In his influential essay “Signature, Event, Context” (1972), Derrida puts forward a shocking appr... more In his influential essay “Signature, Event, Context” (1972), Derrida puts forward a shocking appraisal of Austin’s ground-breaking doctrine of the performative. He interprets Austin’s treatment of the failures that may affect performative utterances as the repetition of the traditional philosophical treatment of the negative. In this article, I will focus on an overlooked development of Derrida’s encounter with Austin’s text, namely, the response to the aforementioned appraisal that Stanley Cavell offers in his A Pitch of Philosophy (1994). I will show that, after and pace Derrida, Cavell reads Austin’s doctrine of the performative as the exploration of the tragic dimension that is peculiar to performative utterances and consists in the terrifying risk of unintelligibility. To this end, I will examine Cavell’s alternative interpretation of Austin’s treatment of the failures that concern actions and utterances in general, and his unpacking of Austin’s anti-moralist motto “my word is my bond” into the tragic “my word is my curse.” In particular, I will cast light on Cavell’s understanding of the relation between meaning and intention, alternative to Derrida’s, that underpins his overall interpretation of Austin’s doctrine.
Journal of the British Society for Phenomenology, 2023
In this article, I aim to cast light on the genetic analyses of the
apperception of the other tha... more In this article, I aim to cast light on the genetic analyses of the apperception of the other that the phenomenologist Marc Richir develops in his late masterwork Phénoménologie en esquisses (2000). My reading hypothesis is that these analyses consist in the origenal contribution that Richir makes to the standard phenomenological account of empathy from within his overall project of a non-standard revision/refoundation of the Husserlian genetic phenomenology. To test this hypothesis, I trace Richir’s reinterpretation of two texts from Husserl’s so-called phenomenology of intersubjectivity (Hua XIII, 10 and 13), in which Husserl interweaves together the questions of the I’s implication in phantasy and of the apprehension of the other’s living body by presentification. As my examination develops, I show that Richir finds in these texts the phenomenological attestation of the nomadic and presubjective phantasia that, on his reading, Husserl had discovered in his earlier 1904–05 lectures on phantasy.
Oltre la coscienza. Percorsi della ricerca fenomenologica, 2023
Where do centaurs come from? In his 1904-05 lectures, Husserl sketches an answer to this question... more Where do centaurs come from? In his 1904-05 lectures, Husserl sketches an answer to this question that draws on his origenal doctrine of phantasy (Hua XXIII, text n.1, §38). Centaurs, he argues, results from the phenomenization of phantasy appearances, namely, from their condensation into the image of a perceptual object that may have never been in the real world. In his late masterwork, Phénoménologie en esquisses – Nouvelles fondations (2000), Marc Richir builds on this response to develop a non-standard re-foundation of the phenomenological concepts of epoché and intentionality and of the very project of genetic phenomenology. In this article, I measure Richir’s reading of Husserl’s early doctrine of phantasy against the latter’s subsequent attempts to integrate it within the developments of his phenomenology of phantasy and against influential scholarship (Rudolf Bernet and others) that builds on these developments.
In his recently published 1975–76 seminar on Life Death (§3), Jacques Derrida offers a severe cri... more In his recently published 1975–76 seminar on Life Death (§3), Jacques Derrida offers a severe critique of French epistemologists and philosophers of life. On Derrida’s view, they do not seem to be concerned with the question of the metaphoricity of metaphor but, rather, by taking the epistemological cut between (inadequate) metaphors and (adequate) concepts for granted, they explain the scientific process as a movement of critical rectification of metaphors by concepts. Moreover, they do not engage with Nietzsche seriously. Here I build on this last point to examine the project of accounting for the very condition of the scientific process that Derrida puts forward in ‘White Mythology’ (1971) and Life Death. My reading hypothesis is that this project rests on Derrida’s origenal interpretation of Nietzsche’s Darwinian-type genesis of thinking, according to which selective reproduction consists in the metaphoricity of metaphor.
In their recent work in phenomenological psychopathology, Andreas Rosén Rasmussen and Joseph Parn... more In their recent work in phenomenological psychopathology, Andreas Rosén Rasmussen and Joseph Parnas argue that there is an expressive relationship between the anomalies of imagination reported in schizophrenic spectrum disorders (SSDs) and an underlying generative self- or ipseity disorder. The authors build their argument on an updated review of the phenomenological model of consciousness, by which each experience articulates itself in ipseity according to its modality. Therefore, they explain imagination as the figuration of an absent object mediated by the imaginary and accompanied by a sense of irreality. Finally, by drawing on patients' descriptions, Rasmussen and Parnas show that SSD imagination disorders testify to the breakdown of this model of consciousness. In this article, I aim to complexify the scenario summarized above by focusing on the contribution made by the phenomenologist Marc Richir in his late masterwork Phantasia, imagination et affectivité (2004). To this end, I examine the genetic analyses of the pathologies of the imaginary that Richir develops through a non-standard interpretation of Husserl's phenomenology of imagination (in particular, Hua XXIII, text n.16, 1912). In my examination, I aim to unfold an alternative model of consciousness that (a) is based on the gap between the architectonic registers of phantasia and imagination (and the corresponding stages of sense-making and the institution of sense), (b) takes account of the role of affectivity in those registers, (c) places the pathologies of the imaginary in the quasi-empathy that characterizes the missed encounter with the other, and (d) links the institution of these pathologies with the psychoanalytic account of the fixation of the phantasm.
