La première préface à l’Histoire de la folie est un texte riche qui propose une conception originale de la culture : celle-ci se définirait non par ce qu’elle affirme, mais par ce qu’elle rejette. Or, s’il existe une littérature secondaire qui en fait mention, la préface n’est presque jamais traitée pour elle-même. Nous pensons pourtant qu’en plus d’offrir une conception de la culture, elle permet de penser l’œuvre et la folie à travers une certaine confrontation, à savoir celle entre la (...) dialectique et le tragique. C’est en suivant cette confrontation, voulue par Foucault, que nous dégagerons les points forts de la préface. On se demandera, enfin, si Foucault, dans ce texte, dispose des moyens pour mener la véritable confrontation des « dialectiques de l’histoire » ou si, comme le pensait Derrida, il ne s’agit que d’une contestation de l’ordre rationnel. (shrink)

El artículo enfoca la crítica de la imagen dogmática en Deleuze desde un análisis retrospectivo del papel que desempeña la noción de «imagen del pensamiento» en su obra. Tras desgranar brevemente los distintos sentidos e interpretaciones con que el autor la utiliza y cerrar la introducción con la exposición del uso plenamente positivo que ese sintagma acabará adquiriendo en él, nos remontamos hasta el uso crítico y cronológicamente anterior –que no primero– de la expresión, donde la palabra «Imagen» señala esa (...) preconcepción tradicional, común a la filosofía y al buen sentido, de un pensamiento pretendidamente «natural», con el fin de arrojar una luz nueva sobre los principales ejes en torno a los cuales semejante Imagen se estructura. (shrink)

Totality and Infinity , the title of a well-known work by Emmanuel Levinas, takes up a word which readers of Poetic Intention and of many other texts of Édouard Glissant’s will easily recognize: a term sometimes used in a sense that is clearly positive, sometimes in a sense that is not quite as positive, such as when, for instance, he compares “totalizing Reason” to the “Montaigne’s tolerant relativism.” In his final collection of essays, Traité du tout-monde, Poétique IV , Glissant (...) attempts one more time to clarify the sense in which the reader will have to understand his use of the word “totality,” thinking, and rightfully so, that this word might lead to some confusion: “To write is to say the world. The world as totality, which is so dangerously close to the totalitarian.” Of course, here, it will be necessary to try to ascertain whether or not Levinas’s totality and Glissant’s can peacefully coexist, or, rather, whether this word might, in Glissant, have opposite meanings. Where the second word is concerned, “infinity,” any reader of Glissant will know that he locates its source in those societies he calls atavistic, which are grounded in foundational texts that are the bearers of stories of filiation, of legitimacy, societies whose arrogance and whose errors the author never ceases to decry and whose decomposition, in the very times in which we live, he never ceases to announce (even as Glissant recognizes that there was a time when atavistic cultures undoubtedly must have experienced their own period of creolization, and that, conversely, composite cultures undoubtedly often tend to become atavistic). On this level, “totality” and “infinity,” for him, seem to belong to the same world. Thus, and still in Traité du tout-monde , he proposes that "Hebraism, Christianity, Islam are grounded in the same spirituality of the One and to the same belief in a revealed Truth… The thought of the One that has done so much to magnify, as well as to denature. How can one consent to this thought, which transfigures while neither offending nor de-routing the Diverse?" Moreover, it would be interesting, I think, to know how Levinas might react to these words of Glissant’s: “Totality is not that which has often been called the universal. It is the finite and realized quantity of the infinite detail of the real.” This word, “infinite,” is decidedly dangerous: what is an “infinite detail?” Does this word, “infinite,” not always lead to the unknown, to the non-totalizable, to what Levinas would call an “enigma,” to what Glissant would call an “opacity?&rdquo. (shrink)

Inaugural lecture as Professor of Women's Studies in the Arts Faculty of the University of Utrecht, May 16, 1990.

