scholarly journals Drive to Drive: The Deconstruction of the FreudianTrieb

Derrida Today ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
pp. 59-79
Author(s):  
Mauro Senatore
Keyword(s):  
Jacques Derrida ◽  
Early Reading ◽  
Close Reading ◽  
Pleasure Principle

In the essay ‘To Speculate – On “Freud’”, which is published in The Postcards: 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), 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.

On Reading Organizational Culture

1992 ◽  
Vol 13 (3) ◽  
pp. 331-355 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stephen Linstead ◽  
Robert Grafton-Small
Keyword(s):  
Organizational Culture ◽  
Jacques Derrida ◽  
Common Knowledge ◽  
Everyday Practice ◽  
Close Reading ◽  
Organizational Cultures ◽  
Cultural Organization ◽  
Production Of Culture ◽  
Interpretative Approach

The study of organizational cultures has been dominated by an interpretative approach which has emphasized the production of culture at the expense of the creativity shown by the consumers of cuiture, organizational members. 'Corpor ate culture' is distinguished from 'workplace' or 'organizational' cultures, and a number of other problems emerging within the literature are identified. These are presented as organizational culture versus cultural organization; cultural plurali ties ; rationality and the irrational; common knowledge and its constitution; power and ideology; and individualism and subjectivity. It is then argued, after a detailed discussion of concepts drawn primarily from a close reading of the work of Jacques Derrida, that a postmodern approach to organizational culture would recast the problems in terms of a revised conceptualization of subjectivity, and would formulate culture as paradox, otherness, seduction, and discourse. This would entail studying the 'bricolage' of organizational members within the 'microphysics' of what de Certeau calls the 'tactics of everyday practice'.

Conversion and the Idea of the Secret

2018 ◽  
Vol 73 (2) ◽  
pp. 161-186
Author(s):  
Gauri Viswanathan
Keyword(s):  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
Jacques Derrida ◽  
Religious Beliefs ◽  
Belief Systems ◽  
Close Reading ◽  
African History ◽  
African Slave ◽  
Dynamic View ◽  
Helena Petrovna Blavatsky ◽  
The Individual

Gauri Viswanathan, “Conversion and the Idea of the Secret” (pp. 161–186) Obsessed with the notion of the secret in his writings on religion, Jacques Derrida uncannily evokes a predecessor with whom he has rarely, if at all, been compared—the Russian occultist Helena Petrovna Blavatsky. This essay argues that Blavatsky’s occult writings set the stage for the kinds of speculations on crypto-conversion, conscience, and responsibility that subsequently engaged Derrida. Like Blavatsky, Derrida saw conversion not as change but as retaining whatever it displaces in the form of a secret, persisting as an enduring reminder of supplanted religious beliefs. While Derrida was more interested in conversion as a form of repression that mutually constitutes the old and the new, Blavatsky held a broader and more dynamic view of conversion-as-repression: in describing Christianity’s battle against the heterogeneous belief-systems it eventually supplanted, she sought to illuminate conversion as a larger process well beyond the individual and involving religious expansion and consolidation. The essay culminates in a close reading of an occult text, W. B. Yeats’s “The Manuscript of ‘Leo Africanus,’” that exemplifies the problematics of crypto-conversion as delineated by Blavatsky and Derrida in their respective ways. “Leo Africanus” stages Yeats’s encounter with a dead spirit alternatively grasped as his anti-self and historical conscience. A breakthrough in understanding allows Yeats to acknowledge an occluded history—his as much as that of his deceased interlocutor—that can only be told in the terms of crypto-conversion, in this instance of a sixteenth-century African slave forcibly converted to Christianity and turned into a native informant of African history and geography.

scholarly journals Transforming Representation: Jacques Derrida and the End of Christianity

Open Theology ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 116-124
Author(s):  
Martin Koci
Keyword(s):  
Jacques Derrida ◽  
Driving Force ◽  
Close Reading ◽  
Central Question ◽  
The World ◽  
The Media ◽  
Central Argument ◽  
Common Understanding

Abstract The central question of this paper revolves around the problem of representation. Following Jacques Derrida and his critique of representation, this paper will interconnect two, at first sight distinct, topics: Christianity and the world of media. For Derrida, Christianity stands behind our common understanding of representation, whereas the media are the major driving force of any representation today. The central argument of this paper is to unfold this link between Christianity and representation and thus to elaborate on the idea of representation in relation to the end of Christianity announced by Derrida. Firstly, I will review Derrida’s account on the logic of representation. Derrida deems Christianity to be responsible for the logic of representation discernible in today’s media world and offers a devastating critique of the concept. Secondly, I will contextualize Derrida’s approach by pointing out the tension between the modern and postmodern perspectives on representation. Thirdly, I will return to a close reading of Derrida. Fourthly, I will offer a critique of Derrida’s critique and will look further at the possible meanings of ‘the end of Christianity.’