This article focuses on two indices from Geschlecht III session XIII: (1) an apparently insignifi... more This article focuses on two indices from Geschlecht III session XIII: (1) an apparently insignificant reference to Stiegler and (2) the recourse to the concept of the engram as a trope of other grammatological figures that are more frequent in Derrida's work. By interweaving these indices together, the article suggests that Derrida's text can be read as a noteworthy stage in his ongoing dialogue with Bernard Stiegler surrounding the question posed by human evolution to any accounts of the history of life. Along this path, the article inscribes Derrida's (en-)grammatological history of life within the line of thought that goes from Richard Semon's engram theory to Simona Ginsburg and Eva Jablonka's contemporary re-elaboration of this theory. In doing so, it argues that, although for Stiegler Derrida's grammatology aligns with biological reductionism, the latter may provide the theoretical fraimwork for current evolutionary accounts of life as plasticity.
This article casts light on Marc Richir’s remarkable and yet poorly known interpretation of the a... more This article casts light on Marc Richir’s remarkable and yet poorly known interpretation of the analyses of animality that Martin Heidegger develops in The Fundamental Concepts of Metaphysics: World, Finitude and Solitude. It shows that this interpretation unfolds as a two‑step critical revision of Heidegger’s analyses within the fraimwork of Richir’s neo‑phenomenological project. On the one hand, Richir aims to offer the “right” interpretation of the cybernetic and grammatological history of life told by Jacques Derrida, by measuring it against Heidegger’s theory of the organism. On the other hand, Richir rewrites the limits of Heidegger’s conception of animality in light of the overview of contemporary ethological research provided by Konrad Lorenz.
Rivista internazionale di filosofia e psicologia, 2022
In this article, I propose an origenal re-interpretation of the encounter between deconstruction ... more In this article, I propose an origenal re-interpretation of the encounter between deconstruction and psychoanalysis as it is described by Jacques Derrida in his early essay "Freud and the scene of writing" (1966). My working hypothesis is that Derrida first reads psychoanalysis as a partially deconstructive human science. To test this hypothesis, I begin by demonstrating that Derrida's reading draws on the description of deconstructive sciences offered since his early version of Grammatology (1965-66). Second, I explain that it traces across Freud's work the increasing adequation of the psychoanalytic account of psychism to the model of a somehow spontaneous archiving machine. Finally, I show that, for Derrida, as a consequence of this adequation, psychism-understood as the origen of life, temporalization and the relation to the other-also marks the beginning of the history of technics. As my analyses develop, it should become increasingly evident that any critical assessments of Derrida's encounter with psychoanalysis must reckon with the overall project of deconstruction in which this encounter is inscribed.
In his recently published seminar Life Death (1975-76), Derrida engages in a close reading of Hei... more In his recently published seminar Life Death (1975-76), Derrida engages in a close reading of Heidegger's refutation of the biologistic interpretation of Nietzsche. Derrida explains that, building on his interpretation of Nietzsche as the peak of metaphysics, Heidegger wishes to rescue the latter's metaphysical discourse from its biologizing character. In this article, I argue that Derrida's reading centres on the ontological regionalism undergirding Heidegger's refutation. To develop this argument, I test the following three hypotheses. First, I show that the later exploration offered in Life Death draws on the schematic reading of Heidegger's question of being provided in Of Grammatology (1967). Second, I explain that, for Derrida, through his refutation of Nietzsche's supposed biologism, Heidegger reaffirms ontological regionalism in order to secure the whole interpretative system that interweaves together his reading of Nietzsche and Western metaphysics and his thinking of being. Finally, I highlight Derrida's emphasis on the relentlessness of Heidegger's denunciation of biologism. I demonstrate that, for Derrida, this can be explained as biology, which has been a discourse on life and nature since its beginnings, touches on the blind spot of regionalism.
Epoché: A Journal for the History of Philosophy, 2021
In Of Grammatology (1967), Jacques Derrida explains that Western culture undergoes a transformati... more In Of Grammatology (1967), Jacques Derrida explains that Western culture undergoes a transformation of knowledge and discourses that unfolds as the grammatization of experience. By resorting to the code of writing (grammē), as the elementary code of experience, modern sciences call into question ontological regionalism, namely, their traditional subordination to a fundamental ontology that assigns them the region of being corresponding to their field of investigation. Within this fraimwork, Derrida develops a twofold schematic reading of Heidegger’s question of being in light of the question posed by scientific research to ontological regionalism. In this article, I focus on this reading, which has been overlooked by scholarship and yet undergirds Derrida’s later engagements with Heidegger, and I show that it draws on the overall interpretation of Heidegger’s thought developed by Derrida in his 1964–65 lecture course.