Se analiza la importancia de Bataille en El Anti Edipo de Deleuze y Guattari, para mostrar la deuda o filiación entre la noción de “gasto improductivo” y la noción de “producción deseante”. Explicando el sentido de la primera en el marco de una economía general, se muestran afinidades entre dicha reflexión y la propuesta de D-G en AE, en relación con una lectura de la tesis marxiana sobre la identidad entre hombre y naturaleza. Se concluye con posibles inscripciones que los (...) trabajos de Bataille y de D-G pueden tener en la trayectoria del marxismo y del pensamiento contemporáneo. (shrink)

Deconstruction is often depicted as a method of critical analysis aimed at exposing unquestioned metaphysical assumptions and internal contradictions in philosophical and literary language. Starting from Derrida's contention that deconstruction is not a method and cannot be transformed into one, I make a case for a different attitude towards deconstruction, to which I refer as 'witnessing'. I argue that what needs to be witnessed is the occurrence of deconstruction and, more specifically, the occurrence of metaphysics-in-deconstruction. The point of witnessing metaphysics-in-deconstruction (...) is affirmative: it is an affirmation of what cannot be conceived in terms of the system and yet makes this system possible. To the extent to which education is concerned with the 'coming into presence' of new beginners and new beginnings, it shares an interest with deconstruction. Through a discussion of the role of communication in education I indicate how we might witness the occurrence of deconstruction in education. Through this we may be able to identify openings that can become potential entrances for the coming into presence of new beginnings and new beginners. Such an engagement with Derrida's work is more than the application of 'his' philosophy to the 'field' of education and therefore also has implications for how we think of the very idea of philosophy of education. (shrink)

How might Derrida be said to greet Jean-Luc Nancy in Le Toucher? What kind of handshake does he offer? Derrida explicitly mentions the handshake at the very centre of his book, in the tangent devoted to Merleau-Ponty. A reading of this moment reveals an exemplary case of what happens when Derrida reads apparently ‘fraternal’ texts, and opens up further levels of difference. What then if we consider Nancy's response to Derrida, when the recipient of the handshake shakes back? By examining (...) Nancy's various (mis-)readings of Derrida's famous phrase ‘la différance finie est infinie’ it is possible to trace a subtle but irreducible non-reciprocity in this relationship, represented in the handshake of the ‘salut’ as greeting and valediction, beyond all safety or salvation. (shrink)

All concepts, methods, and techniques of the philosophy of language arise from its conceptions of language. Conceptions of language have determined the character of the philosophy of language and the direction of its philosophical research. Various schools and currents within the philosophy of language differ from each other, mainly in the way they understand the referential character of the sign—that is, the relationship between the meaning of a word and its referential object.

Divided into eight sections, each with introductory essays, the selections offer rich and detailed insights into a diverse multinational philosophical landscape. Revealed in this pathbreaking work is the way in which traditional philosophical issues related to ethics, metaphysics, and epistemology, for instance, take on specific forms in Africa's postcolonial struggles. Much of its moral, political, and social philosophy is concerned with the turbulent processes of embracing modern identities while protecting ancient cultures.

I argue that we find the articulation of a problem concerning bodily agency in the early works of the Merleau-Ponty which he explicates as analogous to what he explicitly calls the problem of perception. The problem of perception is the problem of seeing how we can have the object given in person through it perspectival appearances. The problem concerning bodily agency is the problem of seeing how our bodily movements can be the direct manifestation of a person’s intentions in the (...) world. In both cases what, according to Merleau-Ponty, obscures a recognition of the phenomenon in question is a conception of our bodily capacities, i.e. our sensibility and our motility, which reduces these to the workings of mechanisms that are blind to meaning. I argue that both the problem concerning perception and the problem concerning bodily agency can be properly called transcendental. The problem of perception is transcendental because it concerns the very intelligibility of appearances and judgements with empirical content. The problem of bodily agency is transcendental in the sense that it concerns the very intelligibility of our bodily capacity to carry out intentions and by implication the intelligibility of our intentions as such. (shrink)

If it is true that semiotics has tried to establish itself as an autonomous science starting with Saussure and Peirce, in imposing itself as a cultural fashion since the 1960’s, due especially to Roland Barthes and his interest in the language of connotations, it is also true that from ancient treatises of medicine to books of magic, from rhetoric to logic, from nature to science, symbols— even from different points of view—have been the object of passionate reflections.

