. The essay shows that an understanding of the ontological difference or the relation between Being and beings in Heidegger’s thinking as well as Freud’s speculations on the death drive are essential to comprehend the ‘concept’ or ‘notion’ of différance as well as the gift in Derrida’s thinking. The analysis points to the complexity of Derrida’s thinking in his contemplation of the relation between justice and law and the need for a broader investigation to understand what is at stake in this regard. An exploration of the gift shows that Derrida’s thinking on justice is not ‘relativistic’ as is often assumed and that the gift can in a certain way function as a ‘guide’ in questions of constitutional interpretation

Signature Pieces: On the Institution of Authorship

Some contemporary approaches to literature still accept the separation of historical, biographical, external concerns from formal, internal ones. On the borderline that lends this division between inside and outside its apparent coherence is signature. In Peggy Kamuf’s view, studying signature will help us to rediscover some of the stakes of literary writing beyond the historicist/formalist opposition. Drawing on Derrida’s extensive work on signatures and proper names, Kamuf investigates authorial signature in key writers from Rousseau to Woolf, as well as the implications of signature for the institutions of authorship and criticism

Deconstrucción y amor

The image of deconstuction as an essentially negative operation, as a dismantling of systems, does not seem to be improved if we state that deconstruction affirmatively declares love for the texts it deconsturcts, because, once again, it can be charged with the negativity of an activity circumscribed to intelectualism's inert world. However, the "performative" force of this affirmation of love which deconstruction carries out takes us to the very heart of any love address or love declaration, which is essentially affirmative. The performative force of a love addressed to texts overshadows the nutrality of an external objectivity, and it also surpasses the limits of subjectivity: this force contains, instead, the explicitness of the "iterability" of "any" declaration of love, thus becoming the love address "par excellence". Nevertheless, the blurring of the boundaries of object and subject in which we are now submerged leaves for us only the possibility of "thinking" about a kind of love in which we are able to distinguish between love for the other as other an love as the other's appropriation by the self. Such a possibility is enacted in fictional texts, and one example which is analised here is Henry Jame's "The Aspern Papers".La imagen de la desconstrucción como una operación esencialmente negativa, desmanteladora de sistemas, no parece verse mejorada si añadimos que declara afirmativamente amor por los textos que desconstruye, porque de nuevo puede achacársele la negatividad de una actitud que se circunscribe al mundo inerte del intelectualismo. Sin embargo, la fuerza lingüística "realizativa" de esta afirmación de amor que la desconstrucción hace, nos lleva hasta el corazón mismo de toda declaración de amor, esencialmente afirmativo. La fuerza realizativa de una declaración de amor por los textos eclipsa la neutralidad u objetividad externa, y tampoco encaja en los límites de la subjetividad: contiene, en lugar de esto, la explicitud de la "iterabilidad" de "toda" declaración de amor, convirtiéndose en la declaración de amor por excelencia. No obstante, el desdibujamiento de los límites de objeto y sujeto en que nos sumerge nos deja sólo la posibilidad de "pensar" en un amor en que se sea capaz de distinguir entre el amor por el otro en tanto que otro, y el amor como la aporpiación del otro por el yo. Tal posibilidad se ve realizada en textos ficticios, y un ejemplo analizado aquí es "Los papeles de Aspern", Henry James