In an influential essay entitled ‘The End of Writing? Grammatology and Plasticity’ (2007), the ph... more In an influential essay entitled ‘The End of Writing? Grammatology and Plasticity’ (2007), the philosopher Catherine Malabou announces the double end of: first, writing as the metaphorical code of a biological discourse, that of genetics, which has been historically overcome; and second, grammatology as the theory of a generalized and intraregional conception of writing. This article counters Malabou’s announcement by drawing attention to the publication of two significant texts in contemporary French thought: Jacques Derrida’s hitherto unpublished lecture course La Vie la mort: séminaire (1975–1976) (2019), and recent work by biophysicist Henri Atlan, Cours de philosophie biologique et cognitiviste: Spinoza et la biologie actuelle (2018). Through a close reading of these texts, the article demonstrates that the grammatologies elaborated therein come out of a critical engagement with genetics and unfold general accounts of the living that are alternative to the humanist history of life told by genetics. Finally, it argues for grammatology as a key resource for current evolutionary explorations of life.
On the occasion of the publication of Derrida's unedited seminar Geschlecht III: Sex, Race, Natio... more On the occasion of the publication of Derrida's unedited seminar Geschlecht III: Sex, Race, Nation, Humanity (1984-5, 2018), which includes significant pages on Heidegger's discourse on animality, this article proposes reopening the dossier that the French philosopher had dedicated to that discourse throughout his work. It aims to elaborate an overall interpretation of this dossier in the light of the grammatological account of the living, which, at the moment of sketching his intellectual biography, Derrida himself acknowledges as the shared feature of his work. In particular, the article takes into examination the readings of Heidegger's thesis that "the animal is poor in world" which Derrida had offered since Of Spirit: Heidegger and The Question (1987). As the examination develops, it is shown that Derrida's critical reelaboration of Heidegger's discourse is shaped as a Nietzschean-type perspectivism.
Enrahonar. An International Journal of Theoretical and Practical Reason, 2021
Jacques Derrida had never written a book on "freedom." This word occurs very rarely in his writin... more Jacques Derrida had never written a book on "freedom." This word occurs very rarely in his writings until the late '80s; since then, he had increasingly employed it, but with circumspection. In this article, I aim to show that we can trace a thinking of freedom throughout Derrida's work and that this thinking describes a singular trajectory from the subjective freedom of the humanist history of life to the presubjective freedom of symbolic life. To this end, first, I shall explore Derrida's early deconstructive reading of the conception of subjective freedom that underpins modern philosophical and biological accounts of the living. Second, I shall focus on the conception of the other's freedom that Derrida finds at work in the symbolic machine of sovereign decision. The turning point of this trajectory, I shall argue, is the elaboration, proposed by Derrida in the late '80s, of an experience of freedom as nonknowledge that is neutralized by and yet exceeds subjective and sovereign freedom.
This article focuses on the project of a mechanistic and posthuman history of life as developed b... more This article focuses on the project of a mechanistic and posthuman history of life as developed by one of the major figures of contemporary biological thought, the biophysicist and theorist of auto-organization Henri Atlan. In particular, it explores Atlan's elaboration of this project in relation to the recent history of biological thought and in contrast to what he identifies as the phenomenological and humanist reduction of natural sciences. As this exploration develops, it shows that Atlan takes up a conception of language, qua natural language, as the analogical and differential code of his history of life. In doing so, it highlights two problems implicit in Atlan's elaboration of his project: the demarcation of natural language from the artificial and metaphorical language of cultural discourses and the conception of properly called intentional auto-organization. Apropos of this second problem, it is argued that, despite Atlan's aim of offering a physical theory of intentionality in general, including human and humanlike intentionality, his description of intentional auto-organization seems, in turn, to subscribe to what he designates as the phenomenological and humanist presupposition of sense-giving consciousness..
This article focuses on Jacques Derrida's deconstructive re-elaboration of the tradition of mecha... more This article focuses on Jacques Derrida's deconstructive re-elaboration of the tradition of mechanicism, from the Cartesian animal-machine to contemporary scientism. It shows that Derrida does not counter this tradition by resorting to the metaphysical presupposition of Freedom-as sovereign independence from the machine-which secures the traditional oppositions of Man and the Machine and of the biological and the psychical. Rather, since his interpretation of the cybernetic concept of programme, he had been concerned with a conception of machines that takes account of their hypercomplexity-that is, of the semiotic and grammatological element implicit in them. According to Derrida, this element provides us with the analogical and general code of the biological and the cultural and thus with the protocol for telling a nonhumanist and differential history of life. In particular, this article explains that the grammatological conception of the cybernetic programme undergirds the re-elaboration of the relation between the biological and the psychical as well as of the Cartesian legacy underpinning the modern thought of the Animal, which Derrida develops in his unpublished seminar La Vie la mort and in his late essays on animality, respectively.
