This thesis is based on two readings on death. The first one is Martin Heidegger&rsquo / s Being and Time chapter two, part one and the second one is Jacques Derrida&rsquo / s Aporias. The first reading is based on the phenomenological analysis of death. The line of argument of Heidegger is figured out. The second reading is based on Derrida&rsquo / s deconstruction of Heidegger&rsquo / s account of death in Being and Time. The thesis and the conclusion part is based on the idea that, on death, these philosophers are fundamentally similar and radically different. This is shown by the comparison of these philosophers.

This study of Alain Robbe-Grillet’s first four published novels seeks to examine the manifestations of four different philosophical concepts in these works. Each novel will be taken as a primary example of Robbe-Grillet’s interrogation of either time, space, difference or repetition. The title of this work, ‘Philosophical Conceptions of Time, Space, Difference and Repetition in the Early Novels of Alain Robbe-Grillet’, as apparently uncomplicated as it is, is useful not only for directly implicating the topics to be examined, but also for what it does not directly allude to. By making reference neither to Robbe-Grillet’s involvement in the movement of the Nouveau Roman nor the theoretical ideas he developed, the title demonstrates one of the main approaches employed here; for Robbe-Grillet’s novels will be examined first and foremost for the textual qualities they exhibit, and will not be tested against the author’s statements, as is most often the case in studies of Robbe-Grillet. When examining these novels, we will thus neither support our study with quotations from Robbe-Grillet’s many interviews and public statements, nor concern ourselves with the apparent objectivity or subjectivity of the novels’ narrators, nor will we base our examinations of the philosophical concepts found in the novels on questions of subjectivity or objectivity. It will become clear throughout our work that Robbe-Grillet’s novels, particularly the early novels that are the focus of this work, have been very well researched and from many different perspectives, yet in spite of the proliferation of texts dealing with these novels certain standard readings have evolved that impinge on the advancement of our understanding of Robbe-Grillet’s complex works. We will argue that this is precisely because these readings actually negate the multiple interpretations that the novels demand and that these standardised readings therefore work as fixed central points around which almost all analyses of the novels revolve. It is thus the aim of this work to complicate these dominant readings by engaging with the ways in which the novels both offer and deny different interpretations, a strategy that ultimately results in the impossibility of a sole fixed reading. In choosing this approach to study the novels, we wish to concentrate solely on the non-representative aspects of these novels. That is to say, the novels will not be treated here, as they are by many critics, for the way they present themselves on the surface as merely concerned with an interrogation of narrative strategies, characterisation or with an application of Robbe-Grillet’s theoretical modus operandi. Rather we will argue that the texts simultaneously invite a deeper reflection on philosophical concepts. The possibility the novels offer to consider the four philosophical concepts that are the focus of this study will be remarked by the novels’ continual engagement with these ideas so as to suggest finally the opportunity of conceiving of these concepts in a literary discourse. Thus, the philosophical concepts which will be deployed in examining Robbe-Grillet’s novels aim to elucidate not strict equivalences between a given concept and its expression in the novel, but rather the ways in which the novels themselves can be seen to propose their own conceptions of these philosophical notions. Thus, each of these chapters will ostensibly deal with a particular philosophical notion, yet they can be seen to work towards a similar shared goal; for each section of this study will propose that it is impossible to isolate a single unifying thesis or central controlling identity through which the texts can be examined. Instead, we will suggest that the novels are governed by a logic of difference in itself, a philosophical notion which, as we will see throughout this work, operates outside of the notion of identity and which favours fluid, unstable and continuously evolving relationships of its constituent parts.