The paper seeks to outline the relationship between Geschlecht III and Derrida’s published texts devoted to the mark «Geschlecht» in order to detect the general strategy followed by Jacques Derrida into the construction of his archive during his lifetime. Indeed, we suppose that his archive has to be build in accordance with his deconstructive statements about the classical conception of the archive: a totalizing closure of a textual production able to trace it back to the unity of an ideal identity. (...) In particular, the paper aims to focus on a passage at the end of Jacques Derrida’s Geschlecht III, where the question of the animal in Heidegger comes in the foreground and in a way that is slightly different from what we already know through Derrida’s published Works and could impose a re-reading of its «entire» work. (shrink)

What is the difference between doing philosophy and doing the history of philosophy? Where should the line be drawn between ?using? previous philosophers to make one's point and discussing what past philosophers claimed? In trying to confront these questions, this essay starts with a reflection on the difference between doing philosophy and doing the history of philosophy as proposed by the French philosopher Gilles Deleuze, and confronts it with a different one derived from the German philosopher Martin Heidegger. The ideas (...) developed by Heidegger will then lead to a definition of ?philosophy? and to some etymology-based reflections on what a ?philosopher? is that Plato proposes in his ?Symposium?. The essay continues by arguing that, when doing philosophy, it is necessary to return to philosophy's past in order to recoup philosophical momentum. The essay concludes with some reflection on the possible similarities between Plato's characterization of Eros as the first philosopher and the difference between doing philosophy and doing the history of philosophy. (shrink)

RÉSUMÉ Le principal objectif de ce texte est d'apporter certaines clarifications par rapport à des problèmes et difficultés entourant l'usage actuel des notions de culture, d'appartenance et de dialogue. L'auteur montre que l'idée selon laquelle on pourrait être prisonnier de sa propre culture découle d'une transformation récente de la signification du concept de culture. Cette idée est critiquée comme étant un mythe, le mythe de la monade culturelle, reposant sur une mécompréhension des rapports entre culture, appartenance et dialogue. L'auteur s'efforce (...) de proposer une meilleure compréhension de ces trois concepts, de façon à éviter toute forme de relativisme radical. ABSTRACT The aim of this paper is to shed light on some difficulties and problems related to the current use of the concepts of culture, belonging and dialogue. The author shows that the idea that we could be prisoners of our own culture stems from a recent transformation of the meaning of the concept of culture. This idea is criticized as a myth, the myth of the cultural monad, based on a misunderstanding of the relationship among culture, belonging and dialogue. The author tries to offer a better understanding of these three concepts, in order to avoid any form of radical relativism. (shrink)

This paper analyzes a European research project called ‘Deepening Ethical Engagement and Participation in Emerging Nanotechnologies’ with the abbreviation DEEPEN. The DEEPEN’s findings and conclusions on the narratives, public understandings and the lay ethics of nanotechnologies are examined in a critical manner. Through a criticism of the theoretical framings of what constitutes a narrative and the application of a different theoretical framing of narratives, the paper argues that the findings and conclusion of the DEEPEN should be approached with caution as (...) there are several unjustified claims concerning the contextualization of the findings. Such claims pertain to the theoretical framing of narratives, virtue ethics, modernity, lay attitudes, and earlier research. (shrink)

The dramatic change in the focus and overall project of French philosophy since World War I has become increasingly apparent, with one of the resultant developments being, as Geroulanos has identified, the emergence of “an atheism that is not humanist.” This article discusses parallels between the philosophical methodology of Gabriel Marcel and this new form of atheism. In so doing, it explores connections between Marcel and French philosophy’s more recent “turn to religion,” and uses these to demonstrate how Marcel’s notion (...) of disponibilité or “availability” operates with respect to Marcel’s conception of philosophy itself. (shrink)