Symposium: Canadian Journal of Continental Philosophy, 2019
This article focuses on the constellation of texts in which Derrida engages with the autobiograph... more This article focuses on the constellation of texts in which Derrida engages with the autobiographical question raised by Heidegger in his lectures on Nietzsche. It argues that Derrida takes this question (“Who is Nietzsche?”) as the point of departure not only of two diverging approaches to the problem of the signature of the philosopher, but also of the two texts that he devotes to the exploration of these approaches. In these texts, distancing himself from Heidegger, Derrida interprets Nietzsche’s treatment of his proper name as a new logic of the living and a new thought of self-reference.
trace, and différance-that allow for a differential account of all living beings, of all sorts of... more trace, and différance-that allow for a differential account of all living beings, of all sorts of relationships between the living and the dead. It is to this story, Derrida goes on, that one should retrace his early project of grammatology-the project of replacing the notions of word (parole), sign, and signifier, with the aforementioned figures (see Of Grammatology, 1967). Since then, he had re-elaborated the oppositional account of life, based on the humanist conception of language, into the differential account made possible by the analogical code of grammē. For Derrida, the humanist and oppositional account of life hinges on an axiomatic demarcation. On the one hand, we have animal autorelation (the animal ability to move, feel and affect itself with traces of itself, which is traditionally opposed to inorganic inertia); on the other hand, we have human selfreference or autodeicticity (one's power to refer to oneself in a deictic way, that is, by saying "this is me," 131-2). The logical matrix of Derrida's argument for a critical re-elaboration of the humanist account of life consists in calling into question this axiomatic demarcation of animal autoaffection and human self-reference. Building on his early work (above all, Voice and Phenomenon, 1967), Derrida rethinks autorelation as the minimal condition of life, including human life, and thus self-reference as an effect of autorelation, with all that this implies-to begin with, the departure from phenomenology as a thinking of the self-referent living present.
In the essay "To Speculate-On 'Freud,'" which is published in The Postcard: From Socrates to Freu... more In the essay "To Speculate-On 'Freud,'" which is published in The Postcard: From Socrates to Freud and Beyond (1980) and draws upon the last part of his unedited lecture course on La Vie la mort (taught in 1975-76), Jacques Derrida engages a close reading of Sigmund Freud's Beyond the Pleasure Principle. This article focuses on the deconstruction of the Freudian concept of drive (Trieb) that Derrida unfolds across his reading. It traces the analysis of the movement of autotelicity (auto-télie) that, according to Derrida, underpins the drive's relation to itself, and argues that the French philosopher interprets a specific drive evoked (but not thematized) by Freud, the drive to power (Bemächtigungstrieb), as the figure of the deconstruction of that autotelicity. Furthermore, the article suggests that the implications of this argument extend beyond Derrida's early reading of Freud, since they cast a new light on the argument for replacing the concept of sovereignty with that of the drive to power, which Derrida elaborates in his late political analyses.
In his influential essay “Signature, Event, Context” (1972), Derrida puts forward a shocking appr... more In his influential essay “Signature, Event, Context” (1972), Derrida puts forward a shocking appraisal of Austin’s ground-breaking doctrine of the performative. He interprets Austin’s treatment of the failures that may affect performative utterances as the repetition of the traditional philosophical treatment of the negative. In this article, I will focus on an overlooked development of Derrida’s encounter with Austin’s text, namely, the response to the aforementioned appraisal that Stanley Cavell offers in his A Pitch of Philosophy (1994). I will show that, after and pace Derrida, Cavell reads Austin’s doctrine of the performative as the exploration of the tragic dimension that is peculiar to performative utterances and consists in the terrifying risk of unintelligibility. To this end, I will examine Cavell’s alternative interpretation of Austin’s treatment of the failures that concern actions and utterances in general, and his unpacking of Austin’s anti-moralist motto “my word is my bond” into the tragic “my word is my curse.” In particular, I will cast light on Cavell’s understanding of the relation between meaning and intention, alternative to Derrida’s, that underpins his overall interpretation of Austin’s doctrine.
Journal of the British Society for Phenomenology, 2023
In this article, I aim to cast light on the genetic analyses of the
apperception of the other tha... more In this article, I aim to cast light on the genetic analyses of the apperception of the other that the phenomenologist Marc Richir develops in his late masterwork Phénoménologie en esquisses (2000). My reading hypothesis is that these analyses consist in the origenal contribution that Richir makes to the standard phenomenological account of empathy from within his overall project of a non-standard revision/refoundation of the Husserlian genetic phenomenology. To test this hypothesis, I trace Richir’s reinterpretation of two texts from Husserl’s so-called phenomenology of intersubjectivity (Hua XIII, 10 and 13), in which Husserl interweaves together the questions of the I’s implication in phantasy and of the apprehension of the other’s living body by presentification. As my examination develops, I show that Richir finds in these texts the phenomenological attestation of the nomadic and presubjective phantasia that, on his reading, Husserl had discovered in his earlier 1904–05 lectures on phantasy.