This thesis is centrally concerned with the texts of Jacques Derrida that have addressed directly the theme of sexual difference. Yet to say the thesis is centrally concerned with a philosophy that positions itself clearly as one that deconstructs centrality and its trajectory of return, is to face the crisis or chiasmus of my concern. The thesis is not returned to Derrida. If the question of feminism for Derrida is a question from the margins, from interruptions, of the trace and of la cendre, ashes, the question of sexual difference is primordially and originarily that of the undecidability of the name, signatory, and textual border. She would not have appeared here. Therefore she cannot return. There are two frames to this research that can be recognized in the chapter sequence of the thesis. Initially I develop a preparatory engagement to a questioning of the ontology of sexual difference, with Chapters 2 and 3, with a questioning that broaches the metaphysics of the feminine with respect to the texts of Derrida, Heidegger and Cixous in particular and further engages with Écriture Féminine, Levinas and feminist responses to Heidegger and Levinas. However, this broader questioning is undertaken in order to develop a sharper focus on the writings of Derrida that address Heidegger’s ontological difference, Levinas’s ethics before being, and a more originary questioning of sexual difference. The second frame and predominant focus of the thesis is on Derrida’s approach to the metaphysics of the feminine with four pivotal texts by Derrida from the late 1970s and early 1980s examined in Chapters 4 to 7. Each addresses a questioning of difference and the metaphysical tradition, under difference’s many names: ontological difference, sexual difference, différance, and engages deconstruction’s encounters with Nietzsche & Heidegger (Spurs); the psychoanalysts Abraham & Torok (“Fors”); Levinas (“At This Very Moment in This Work Here I Am”) and Hegel (Glas). In bringing together these four texts, my aim is to emphasize the significance of a double deconstructive movement of transgression and restoration, as this research’s politico-ethical acts of writing and reading for an otherwise discourse on sexual difference. This otherwise discourse has always already been produced with phallogocentrism and remains critical for the inventing of thresholds across philosophy, literature and their others. The ashen Preface enkindles a paradigmatic figure as deconstructive trace of sexual difference in writing and reading practices. A Postscript questions the binding to institutional laws constitutive of disciplinary practice while the fiery trace in Derrida’s writing on Kafka’s law concludes on the ash-laden edges of Blanchot’s unavowable work.

Zugl.: Köln, Univ., Diss.

This thesis argues that all literature is subject to ‘afterlife,’ a continual process of translation. From this starting point, this thesis seeks to answer two questions. Firstly, how texts demonstrate this continual translation; secondly, how texts should be read if they are understood as constantly within translation. To answer these questions, this thesis seeks to develop a model of textuality that holds afterlife as central, and a model of reading based on this concept of textuality. Chapter One explores how following through the implications of Walter Benjamin’s and Jacques Derrida’s usages of the term ‘afterlife’ in their writings on translation, language and history necessarily implies a model of textuality. The model of reading that this thesis seeks to develop focuses on language and history, as Benjamin and Derrida define these as the parameters within which translation takes place. This study emphasises textuality itself as a third parameter. Chapter One also describes how, following Benjamin and Derrida, language and history are conceived as inescapable, repressive systems. This, paradoxically, allows for the concept of ‘messianicity’ – the idea that all language, and every historical event, has the potential to herald an escape from language or history. By definition, because language and history are all-encompassing, this potential cannot be enacted, and remains potential. An innovation of this thesis is to understand textuality itself as having ‘messianic potential’; all texts have the potential to escape textuality and afterlife, by reaching a point where they could no longer be translated. Understanding texts as having messianic potential, but always being subject to afterlife, is the basis of the model of reading described at the end of this chapter. Due to the ways Benjamin and Derrida suggest we recognise messianic potential, texts are read with a dual focus on their singularity and their connections to other texts. This is achieved through the ‘text-in-afterlife,’ a concept this thesis develops that understands texts as inextricable from the texts they translate and the texts that translate them. Chapters Two, Three and Four test and complicate this model of reading in response to texts by James Joyce, Aimé Césaire and Jorge Luis Borges. Concepts of textuality and reading are therefore developed throughout the thesis. The three key texts are read with focus on their individual relationships with language, history and textuality, and their connections to the texts they translate. Critics have linked Joyce’s Ulysses to multiple other texts, making it seem exceptional. However, the concept of messianicity shows that Ulysses is important precisely because it is not exceptional. Césaire’s Une Tempête demonstrates how a text can interact with several translations of ‘the same’ text simultaneously, and also that, although language and history are structured by colonialism and are inescapable, there is a huge potential for translation within these terms. Borges’ ‘Pierre Menard, Autor del Quijote’ demonstrates the form of texts’ continual translation in afterlife by describing a text that is verbally identical to the text it ‘translates,’ yet is nevertheless different in ‘meaning’ from its original. Borges’ fiction also highlights the endless potential for translation that is inherent to all texts. Through four chapters, this thesis develops a model of textuality that understands literature as defined by an almost endless potential for translation. The value of reading texts in the terms of ‘afterlife’ is to emphasise literature’s immense potential: all texts are continually translated in relation to language, history and textuality, and continually reveal further texts.