Considerando os vários sentidos da palavra "tela" em português, tela como resultante do entrelaçamento de fios, tela como tecido, tela de cinema ou de televisão, quadro pintado, ou como questão, pretendo trazer à discussão o despojamento de Jacques Derrida ao propor, sob o prisma da desconstrução, o deslocamento do velho conceito de arquivo para uma noção de arquivo aberta a possibilidades imprevisíveis. Para tanto, seu entendimento do que ele chamou de “impressão freudiana”, sua interpretação da pulsão de morte como “mal (...) de arquivo”, nos colocará em contato com uma espécie de revolução “arquiviolítica” nos textos de toda ordem, em especial o texto psicanalítico e as artes. (shrink)

This paper begins by presenting Lawlor's Derrida and Husserl: The Basic Problems of Philosophy, an account of how deconstruction emerges as Derrida discusses Husserl's phenomenology (I.). It then determines the genre of Lawlor's intellectual history. Lawlor writes a continuist narrative history of ideas and concepts (II.). In the subsequent main section the paper uses Lawlor's material to take a position in the debate between Husserl and Derrida (III.). This is done in three parts. The first part reconstructs Derrida's version of (...) Husserlian time consciousness (III. 1). The second part proposes an alternative and revisionist reading of Husserl's theory of internal temporality. On this reading Husserl is a process theoretician of consciousness (III. 2). The third part juxtaposes Husserl and Derrida's critical views (III. 3), arguing that Husserl's fluxive theory of time consciousness does not suffer from the problems Derrida finds in his Husserl. The final section (IV.) points to relativizing consequences for deconstruction and identifies programmatic consequences for phenomenology. (shrink)

The link between force, violence and events in the philosophy of Jacques Derrida is explored, arguing that this relationship is at the very heart of the problem of meaning and its performativity. This thesis is based on the analysis of Derrida’s reading of both Benjamin’s Critique of Violence, as well as Austin’s linguistic performative theory, which allows, at first, to link the question of signification with that of force or violence. Subsequently, we use the analysis of W. Hamacher about Benjamin (...) in order to strengthen that connection and propose a new reading of the question of the event in Derrida. We obtain a philosophy of the event that moves between ethics, politics and linguistics that allows new approaches to the “critique” of violence. (shrink)

Resumen: El siguiente trabajo aborda la relación que tiene la violencia con el lenguaje y el discurso en la obra de Derrida, específicamente desde las nociones tempranas de violencia originaria, archi-violencia y violencia trascendental, con el fin de abrir la perspectiva de su análisis hacia una reflexión desde el problema del origen del sentido y su despliegue textual.La cuestión de la violencia será enfocada en torno a dos aspectos de la obra de Derrida: 1) la tesis general sobre la economía (...) en la que la violencia de origen está expuesta y se despliega, cuestión que desarrollaremos a partir de la relación teórica de Derrida con Lévi-Strauss; y 2) algunas notas más detalladas sobre la génesis del concepto de violencia, que es adoptado por Derrida en discusión directa con la tradición fenomenológica, especialmente con Husserl y Levinas. Todo, además, en el contexto de ciertas notas metodológicas sobre la herencia que no son periféricas, sino que permiten una aproximación más completa desde una idea de génesis de la violencia de la génesis.: In this paper, I approach the concept of violence in connection with deconstruction as a condition of possibility of meaning. I track the genesis and structure of different formulations of the concept presented in the early works of Derrida, such as ‘original violence’, ‘transcendental violence’, and ‘archi-violence’. I present some key points on this topic emphasizing two features: 1) the overall thesis about the economy in which violence is exposed and developed, in dialogue with the ideas of Lévi-Strauss; and 2) some more detailed notes about the genesis of the concept of violence, which is adopted by Derrida in direct discussion with the phenomenological tradition, especially with Husserl and Levinas. Both subjects are also involved with certain methodological elements that I think cannot be avoided in Derrida’s philosophy, because they are integral to deconstruction itself. This will give us a full view of the problem of the idea of a genesis of the violence of genesis. (shrink)