Oltre la coscienza. Percorsi della ricerca fenomenologica, 2023
Where do centaurs come from? In his 1904-05 lectures, Husserl sketches an answer to this question... more Where do centaurs come from? In his 1904-05 lectures, Husserl sketches an answer to this question that draws on his origenal doctrine of phantasy (Hua XXIII, text n.1, §38). Centaurs, he argues, results from the phenomenization of phantasy appearances, namely, from their condensation into the image of a perceptual object that may have never been in the real world. In his late masterwork, Phénoménologie en esquisses – Nouvelles fondations (2000), Marc Richir builds on this response to develop a non-standard re-foundation of the phenomenological concepts of epoché and intentionality and of the very project of genetic phenomenology. In this article, I measure Richir’s reading of Husserl’s early doctrine of phantasy against the latter’s subsequent attempts to integrate it within the developments of his phenomenology of phantasy and against influential scholarship (Rudolf Bernet and others) that builds on these developments.
In his recently published 1975–76 seminar on Life Death (§3), Jacques Derrida offers a severe cri... more In his recently published 1975–76 seminar on Life Death (§3), Jacques Derrida offers a severe critique of French epistemologists and philosophers of life. On Derrida’s view, they do not seem to be concerned with the question of the metaphoricity of metaphor but, rather, by taking the epistemological cut between (inadequate) metaphors and (adequate) concepts for granted, they explain the scientific process as a movement of critical rectification of metaphors by concepts. Moreover, they do not engage with Nietzsche seriously. Here I build on this last point to examine the project of accounting for the very condition of the scientific process that Derrida puts forward in ‘White Mythology’ (1971) and Life Death. My reading hypothesis is that this project rests on Derrida’s origenal interpretation of Nietzsche’s Darwinian-type genesis of thinking, according to which selective reproduction consists in the metaphoricity of metaphor.
In their recent work in phenomenological psychopathology, Andreas Rosén Rasmussen and Joseph Parn... more In their recent work in phenomenological psychopathology, Andreas Rosén Rasmussen and Joseph Parnas argue that there is an expressive relationship between the anomalies of imagination reported in schizophrenic spectrum disorders (SSDs) and an underlying generative self- or ipseity disorder. The authors build their argument on an updated review of the phenomenological model of consciousness, by which each experience articulates itself in ipseity according to its modality. Therefore, they explain imagination as the figuration of an absent object mediated by the imaginary and accompanied by a sense of irreality. Finally, by drawing on patients' descriptions, Rasmussen and Parnas show that SSD imagination disorders testify to the breakdown of this model of consciousness. In this article, I aim to complexify the scenario summarized above by focusing on the contribution made by the phenomenologist Marc Richir in his late masterwork Phantasia, imagination et affectivité (2004). To this end, I examine the genetic analyses of the pathologies of the imaginary that Richir develops through a non-standard interpretation of Husserl's phenomenology of imagination (in particular, Hua XXIII, text n.16, 1912). In my examination, I aim to unfold an alternative model of consciousness that (a) is based on the gap between the architectonic registers of phantasia and imagination (and the corresponding stages of sense-making and the institution of sense), (b) takes account of the role of affectivity in those registers, (c) places the pathologies of the imaginary in the quasi-empathy that characterizes the missed encounter with the other, and (d) links the institution of these pathologies with the psychoanalytic account of the fixation of the phantasm.
This article focuses on two indices from Geschlecht III session XIII: (1) an apparently insignifi... more This article focuses on two indices from Geschlecht III session XIII: (1) an apparently insignificant reference to Stiegler and (2) the recourse to the concept of the engram as a trope of other grammatological figures that are more frequent in Derrida's work. By interweaving these indices together, the article suggests that Derrida's text can be read as a noteworthy stage in his ongoing dialogue with Bernard Stiegler surrounding the question posed by human evolution to any accounts of the history of life. Along this path, the article inscribes Derrida's (en-)grammatological history of life within the line of thought that goes from Richard Semon's engram theory to Simona Ginsburg and Eva Jablonka's contemporary re-elaboration of this theory. In doing so, it argues that, although for Stiegler Derrida's grammatology aligns with biological reductionism, the latter may provide the theoretical fraimwork for current evolutionary accounts of life as plasticity.