No description available.

Notre hypothèse est la suivante : pour des raisons différentes et avec des méthodes différentes, Derrida et Goodman ont, chacun, ébranlé l’un des deux piliers qui sous-tendent l’essentiel de la tradition philosophique. Derrida, par le jeu subtil de la différance, a fait vaciller la vaste entreprise de mise en ordre. Goodman, par la profusion de mondes construits et irréductibles les uns aux autres, remet en cause l’aspiration à l’unité. Nous avons tenté d’établir que la métaphysique s’est développée dans une dialectique de l’un et de l’ordre, se rétablissant sur l’un de ses pilastres quand l’autre faiblissait. Si donc les soubassements de l’histoire philosophique devaient être revisités – peut-être révisés – il serait fructueux d’user simultanément des propositions derridiennes et goodmaniennes. C’est l’originalité de ce projet. Il s’agit, pour neutraliser la récupération dialectique par l’autre pilier (par l’unité quand l’ordre faillit ou par la mise en ordre dans la multitude s’immisce) d’interroger la tradition suivant le double impératif de la déconstruction et du nominalisme, suivant le double prisme du dés-ordre de Derrida et du multiple de Goodman. Nous avons tenté d’établir que l’efficace d’une remise en cause du « mythe de l’un » ne peut se faire sans ébranler le « mythe de l’ordre ». Considérer conjointement les systèmes (ou des dé-systématisations) de Derrida et Goodman serait donc, suivant ce dessein, non seulement utile mais presque indispensable. Chacun d’eux permet d’éviter la récupération dialectique du schème de l’autre. L’étude est menée à partir d’un inconfort partagé face au concept de vérité. / Our hypothesis is the following : for different reasons and with different methods, Derrida and Goodman have both deconstructed one of the pillars of the Western philosophical tradition. Derrida, using the subtleties of the differance concept, has shaken the general entreprise of « organisation ». On the other hand, Goodman, by considering numerous constructed worlds that cannot be reduced one to the other, questions the desire of unity. We have tried to establish that metaphysics has developed in a dialectic articulation of order and unity, using one when the other fails. If the groundings of the history of philosophy were then to be revisited, it would be useful — if not necessary — to use simultaneously the derridean and goodmanian views. This the originality of this project. To break the dialectic mechanics using order to cure multiplicity, or the other way round, we have reconsidered the tradition using both deconstruction and nominalism, Derrida’s disorder and Goodman’s diversity. We have tried to show that the efficiency of the questioning of the « unity myth » depends on how far the « order myth » has been revised. Considering simultaneously both Derrida’s and Goodman’s systems allows to avoid the dialectic neutralisation of the proposal. The study is performed through the question of truth.