Roberto Esposito (1998; 2002; 2008) examines how immunological apparatuses originally designed to protect communities end up undermining communities. This paper explores comparatively his view on the interplay between community and immunity with Giorgio Agamben’s and Jacques Derrida’s, although in their works these notions appear under other labels. Beyond pointing out their similarities, the paper concludes by analyzing what, in our view, constitute the raison d’être of their ultimate and irreconcilable differences: Agamben’s approach is _antinomic_, while Derrida’s is _aporetic_ and Esposito’s (...) is rather _dialectical_. (shrink)

En Homo sacer I. Il potere sovrano e la nuda vita, Giorgio Agamben recuerda una expresión que le dirigiera Walter Benjamin a Pierre Klossowski e, indirectamente, al grupo Acéphale: vous travaillez pour le fascisme. En este artículo quisiéramos mostrar que es el pensamiento político-ontológico del propio Agamben, y también en cierto sentido el de Benjamin – quien ha influido de modo decisivo en el filósofo italiano –, el que en verdad corre el riesgo de trabajar para el fascismo. Mostraremos por (...) eso la necesidad de distinguir dos niveles de lo político: un nivel trascendental y un nivel empírico. Si no se atiende a esta distinción, argumentaremos, se corre el riesgo de trabajar, efectivamente, para el fascismo. (shrink)

This is an account of an interview with one of Britain's foremost literary theorists, Professor Catherine Belsey. The interview was conducted in Ghent, Belgium in 1997. The discussion spans all of Belsey's works, from the earliest, Critical Practice (1980), to her latest publication, Shakespeare and the Loss of Eden (1999). In this piece, Belsey openly and unpretentiously discusses her feminist commitment, her sometimes controversial critical positions, some of the influences on her careers and the importance to her of her teaching.

Nothing survives deconstruction unless we accept that survival in some sense attaches to the ghostly or etiolated figures (the marks and traces) of things, by which deconstruction proceeds. If the ghostly figure survives then it may be because it is undeconstructible. Yet the spectral figure would no doubt remain insignificant if it was not for the force it brings to bear on more central and familiar categories of philosophical and literary discourse. These categories, like style, friendship, justice and hospitality, tend (...) to occupy those spectral spaces that mark the structural difference between philosophy (conceptual, abstract, universal) and literature (figurative, concrete, singular). Yet nothing defines such spaces so well as the trace and its paradoxical structure. And nothing describes the structure of the trace so well as that of the signature. This paper identifies the movement of the trace as occupying and to a great extent defining the difference between philosophy and literature. The example, in this case, is the appearance of asphodels in Homer's Odyssey, according to which the fields where ghosts live are thick with the so-called grave-flower. But the asphodel on closer examination breaks down into mere traces of itself in a series of insoluble philological problems. The larger implications have to do with death, the signature of the writer, the relation between philosophy and literature and their respective modes of survival. There is no philosophy (no truth, no good, no chance) without its attachment to the etiolated figure, the trace of itself. The paper proposes readings of Blanchot, Derrida, Hegel and Plato, in addition to a focus on the main philological problem in Homer and its implications for a tradition of literary allusion, as a way of establishing the consistency of the paradoxical structure of the signature. (shrink)

