This thesis identifies and explores a ‘return to Freud’ in the work of Jacques Derrida. Resemblances between Derrida’s method of deconstruction and the therapeutic procedure of psychoanalysis have long been a source of debate among critics. Is deconstruction little more than a psychoanalytic reading of the history of philosophy, or is Freud a Derridean avant la lettre? Revealing this dilemma to be a false one, this thesis challenges major interpreters of Derrida such as Jonathan Culler and Gayatari Chakravorty Spivak. By developing Derrida’s well-known yet little understood concept of différance, it argues that this dilemma stems from an inadequate understanding of Derrida’s treatment of time. The structure of temporality implied by différance entails that the meaning of the past is continually reconstituted in its relationship to an ever-evolving present. Far from dissolving the importance of Freud’s contribution, this structure allows Derrida to circumvent nebulous notions of ‘influence’ and ‘indebtedness’ while still engaging psychoanalysis as a key theoretical resource in his own project of deconstruction. A productive engagement with psychoanalytic theory is shown to inform every major stage of the philosopher’s career, from his early phenomenological work to his later reflections on the terrorist attacks of 9/11. Derrida repeatedly turns to Freud as a crucial interlocutor in interrogating a number of philosophical problems encountered in his own work. These problems include the nature of time, space, and memory; the role of the fictive in scientific discourse; the question of the archive; the interdependence of the psyche and technology; and the relationship between politics and the unconscious. At a theoretical level, this thesis provides a detailed account of Derrida’s notion of spacing, arguing that the unconditional belatedness entailed by différance calls us to a difficult, dual responsibility: both towards the legator of an inheritance (that is, towards the textual legacy Freud has bequeathed to us) and towards the unforeseeable future contexts in which this inheritance will require transformation. The discourse of deconstruction, it concludes, enacts a careful negotiation of these two demands.

Submitted by Luciana Ferreira (lucgeral@gmail.com) on 2018-03-29T11:13:07Z No. of bitstreams: 2 Dissertação - Murilo Gonçalves dos Santos - 2018.pdf: 1330525 bytes, checksum: 8db093afbfdb2c921a3bd7c11efc306d (MD5) license_rdf: 0 bytes, checksum: d41d8cd98f00b204e9800998ecf8427e (MD5) / Approved for entry into archive by Luciana Ferreira (lucgeral@gmail.com) on 2018-03-29T11:39:29Z (GMT) No. of bitstreams: 2 Dissertação - Murilo Gonçalves dos Santos - 2018.pdf: 1330525 bytes, checksum: 8db093afbfdb2c921a3bd7c11efc306d (MD5) license_rdf: 0 bytes, checksum: d41d8cd98f00b204e9800998ecf8427e (MD5) / Made available in DSpace on 2018-03-29T11:39:29Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 2 Dissertação - Murilo Gonçalves dos Santos - 2018.pdf: 1330525 bytes, checksum: 8db093afbfdb2c921a3bd7c11efc306d (MD5) license_rdf: 0 bytes, checksum: d41d8cd98f00b204e9800998ecf8427e (MD5) Previous issue date: 2018-02-26 / Conselho Nacional de Pesquisa e Desenvolvimento Científico e Tecnológico - CNPq / Abstract: The work is subsumed on the objective of examining the theory of history developed by Raymond Aron (1905 - 1983), accounted primarily in relation to its connection with german thought. The process of constitution of his theoretical-epistemological, as well as political thought was deeply marked by the strenuous presence of german philosophical conceptions, whose fruitful dialogue took place, especially, during the decade of 1930, which resulted in the conception of his doctoral thesis, namely, Introduction à la philosophie de l'histoire: Essai sur les limits de l'objectivité Historique. The defense of this thesis is the representation of a process marked by the struggle not only of generations, but also of different systems of thought. The question of this work is, in this sense, precisely the critical analysis of the "appropriation" presented by the work of Aron, from the confrontation of the works he carried out in the 1930s with the tradition of which he is considered to belong and, finally, to prescribe its specificity. This discussion is embedded in a larger context which deals with the reception of german philosophical and sociological thought in France. Aron was from his formation linked to german philosophy, initially to Kant and, later, to phenomenology, marxism, to the philosophy of W. Dilthey, as well as to the Neo-Kantianism of the Baden School, and especially to Max Weber. This period is decisive for the constitution of his theory of history or, in Aron's terms, of his "critical philosophy of history", based on the "critique of historical reason". A theory distinguished mainly by the search of the limits of historical objectivity and by an ontological-existential perspective. / O trabalho encontra-se subsumido no objetivo do exame da teoria da história desenvolvida por Raymond Aron (1905 - 1983) considerada, primordialmente, em relação ao seu vínculo com o pensamento alemão. O processo de constituição do seu pensamento teórico-epistemológico, bem como político, foi profundamente marcado pela forte presença de concepções filosóficas alemãs, cujo fecundo diálogo foi realizado, especialmente, durante a década de 1930, o qual resultou na concepção de sua tese de doutoramento, a saber, Introduction à la philosophie de l'histoire: Essai sur les limites de l'objectivité Historique. A defesa dessa tese é a representação de um processo marcado pelo embate não só de gerações, mas de sistemas de pensamento distintos. A questão de trabalho é, nesse sentido, justamente a análise crítica dessa “apropriação” apresentada pela obra de Aron, a partir da confrontação de seus trabalhos realizados na década de 1930 com a tradição da qual se julga pertencente e, finalmente, da determinação de sua especificidade. Esta discussão está inserida em um contexto maior que trata da recepção do pensamento filosófico e sociológico alemão na França. Aron esteve desde a sua formação ligado à filosofia alemã, inicialmente a Kant e, posteriormente, com a fenomenologia, o marxismo, com a filosofia de W. Dilthey, bem como com o neokantismo da Escola de Baden e, principalmente, com Max Weber. Este período é determinante para a constituição de sua teoria da história ou, nos termos de Aron, de sua “filosofia crítica da história”, baseada na “crítica da razão histórica”. Uma teoria marcada principalmente pela busca dos limites da objetividade histórica e por uma perspectiva ontológico-existencial.