Este trabalho consiste em investigar as marcas do pensamento da desconstrução, em especial da filosofia de Jacques Derrida, nos ensaios críticos de Silviano Santiago. No entanto, o objetivo não se esgota em uma visada meramente expositiva, ou seja, apenas colocar em relevo as noções propostas pelo filósofo argelino em suas obras que por ventura apareçam nos ensaios selecionados crítico literário. Mais do que isso, pretende-se mostrar como a articulação desconstrutora é útil ao crítico na discussão de seus próprios temas, principalmente a questão da dependência cultural. Foram selecionados ensaios de suas coletâneas publicadas no fim do século XX e início do XXI, de modo a evidenciar um eixo temático que perpassa a sua obra, voltada a pensar os esquemas cristalizados de trocas culturais, a partir de questionamentos amplos que visam a subverter as hierarquias estabelecidas, abrindo espaço para a alteridade do outro como diferença, mediante o aporte da noção derridiana de différance. No que concerne especificamente aos estudos literários, serão apresentadas as leituras que Santiago faz das estratégias estéticas que reiteram, deslocam ou reiteram para deslocar os paradigmas de globalização, considerando a literatura como uma modalidade discursiva inserida no campo mais amplo da cultura, afinando sua discussão com as estratégias desconstrutoras de Derrida / This work consists in investigate the marks of the thought of deconstruction, in particular the philosophy of Jacques Derrida, on the critical essays of Silviano Santiago. However, the aim does not end in a purely exposition, that is to highlight the notions proposed by the Algerian philosopher in his works that may eventually appear in the selected essays of the critic. More than that, we intend to show how the deconstructive joint is useful for the critical discussion of Santiagos own subjects, especially the theme of cultural dependency. Published collections in the late twentieth century and early twenty-first of his essays were selected, in order to show the main theme that runs through his work, dedicated to think the crystallized schemes of cultural exchanges, making extensive considerations which aims for subvert established hierarchies, opening space for the others alterity, for the others as difference, through the contribution of Derrida's notion of différance. Regarding specifically to literary studies, Santiagos readings of the aesthetic strategies which reiterates, dislocates or reaffirm to shift the paradigms of globalization will be presented, considering the literature as a discursive modality inserted in the larger field of culture, tuning his discussion with the deconstructive strategies of Derrida

Este trabalho consiste em investigar as marcas do pensamento da desconstrução, em especial da filosofia de Jacques Derrida, nos ensaios críticos de Silviano Santiago. No entanto, o objetivo não se esgota em uma visada meramente expositiva, ou seja, apenas colocar em relevo as noções propostas pelo filósofo argelino em suas obras que por ventura apareçam nos ensaios selecionados crítico literário. Mais do que isso, pretende-se mostrar como a articulação desconstrutora é útil ao crítico na discussão de seus próprios temas, principalmente a questão da dependência cultural. Foram selecionados ensaios de suas coletâneas publicadas no fim do século XX e início do XXI, de modo a evidenciar um eixo temático que perpassa a sua obra, voltada a pensar os esquemas cristalizados de trocas culturais, a partir de questionamentos amplos que visam a subverter as hierarquias estabelecidas, abrindo espaço para a alteridade do outro como diferença, mediante o aporte da noção derridiana de différance. No que concerne especificamente aos estudos literários, serão apresentadas as leituras que Santiago faz das estratégias estéticas que reiteram, deslocam ou reiteram para deslocar os paradigmas de globalização, considerando a literatura como uma modalidade discursiva inserida no campo mais amplo da cultura, afinando sua discussão com as estratégias desconstrutoras de Derrida / This work consists in investigate the marks of the thought of deconstruction, in particular the philosophy of Jacques Derrida, on the critical essays of Silviano Santiago. However, the aim does not end in a purely exposition, that is to highlight the notions proposed by the Algerian philosopher in his works that may eventually appear in the selected essays of the critic. More than that, we intend to show how the deconstructive joint is useful for the critical discussion of Santiagos own subjects, especially the theme of cultural dependency. Published collections in the late twentieth century and early twenty-first of his essays were selected, in order to show the main theme that runs through his work, dedicated to think the crystallized schemes of cultural exchanges, making extensive considerations which aims for subvert established hierarchies, opening space for the others alterity, for the others as difference, through the contribution of Derrida's notion of différance. Regarding specifically to literary studies, Santiagos readings of the aesthetic strategies which reiterates, dislocates or reaffirm to shift the paradigms of globalization will be presented, considering the literature as a discursive modality inserted in the larger field of culture, tuning his discussion with the deconstructive strategies of Derrida

By framing his deconstruction of Plato’s Phaedrus and Timaeus as a response to Platonism, Jacques Derrida overlooks the possibility of a Platonic philosophy beyond dogma and doctrine. This thesis argues that Derrida’s deconstructions target a particularly Platonist abstraction of the dialogues, and thus, his critique relies on the underlying assumption that Plato defends the metaphysics of presence. Derrida attempts to show how the thesis that Being is presence undermines itself in both dialogues through hints of différance like pharmakon and khôra. To answer the Derridean critique, I analyze the hermeneutics of Derrida’s deconstruction of Plato and identify what in the dialogues lies beyond the limits Derrida’s reading, for example Derrida’s notable exclusion of ἔρως.