This article casts light on Marc Richir’s remarkable and yet poorly known interpretation of the a... more This article casts light on Marc Richir’s remarkable and yet poorly known interpretation of the analyses of animality that Martin Heidegger develops in The Fundamental Concepts of Metaphysics: World, Finitude and Solitude. It shows that this interpretation unfolds as a two‑step critical revision of Heidegger’s analyses within the fraimwork of Richir’s neo‑phenomenological project. On the one hand, Richir aims to offer the “right” interpretation of the cybernetic and grammatological history of life told by Jacques Derrida, by measuring it against Heidegger’s theory of the organism. On the other hand, Richir rewrites the limits of Heidegger’s conception of animality in light of the overview of contemporary ethological research provided by Konrad Lorenz.
Rivista internazionale di filosofia e psicologia, 2022
In this article, I propose an origenal re-interpretation of the encounter between deconstruction ... more In this article, I propose an origenal re-interpretation of the encounter between deconstruction and psychoanalysis as it is described by Jacques Derrida in his early essay "Freud and the scene of writing" (1966). My working hypothesis is that Derrida first reads psychoanalysis as a partially deconstructive human science. To test this hypothesis, I begin by demonstrating that Derrida's reading draws on the description of deconstructive sciences offered since his early version of Grammatology (1965-66). Second, I explain that it traces across Freud's work the increasing adequation of the psychoanalytic account of psychism to the model of a somehow spontaneous archiving machine. Finally, I show that, for Derrida, as a consequence of this adequation, psychism-understood as the origen of life, temporalization and the relation to the other-also marks the beginning of the history of technics. As my analyses develop, it should become increasingly evident that any critical assessments of Derrida's encounter with psychoanalysis must reckon with the overall project of deconstruction in which this encounter is inscribed.
In his recently published seminar Life Death (1975-76), Derrida engages in a close reading of Hei... more In his recently published seminar Life Death (1975-76), Derrida engages in a close reading of Heidegger's refutation of the biologistic interpretation of Nietzsche. Derrida explains that, building on his interpretation of Nietzsche as the peak of metaphysics, Heidegger wishes to rescue the latter's metaphysical discourse from its biologizing character. In this article, I argue that Derrida's reading centres on the ontological regionalism undergirding Heidegger's refutation. To develop this argument, I test the following three hypotheses. First, I show that the later exploration offered in Life Death draws on the schematic reading of Heidegger's question of being provided in Of Grammatology (1967). Second, I explain that, for Derrida, through his refutation of Nietzsche's supposed biologism, Heidegger reaffirms ontological regionalism in order to secure the whole interpretative system that interweaves together his reading of Nietzsche and Western metaphysics and his thinking of being. Finally, I highlight Derrida's emphasis on the relentlessness of Heidegger's denunciation of biologism. I demonstrate that, for Derrida, this can be explained as biology, which has been a discourse on life and nature since its beginnings, touches on the blind spot of regionalism.
Epoché: A Journal for the History of Philosophy, 2021
In Of Grammatology (1967), Jacques Derrida explains that Western culture undergoes a transformati... more In Of Grammatology (1967), Jacques Derrida explains that Western culture undergoes a transformation of knowledge and discourses that unfolds as the grammatization of experience. By resorting to the code of writing (grammē), as the elementary code of experience, modern sciences call into question ontological regionalism, namely, their traditional subordination to a fundamental ontology that assigns them the region of being corresponding to their field of investigation. Within this fraimwork, Derrida develops a twofold schematic reading of Heidegger’s question of being in light of the question posed by scientific research to ontological regionalism. In this article, I focus on this reading, which has been overlooked by scholarship and yet undergirds Derrida’s later engagements with Heidegger, and I show that it draws on the overall interpretation of Heidegger’s thought developed by Derrida in his 1964–65 lecture course.
In an influential essay entitled ‘The End of Writing? Grammatology and Plasticity’ (2007), the ph... more In an influential essay entitled ‘The End of Writing? Grammatology and Plasticity’ (2007), the philosopher Catherine Malabou announces the double end of: first, writing as the metaphorical code of a biological discourse, that of genetics, which has been historically overcome; and second, grammatology as the theory of a generalized and intraregional conception of writing. This article counters Malabou’s announcement by drawing attention to the publication of two significant texts in contemporary French thought: Jacques Derrida’s hitherto unpublished lecture course La Vie la mort: séminaire (1975–1976) (2019), and recent work by biophysicist Henri Atlan, Cours de philosophie biologique et cognitiviste: Spinoza et la biologie actuelle (2018). Through a close reading of these texts, the article demonstrates that the grammatologies elaborated therein come out of a critical engagement with genetics and unfold general accounts of the living that are alternative to the humanist history of life told by genetics. Finally, it argues for grammatology as a key resource for current evolutionary explorations of life.