The contribution that may come from the general science of signs, semiotics, to the planning and development of education and learning at all levels, from early schooling through to university education and learning should not be neglected. As Umberto Eco claims in the “Introduction” to the Italian edition of his book Semiotica and Philosophy of Language (1984: xii, my trans.), “[general semiotics] is philosophical in nature, because it does not study a particular system, but posits the general categories in light (...) of which different systems can be compared. And for general semiotics philosophical discourse is neither advisable nor urgent: it is simply constitutive.” To the title of their book Semiotic Theory of Learning, at the centre of our attention in the present text, Andrew Stables, Winfried Nöth, Alin Olteanu, Sébastien Pesce, and Eetu Pikkarainen, rightly add the subtitle New Perspectives in the Philosophy of Education. This multivoiced contribution to research in learning and education in a semiotic framework has a unifying reference in the semiotics of Charles S. Peirce, but without disregarding an array of other distinguished exponents of the teaching and education sciences from different disciplines, semioticians and philosophers alike. This book, a polyphonic effort, with its appeal to “act otherwise,” and to do so investing in learning and education, no doubt makes a significant contribution in such a direction: education for transformation, for humanizing social change. Beyond evidencing what to us are particularly interesting aspects of the topics under discussion in Semiotic Theory of Learning, we also propose to continue and amplify this multivoiced dialogue. While highlighting still other aspects and contributions made by the same semioticians and philosophers presented by the authors of this book, involving such figures as Charles Peirce, Charles Morris, Thomas Sebeok, John Deely, etc., we have further introduced other voices made to resound throughout, whether directly or indirectly, like that of Victoria Welby, Mikhail Bakhtin, Emmanuel Levinas, Adam Schaff, Ferruccio Rossi-Landi, Marcel Danesi, Augusto Ponzio, and Genevieve Vaughan. (shrink)

Resumo: Este texto parte da letra A, da sua importância e da sua centralidade na Desconstrução de Derrida. Em função dessa letra iniciática, indício da “ironia muda” da différance como sincategorema do pensamento de Derrida, tentar-se-á acompanhar o modo como se apresenta à Filosofia Contemporânea como uma espécie de sismo, de abalo e de nova propulsão. Sismografias tenta então reconhecer, na postura e no desenvolvimento dessa letra “A”, a forma como o trabalho de Derrida abala pela base o território dos (...) conceitos, convocando a urgência e a responsabilidade da filosofia, da escrita e do pensamento. Nesse sentido, trata-se aqui de acompanhar as linhas de desenvolvimento de uma letra motriz, que pontuou, do início ao fim e em todas as direções, o pensamento de Derrida como idioma, como revolução filosófica, como sismografia.: This text departs from the letter A, in its importance and its centrality in Derrida’s deconstruction. From this initiatic letter, a sign of différance’s “mute irony” as a syncategorem of Derrida’s thought, we will try to follow the way in which it presents itself to Contemporary Philosophy as a kind of earthquake, a quake and a new propulsion. Seismographies tries therefore to recognise, in the posture and development of this letter “A”, the way in which Derrida’s work shakes up at its base the domain of concepts,, summoning up the urgency and responsibility of philosophy, of writing and of thought. In this sense it is intended to follow the lines of development of a leading letter, which marked, from beginning to end and in all directions, Derrida’s thought as an idiom, as a philosophical revolution, as a seismographie. (shrink)

La presente nota crítica tiene como finalidad exponer y comentar las ideas fundamentales de la edición española del primer escrito de Jacques Derrida, El problema de la génesis en la filosofía de Husserl. Asimismo, hacemos algunas aclaraciones sobre el origen y significado de este escrito. Al concluir, añadimos algunas observaciones sobre la traducción y sobre el estudio final del editor y traductor Javier Bassas Vila sobre la filosofía del joven Derrida.

Em 1963, Derrida criticatrês páginas da A história da loucura naidade clássica (1961) de Foucault. Trata-se da interpretação de Foucault deuma passagem da Primeira Meditação deDescartes. Segundo Derrida, a leitura de Foucault está mergulhada no que eledenomina metafísica da presença. Istoé, apesar de se tratarem apenas de três páginas, para Derrida, Foucault não étão radical em sua obra ao pensar na noção de episteme, não vendo certa continuidade na tradição filosófica noque concerne ao seu fundamento: a presença viva. O que (...) isto significa; comoFoucault busca responder a este tipo de crítica; e, em que medida podemospensar que Foucault ainda estaria preso às amarras da filosofia da presença é oque buscamos investigar nesse texto. (shrink)

This essay examines the capacity of language (‘word’) to convey what there is (‘world’). It draws on philosophical thought, which it seeks to apply to law while making specific reference to comparative legal studies, that is, to the investigation of law that is foreign to its interpreter.

