Occasional Deconstructions

Julian Wolfreys

Description

In Occasional Deconstructions, Julian Wolfreys challenges the notion that deconstruction is a critical methodology, offering instead a number of reintroductions or reorientations to the texts of Jacques Derrida and the idea or possibility of deconstructions. Proceeding from specific readings of various texts (both film and literary), as well as mobilizing a number of issues from Derrida's recent work surrounding questions of ethics, politics, and identity, Wolfreys considers the role of deconstruction in broader academic and institutional contexts, and questions whether, in fact, deconstruction can be called upon to function as theory at all.

In this book, Wolfreys suggests that the patient, necessary work of reading, in which response and responsibility to the other has a chance to manifest itself, is necessary to the always political and ethical tracing of the material and the historical. He also contends that reading should be an encounter that gives place to an acknowledgment of the other, and that this singular act by which one is introduced to the other can never be programmed.

Acknowledgments
Introduction

PART ONE: FALSE STARTS

1. Reflecting on the Occasions of Introduction: Justifying the Unjustifiable or, Beginning Again

PART TWO: IDENTITIES IN RUINS

2. Uncanny Temporalities, Haunting Occasions: Sunset Boulevard
3. Biography's Ruins: The Afterlife of Mary Shelley
4. Between: Speculations

PART THREE: APPARITIONING

5. Eternity and a Day or, an "Endless Foreword": Tout dire
6. Citation’s Haunt: Spectres of Derrida
7. Occasions of Trauma and Testimony: Witnessing, Memory, and Responsibility

PART FOUR: AFFIRMATIVE RESISTANCES

8. Origins of Deconstruction? Deconstruction, that which arrives (if it arrives at all)
9. Hauntology or the Political? (or, No Politics, Not Now): Always Already Deceived
10. Letter to Martin McQuillan, Concerning "the New International": The Indelible Marx of Haunting

PART FIVE: READING TO COME

11. Guilty Reading

Notes

Works Cited

Index of Proper Names

Sujets

• Philosophie
• Philosophie du langage
• Philosophie de la langue
• Literary theory

Informations

• Publié par: State University of New York Press
• Date de parution: 01 février 2012
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9780791484432
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

Extrait

Occasional Deconstructions

Julian Wolfreys

Occasional Deconstructions

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Occasional Deconstructions

Julian Wolfreys

State University of New York Press

Published by State University of New York Press, Albany

© 2004 State University of New York

All rights reserved

Printed in the United States of America

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For information, address State University of New York Press, 90 State Street, Suite 700, Albany, NY 12207

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Library of Congress CataloginginPublication Data

Wolfreys, Julian, 1958– Occasional deconstructions / Julian Wolfreys. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0791462250 (alk. paper) — ISBN 0791462269 (pbk. : alk.paper) 1. Desconstruction. 2. Literature, Modern—History and criticism. I. Title.

PN98.D43W65 2004 809'.04—dc22

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

2003068659

Acknowledgments

Introduction

1.

2.

3.

4.

5.

6.

PART ONE

FALSE STARTS

Reflecting on the Occasions of Introduction: Unjustifiable or, Beginning Again

PART TWO

C O N T E N T S

Justifying the

IDENTITIES IN RUINS

Uncanny Temporalities, Haunting Occasions:Sunset Boulevard

Biography’s Ruins:

The Afterlife ofMary Shelley

Between: Speculations

PART THREE

APPARITIONING

Eternity and a Day or, an “Endless Foreword”:Tout dire

Citation’s Haunt:

Spectres of Derrida

v

vii

1

15

35

61

87

115

137

vi

7.

8.

9.