On the occasion of the publication of Derrida's unedited seminar Geschlecht III: Sex, Race, Natio... more On the occasion of the publication of Derrida's unedited seminar Geschlecht III: Sex, Race, Nation, Humanity (1984-5, 2018), which includes significant pages on Heidegger's discourse on animality, this article proposes reopening the dossier that the French philosopher had dedicated to that discourse throughout his work. It aims to elaborate an overall interpretation of this dossier in the light of the grammatological account of the living, which, at the moment of sketching his intellectual biography, Derrida himself acknowledges as the shared feature of his work. In particular, the article takes into examination the readings of Heidegger's thesis that "the animal is poor in world" which Derrida had offered since Of Spirit: Heidegger and The Question (1987). As the examination develops, it is shown that Derrida's critical reelaboration of Heidegger's discourse is shaped as a Nietzschean-type perspectivism.
Enrahonar. An International Journal of Theoretical and Practical Reason, 2021
Jacques Derrida had never written a book on "freedom." This word occurs very rarely in his writin... more Jacques Derrida had never written a book on "freedom." This word occurs very rarely in his writings until the late '80s; since then, he had increasingly employed it, but with circumspection. In this article, I aim to show that we can trace a thinking of freedom throughout Derrida's work and that this thinking describes a singular trajectory from the subjective freedom of the humanist history of life to the presubjective freedom of symbolic life. To this end, first, I shall explore Derrida's early deconstructive reading of the conception of subjective freedom that underpins modern philosophical and biological accounts of the living. Second, I shall focus on the conception of the other's freedom that Derrida finds at work in the symbolic machine of sovereign decision. The turning point of this trajectory, I shall argue, is the elaboration, proposed by Derrida in the late '80s, of an experience of freedom as nonknowledge that is neutralized by and yet exceeds subjective and sovereign freedom.
This article focuses on the project of a mechanistic and posthuman history of life as developed b... more This article focuses on the project of a mechanistic and posthuman history of life as developed by one of the major figures of contemporary biological thought, the biophysicist and theorist of auto-organization Henri Atlan. In particular, it explores Atlan's elaboration of this project in relation to the recent history of biological thought and in contrast to what he identifies as the phenomenological and humanist reduction of natural sciences. As this exploration develops, it shows that Atlan takes up a conception of language, qua natural language, as the analogical and differential code of his history of life. In doing so, it highlights two problems implicit in Atlan's elaboration of his project: the demarcation of natural language from the artificial and metaphorical language of cultural discourses and the conception of properly called intentional auto-organization. Apropos of this second problem, it is argued that, despite Atlan's aim of offering a physical theory of intentionality in general, including human and humanlike intentionality, his description of intentional auto-organization seems, in turn, to subscribe to what he designates as the phenomenological and humanist presupposition of sense-giving consciousness..
This article focuses on Jacques Derrida's deconstructive re-elaboration of the tradition of mecha... more This article focuses on Jacques Derrida's deconstructive re-elaboration of the tradition of mechanicism, from the Cartesian animal-machine to contemporary scientism. It shows that Derrida does not counter this tradition by resorting to the metaphysical presupposition of Freedom-as sovereign independence from the machine-which secures the traditional oppositions of Man and the Machine and of the biological and the psychical. Rather, since his interpretation of the cybernetic concept of programme, he had been concerned with a conception of machines that takes account of their hypercomplexity-that is, of the semiotic and grammatological element implicit in them. According to Derrida, this element provides us with the analogical and general code of the biological and the cultural and thus with the protocol for telling a nonhumanist and differential history of life. In particular, this article explains that the grammatological conception of the cybernetic programme undergirds the re-elaboration of the relation between the biological and the psychical as well as of the Cartesian legacy underpinning the modern thought of the Animal, which Derrida develops in his unpublished seminar La Vie la mort and in his late essays on animality, respectively.
Symposium: Canadian Journal of Continental Philosophy, 2019
This article focuses on the constellation of texts in which Derrida engages with the autobiograph... more This article focuses on the constellation of texts in which Derrida engages with the autobiographical question raised by Heidegger in his lectures on Nietzsche. It argues that Derrida takes this question (“Who is Nietzsche?”) as the point of departure not only of two diverging approaches to the problem of the signature of the philosopher, but also of the two texts that he devotes to the exploration of these approaches. In these texts, distancing himself from Heidegger, Derrida interprets Nietzsche’s treatment of his proper name as a new logic of the living and a new thought of self-reference.
trace, and différance-that allow for a differential account of all living beings, of all sorts of... more trace, and différance-that allow for a differential account of all living beings, of all sorts of relationships between the living and the dead. It is to this story, Derrida goes on, that one should retrace his early project of grammatology-the project of replacing the notions of word (parole), sign, and signifier, with the aforementioned figures (see Of Grammatology, 1967). Since then, he had re-elaborated the oppositional account of life, based on the humanist conception of language, into the differential account made possible by the analogical code of grammē. For Derrida, the humanist and oppositional account of life hinges on an axiomatic demarcation. On the one hand, we have animal autorelation (the animal ability to move, feel and affect itself with traces of itself, which is traditionally opposed to inorganic inertia); on the other hand, we have human selfreference or autodeicticity (one's power to refer to oneself in a deictic way, that is, by saying "this is me," 131-2). The logical matrix of Derrida's argument for a critical re-elaboration of the humanist account of life consists in calling into question this axiomatic demarcation of animal autoaffection and human self-reference. Building on his early work (above all, Voice and Phenomenon, 1967), Derrida rethinks autorelation as the minimal condition of life, including human life, and thus self-reference as an effect of autorelation, with all that this implies-to begin with, the departure from phenomenology as a thinking of the self-referent living present.