This thesis examines Bonnefoy’s cultivation of the performative aspects of the poetic act in his later collections of poetry. It investigates the poet’s use of the theatrical structures of poetic performance, their temporal and spatial dynamics, to deconstruct conceptual or representative modes of thought. It examines how Bonnefoy uses apostrophes to insentient phenomena and addresses to an unidentified other in his attempts to open language up to the finitude and sharing of existence. Working within language, against language, the poet cultivates what he describes as ‘un savoir, tout négatif et instable qu’il soit, que je puis peut-être nommer la vérité de la parole’. The first chapter of this thesis investigates how the image of the ephemeral flame becomes a model for a finite poetic performance in ‘La Terre’. The second chapter scrutinises how Bonnefoy makes the signifying function of language ‘passive’ to the inappropriable excess of material presence in Début et fin de la neige. The third chapter, analysing ‘La Voix lointaine’, explores how Bonnefoy dramatises the experience of self-presence as the act of listening to a distant voice. The fourth chapter, investigating the relationship between finitude and form in ‘L’Heure présente’, analyses how the dissolution of form gives rise to a form that is always à venir, a dynamic, ‘un possible’.

The thesis takes the French revue Lignes (1987-present) as its object of study to provide a new account of French intellectual culture over the last twenty-five years. Whilst there are now many studies covering the role of such revues throughout the twentieth-century, the majority of such monographs extend no further than the mid-1980s: the major novelty of this thesis is extending these accounts up until the present moment. It is largely assumed that a reaction against the Marxist and structuralist theories of the 1960s and 1970s led to embrace of liberalism and an intellectual drift to the right in France from the 1980s onwards: whilst largely supporting this account, the thesis attempts to nuance this narrative of the fate of the intellectual left in the following years by showing the persistence of what can be called a politicised 'French theory' in Lignes, and a returning left-wing militancy in recent years. In doing so, it will both reveal under-studied aspects of well-known thinkers, such as Jean-Luc Nancy, Jacques Rancière and Alain Badiou, as their thought develops through their participation in a collaborative, periodical publication, and introduce lesser known thinkers who have not received an extended readership in Anglophone spheres. Lignes also argues for the continued persistence and relevance of the thought of a previous generation of thinkers, notably Georges Bataille, Maurice Blanchot and Dionys Mascolo, and the thesis concludes by examining the potential role 'French Theory' could still have in France. Furthermore, as revues provide a unique nexus of intellectual, cultural, social and political concerns, the thesis also provides a unique history of France from the fall of the Berlin Wall to the 2007 financial crisis and the Arab Spring. Much of the thesis is concerned with contextualising intellectual debates within a period characterised by the moralisation of discourses, a return of religion, the global installation of neo-liberalism and the eruption of immigration as a controversial European issue. From a relatively theoretical and politically stable position to the left of the Parti socialiste, Lignes therefore provides a privileged vantage point for the mutations in French social and cultural life throughout the period.

Bien qu’elle n’ait jamais été abordée de front par Jacques Derrida, la question du pervertible se conçoit à maintes reprises dans son œuvre sous l’angle de paradoxes et par le biais de questions comme celles de l’hospitalité ou de la promesse. Cette thèse explore ainsi les limites et la portée de la notion protéiforme de pervertibilité, ses enjeux et ses manifestations, de même que son rapport au langage et au sens. Pluridisciplinaire, elle se penche sur les concepts philosophiques et sur les dispositifs textuels et littéraires témoignant de cette pervertibilité en acte dans l’ensemble du corpus derridien. / Although Jacques Derrida never addressed it head-on, the problem of pervertibility is often conceptualized in his work by way of paradoxes and questions, such as those of hospitality and the promise. This doctoral thesis explores the limits and scope of the protean notion of pervertibility, its stakes and its manifestations, as well as its relationship with language and meaning. Multidisciplinary in nature, it simultaneously focuses on philosophical concepts and on the textual and literary devices that bespeak this pervertibility, operative throughout Derrida’s entire body of work.