Contents

Occasions of Trauma and Testimony: and Responsibility

PART FOUR

Witnessing, Memory,

AFFIRMATIVE RESISTANCES

Origins of Deconstruction? Deconstruction, that which arrives (if it arrives at all)

Hauntology or the Political? (or, No Politics, Not Now): Always Already Deceived

10. Letter to Martin McQuillan, Concerning“the New International”:The Indelible Marx of Haunting

PART FIVE

11. Guilty Reading

Notes

Works Cited

Index of Proper Names

READING TO COME

161

191

209

227

249

303

355

371

A C K N O W L E D G M E N T S

Any statement of thanks will always resort to the formulaic. The attempt to add something “more” to the process only runs the risk of sounding even more like the same old thing. So, no more words, as I’ve already said too much, and can only say that the occasions of gratitude are many and sincere. Donald Ault, Joan Brandt, Mary Ann Caws, Claire Colebrook, So phie Croisy, Thomas Docherty, Jonathan Dollimore, Kate Flint, Greg Freeman, Regenia Gagnier, Afshin Hafizi, Werner Hamacher, Terry Har pold, Kevin Hart, Susan Hegeman, James R. Kincaid, Peggy Kamuf, Roman Kazmin, Brandon Kershner, John Leavey, Martin McQuillan, J. Hillis Miller, Thomas Pepper, David Punter, JeanMichel Rabaté, John Ronan, Avital Ronell, Nicholas Royle, Phil Wegner, Kenneth Womack, Fred Young—thank you all. As the introduction discusses, several chapters in this volume were first given as conference presentations and the signs of their address have been retained, although all have been reworked extensively, largely as a result of received comments. A number of the other chapters, or parts thereof, have previously appeared in print; all have been substantially re vised and extended for the purposes of the present volume. A significantly different version of chapter one appeared as “Justifying the Unjustifiable” in Julian Wolfreys, ed.,The Derrida Reader: Writing Performances(Ed inburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1998); chapter two appeared in much shorter form as “Hollywood Gothic/Gothic Hollywood” in Andrew Smith and Geoff Wallace, eds.,Gothic Modernisms(London: Palgrave, 2000); a much shorter, partial version of chapter three first appeared as “The Gothic and Liminal Lives of Mary Shelley” in Martin McQuillan, ed., Muriel Spark in Theory(London: Palgrave, 2000); a shorter version of chapter five, “Eternity and a Day or, ‘an Endless Foreword’:Tout dire,”

vii

viii

Acknowledgments

was first published as “Eternity . . . and a Day: an ‘Endless Foreword’,”in Martin McQuillan, ed.,Deconstruction Reading Politics(Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 2000); chapter six first appeared in Ger man, as “Der Spuk das Zitate” in Nils Plath and Volker Pantenburg, eds., Anfuehren—Vorfuehren—Anfuehren: Das Zeitat in Literatur und Theo rie(Bielefeld: Aiesthesis Verlag, 2000) and, in another shorter version, in English, inMosaic35:1 (March 2002); a shorter version of chapter seven appeared as “Trauma and Testimonial Criticism” in Julian Wolfreys, ed., Introducing Criticism at the TwentyFirst Century(Edinburgh: Edin burgh University Press); chapter ten first appeared in different form as “Letter to Martin McQuillan à propos of ‘The New International’,” inPar allax, Fall 7:3 (July–September 2001).

I N T R O D U C T I O N

Hereis the enigma of this situation in which I get lost; but it isthis enigma that erases the difference between calculative rationality and its other; andthisenigma complicates and entangles all questions of decision and responsibility. One has to know, one has to know it. But, since the moment in which the decision is made is heterogeneous to knowing, I say it very firmly and unconditionally, but I inscribe this unconditionality on the trembling nonlimit that I have just said. And I could, naturally, give a great many examples; it is the law of every thing I write and of everything that happens to me[qui m’arrive]. Each time I write a text, it is “on occasion,” occasional, for some oc casion. I have never planned to write a text, everything I have done, even the most composite of my books, were occasioned by a question. My concern with the date and the signature confirms that.

Jacques Derrida

All metaphors are (by profession) equivocal. And there is scarce any word that is not made equivocal by divers contextures of speech, or by diversity of pronunciation and gesture.

This equivocation of names maketh it difficult to recover those con ceptions for which the name was ordained; and that not only in the language of other men, wherein we are to consider the drift, and oc casion, and contexture of the speech, as well as the words them selves; but also in our own discourse, which being derived from the custom and common use of speech, representeth not unto us our own concepts.

1

Thomas Hobbes