Jacques Derrida's lecture entitled "How to Avoid Speaking: Denials", given in Jerusalem in 1986, responds both to those who subsume his project within negative theology and to those that ignore their interrelation. The former fail to see that while negative theology is oriented towards ineffable union with the divine, deconstruction radically denies the possibility of this union. The latter, however, read negative theology solely in the context of this ineffable union, ignoring the possibility of a second apophatic language whose critique of language is itself so radical that it engages in a paradoxcical self-critique that denies, if not union itself, at least the possibility of speaking about union. This second, concurrent language has a distinct family resemblance to Derrida's own deconstructive project, for it embraces the radically negative denials of differance. This study will first present a critique of those who offer either an affirmative or negative answer to the question "Is deconstruction a form of negative theology?", arguing instead that Derrida denies all answers. Its final step will analyze the similarities between negative theology's escape from the silence of pure denial--prayer--and Derrida's own means of escaping the silence summoned when he asks: "How to avoid speaking?"

Thesis--Cologne, 1976. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references (p. 180-187).

Thesis--Cologne, 1976. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references (p. 180-187).

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Several commentators have argued that the focus within political theory in recent decades on abstraction rather than 'reality' has left it with has nothing to say to political actors. On these grounds, some have even expressed concern regarding the discipline's future. As a reply to these concerns, I introduce in this thesis the scholarship and political career of the Italian philosopher Massimo Cacciari. Cacciari shares many goals with Anglophone political theorists, but neither his scholarship nor his practice have engaged in the kind of intellectual abstraction which they now find so troubling. Drawing from Cacciari's philosophy, political career, and interventions as a public intellectual, I show how his understanding of real-world conflicts and contradictions begins with a commitment to what I call his 'geophilosophy of the archipelago', which regards the foundations of human knowledge to be irreducibly plural. A commitment to irreducibly plural foundations means that philosophers and political actors must discard what Cacciari views as 'enchantment' with the possibility of ultimate or absolute resolution of all political discord. In return, however, he argues that hopeful political engagement is still possible, because political actors remain able to cope in material and semiotic terms with the complex realities they face. I suggest that serious consideration of Cacciari's example of recognising irreducible plurality, coupled with a disenchanted engagement with both the material and the semiotic dimensions of political life, offers a compelling alternative orientation to the world that may suggest new ways forward in political theory.

Qu'en est-il de la communication de l'impossible dans son rapport au pouvoir du langage ? En révélant la face a-dialectique du langage littéraire, Maurice Blanchot et Georges Bataille, liés par une amitié essentielle, ont redéployé l’espace désoeuvré de l’Impossible comme espace scripturaire. La présente étude s’est articulée en trois parties, regroupant chacune quatre chapitres. La première s’est intéressée à la nomination comme stricte révélation de la négativité, d’une part, et de l’altérité, d’autre part. Elle a analysé les stratégies de contestation du discours dialectique adoptées en vue de redessiner un nouvel espace communautaire grevé d’absence. Cette dernière, induisant par ailleurs le mouvement infini de la répétition, ouvre l’exigence scripturaire à l’in-fini du re-dire. La seconde a mis au centre de ses préoccupations, à l’exemple des auteurs eux-mêmes, la mort. Liée au déploiement scripturaire, la mort creuse littéralement le Dire dans lequel domine l’oscillation entre pouvoir et impouvoir. La dimension thanatique des œuvres des deux auteurs convoque les notions de limite, de transgression, de dehors, de chance et de neutre qui envisagent toutes l’ouverture de l’expérience scripturaire sur son impossible horizon. La dernière partie, quant à elle, a mis en évidence la manière dont l’écriture, en son mouvement disjoint et imaginaire, s’abstrait du domaine du possible en s’ouvrant finalement sur le silence dont elle se fait complice pour ouvrir le Dire au partage de l’Impossible. / This thesis discusses the saying of the Impossible in its relationship to the power of language in the works of Maurice Blanchot and Georges Bataille. By unveiling the a-dialectical aspect of the literary language, Maurice Blanchot and Georges Bataille, who were bound by an essential friendship, deployed anew the idle space of the Impossible as a writerly space. This study is composed of three parts, each divided into four chapters. The first part discusses nomination as a strict unveiling of negativity on the one hand, and of alterity on the other hand, before analysing the strategies of contesting the dialectical discourse which were adopted by both writers with a view of delineating a new community space marked by absence. By inducing an endless movement of repetition, absence is shown to open the writerly exigence to the infiniteness of re-saying. The second part focuses on death as explored by both writers themselves. As linked to the writerly deployment, death literally enacts a saying dominated by the oscillation between Power and Unpower. The thanatical dimension of the works of both authors relies on the notions of limits, transgression, exteriority, chance and neutre, all of which lead to the opening of the writerly experience on its impossible horizon. The third part highlights how writing, in its disjointed and imaginary movement, abstracts itself from the realm of the possible by opening itself to the silence and becoming thus its accomplice to open the saying to the sharing of the Impossible.

Doctorat en philosophie et lettres / info:eu-repo/semantics/nonPublished