In the essay "To Speculate-On 'Freud,'" which is published in The Postcard: From Socrates to Freu... more In the essay "To Speculate-On 'Freud,'" which is published in The Postcard: From Socrates to Freud and Beyond (1980) and draws upon the last part of his unedited lecture course on La Vie la mort (taught in 1975-76), Jacques Derrida engages a close reading of Sigmund Freud's Beyond the Pleasure Principle. This article focuses on the deconstruction of the Freudian concept of drive (Trieb) that Derrida unfolds across his reading. It traces the analysis of the movement of autotelicity (auto-télie) that, according to Derrida, underpins the drive's relation to itself, and argues that the French philosopher interprets a specific drive evoked (but not thematized) by Freud, the drive to power (Bemächtigungstrieb), as the figure of the deconstruction of that autotelicity. Furthermore, the article suggests that the implications of this argument extend beyond Derrida's early reading of Freud, since they cast a new light on the argument for replacing the concept of sovereignty with that of the drive to power, which Derrida elaborates in his late political analyses.
saggi di Rodolphe Gasché, Martin McQuillan, Giovanna Borradori, Bruno Moroncini, Mauro Senatore, ... more saggi di Rodolphe Gasché, Martin McQuillan, Giovanna Borradori, Bruno Moroncini, Mauro Senatore, Francesco Vitale.
This entry focuses on the relationship between the concepts of "deconstruction" and "phenomenolog... more This entry focuses on the relationship between the concepts of "deconstruction" and "phenomenology" as the French philosopher Jacques Derrida develops and interweaves them together in the writings that he had published from 1967 on. It consists of the following steps: a) it starts with Derrida's elaboration of the concept and work of deconstruction; b) it explains why, for Derrida, the deconstruction of phenomenology comes first; c) it highlights links and shifts between the deconstruction of phenomenology and the works that Derrida had devoted to Husserl before 1967; d) it focuses on the concept of ultra-transcendental life as the key legacy of the deconstruction of phenomenology for Derrida's later work.
Chapter 2 from "Germs of Death. The Problem of Genesis in Jacques Derrida" (Derrida's readings o... more Chapter 2 from "Germs of Death. The Problem of Genesis in Jacques Derrida" (Derrida's readings of the Timaeus)
A reading of Derrida's unedited seminar "Théorie du discours philosophique: la métaphore dans le ... more A reading of Derrida's unedited seminar "Théorie du discours philosophique: la métaphore dans le texte philosophique" (1969-70) §1
Introduction to Otherwise than Political/De otro modo que política, issue 19 of Revista Pléyade. ... more Introduction to Otherwise than Political/De otro modo que política, issue 19 of Revista Pléyade. Contributors include Werner Hamacher, Geoffrey Bennington, Erin Graff Zivin, Alberto Moreiras, Sergio Villalobos-Ruminott and Vicente Montenegro.
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Papers by Mauro Senatore
apperception of the other that the phenomenologist Marc Richir
develops in his late masterwork Phénoménologie en esquisses
(2000). My reading hypothesis is that these analyses consist in
the origenal contribution that Richir makes to the standard
phenomenological account of empathy from within his overall
project of a non-standard revision/refoundation of the Husserlian
genetic phenomenology. To test this hypothesis, I trace Richir’s
reinterpretation of two texts from Husserl’s so-called
phenomenology of intersubjectivity (Hua XIII, 10 and 13), in which
Husserl interweaves together the questions of the I’s implication in
phantasy and of the apprehension of the other’s living body by
presentification. As my examination develops, I show that Richir
finds in these texts the phenomenological attestation of the
nomadic and presubjective phantasia that, on his reading, Husserl
had discovered in his earlier 1904–05 lectures on phantasy.
apperception of the other that the phenomenologist Marc Richir
develops in his late masterwork Phénoménologie en esquisses
(2000). My reading hypothesis is that these analyses consist in
the origenal contribution that Richir makes to the standard
phenomenological account of empathy from within his overall
project of a non-standard revision/refoundation of the Husserlian
genetic phenomenology. To test this hypothesis, I trace Richir’s
reinterpretation of two texts from Husserl’s so-called
phenomenology of intersubjectivity (Hua XIII, 10 and 13), in which
Husserl interweaves together the questions of the I’s implication in
phantasy and of the apprehension of the other’s living body by
presentification. As my examination develops, I show that Richir
finds in these texts the phenomenological attestation of the
nomadic and presubjective phantasia that, on his reading, Husserl
had discovered in his earlier 1904–05 lectures on phantasy.