This article argues that only a developmental approach-one that views Derrida's 1967 work on Husserl, La Voix et la phénomène, in light of Derrida's three earlier encounters with Husserl's work and recognizes significant differences among them-is able to resolve the bitter controversy that has lately surrounded Derrida's Husserl interpretation. After first reviewing the impasse reached in these debates, the need for "a new hermeneutics of deconstruction" is set out, and, then, the reasons why strong development has been rejected internal to (...) Derrida's corpus are discussed. After this, in a discussion of interest with respect to Husserl's own late teachings, as well as Derrida's standpoint, this article focuses on Derrida's 1962 "Introduction to Husserl's Origin." Against the prevailing interpretation, an argument is made showing that Derrida is much closer to Husserl's own positions than has been suspected, most importantly, in section VII of the "Introduction" where the theme of writing is first introduced. Thanks to this, that significant development in Derrida's thought does take place between 1962 and 1967 is demonstrated-and the present piece concludes by providing a brief sketch of the development of deconstruction overall as it came about through Derrida's repeated encounters with Husserlian phenomenology in the years 1954–67. (shrink)

The aim of my paper is to focus upon those aspects of Derrida's relation to language and textual interpretation that have not been adequately dealt with by either proponents of deconstruction, who take Derrida to have effected a total revolution in the way in which we must read texts, or those critics who view deconstruction as having subverted all possible criteria for a valid interpretation leading, thus, to an anarchical textual ‘freeplay’. This inadequate approach by both proponents and critics is (...) the result of a failure to consider Derrida's deconstructive approach as enacting a process of ‘double reading.’ This ‘double reading’ commences with an initial stage or level which seeks to reconstruct a text's authorial intention or its vouloir dire. This initial level then prepares the text, through the identification of authorial or textual intention, for the second stage or level. At this second stage or level, which is the passage to deconstructive reading per se, the blind spots and aporias of the text are set forth. Through this focus upon the process of deconstructive reading as ‘doubling reading,’ it becomes evident that deconstruction is not as revolutionary as proponents or critics have assumed. For, Derrida's initial reading, or the ‘doubling’ of a text's authorial or textual intention is firmly set within a traditional interpretative form. (shrink)

La tesis central del presente texto es que la emergencia del nuevo paradigma de los movimientos sociales es verificada por la fuerza creciente de la idea de red social al interior de las ciencias sociales. Sin embargo, entendemos que el reconocimiento más amplio de este nuevo paradigma es impedido p..

This text argues that Hegel's Concept, insofar as it has already deconstructed all opposed and fixed standpoints, supersedes deconstruction. Reducing the Logic and Phenomenology to the same kind of schematic formalism for which Hegel criticized his predecessors (Fichte and Schelling), Derrida misses the ways in which Absolute Spirit shows itself as the bacchanalian revel wherein no member is not drunk. Thus, this article defends Hegel against Derrida on Derrida's terms.

Metaphor, as is known, has been considered an expression of the creative approach of a subject to language and thinking. Metaphor enables the subject of cognition and action to establish meaning – the subject exercises semiosis not only by referring to the former convention and the situational context, but also by transforming it due to the distinct act of turning the metaphor into an instrument of expression. The innovative character of metaphor allows one to consider it in the context of (...) performative theory, whereas its receptive, evocative character requires interpretation from the recipient. In both cases, metaphor in acts of communication, opens their participants towards specific expressions – performative expression in the case of individual semantic innovation, and receptive expression in the case of the interpretation of former metaphors. The specific example of silence, considered as a kind of metaphor within the frameworks of the performative theory, is the subject-matter of the paper. The basic question of the paper, referring to John L. Austin’s speech act theory and to his followers, is related to the source of the aforementioned metaphorization – to what degree is it an intention of language users, and to what degree is it a language convention which allows one to combine words and establish new associations metaphorically? In his pragmatic concept of meaning, Austin stresses the role of the context of an utterance – the situational context may also enable the establishment of metaphor as a figure of speech that dynamizes and moves our thinking. (shrink)