Language and the Gendered Body: Butler's Early Reading of Merleau‐Ponty

Hypatia ◽  
2013 ◽  
Vol 28 (4) ◽  
pp. 767-783 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anna Petronella Foultier
Keyword(s):  
Early Reading ◽  
The Other ◽  
Close Reading ◽  
Phenomenology Of Perception ◽  
Poststructural Theory ◽  
Feminist Phenomenology ◽  
The One ◽  
Blind Spots

Through a close reading of Judith Butler's 1989 essay on Merleau‐Ponty's “theory” of sexuality as well as the texts her argument hinges on, this paper addresses the debate about the relation between language and the living, gendered body as it is understood by defenders of poststructural theory on the one hand, and different interpretations of Merleau‐Ponty's phenomenology on the other. I claim that Butler, in her criticism of the French philosopher's analysis of the famous “Schneider case,” does not take its wider context into account: either the case study that Merleau‐Ponty's discussion is based upon, or its role in his phenomenology of perception. Yet, although Butler does point out certain blind spots in his descriptions regarding the gendered body, it is in the light of her questioning that the true radicality of Merleau‐Ponty's ideas can be revealed. A further task for feminist phenomenology should be a thorough assessment of his philosophy from this angle, once the most obvious misunderstandings have been put to the side.

scholarly journals Stiegler, Foucault, and Epictetus

Symposium ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 24 (2) ◽  
pp. 53-77
Author(s):  
Kurt Lampe ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Michel Foucault ◽  
Jacques Derrida ◽  
History Of Technology ◽  
Close Reading ◽  
Reading And Writing ◽  
History Of ◽  
Frame Work ◽  
Interpretive Frame ◽  
Premiere Partie ◽  
Ancient Texts

Why does Bernard Stiegler speak of “this culture, which I have named, after Epictetus, my melete?” In the first part of this article, I elucidate Stiegler’s claims about both Stoic exercises of reading and writing and their significance for the interpretive questions he has adapted from Michel Foucault and Jacques Derrida. In particular, I address the relations among care for oneself and others, the use of material technologies, and resistance to subjection or “freedom.” In the second part, I consider the merits and limitations of Stiegler’s comments about reading and writing in Stoicism, with particular attention to Epictetus. We will see that Stiegler’s interpretive frame-work casts considerable light on ancient texts and contexts, on the condition that it be combined with close reading of ancient texts and engagement with specialist scholarship. Finally, in the conclusion, I will suggest that the history of technology in Epictetus’s time contributes to a debate about Stiegler’s theories.Bernard Stiegler signale à plusieurs reprises l’importance des exercices stoïciens de lecture et d’écriture. Dans la première partie de cet article, j’essaye de clarifier ces assertions et d’expliquer leur lien aux oeuvres de Michel Foucault et de Jacques Derrida. Il s’agit en particulier des rapports entre le souci de soi et d’autrui, l’usage des techniques et des matériaux et la résistante à la soumission ou à la « liberté ». Dans la deuxième partie, je considère les mérites ainsi que les limites des remarques de Stiegler sur la lecture et l’écriture au sein du stoïcisme, en portant une attention particulière à Épictète. Le point du vue stieglerien donnera de nouvelles significations à quelques passages des oeuvres d’Épictète, à condition qu’il soit conjugué à une lecture attentive d’études spécialisées et de textes anciens. Je conclurai, dans la troisième partie, en proposant que l’histoire des techniques à l’époque d’Épictète pourrait alimenter un débat à l’égard des théories de Stiegler.

Philosophy’s Gigantomachia over Life and Being

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael Naas
Keyword(s):  
Jacques Derrida ◽  
Continental Philosophy ◽  
Great Emphasis ◽  
Western Philosophy ◽  
Close Reading ◽  
Bare Life ◽  
Contemporary Philosophy ◽  
Being And Becoming

Following the claim made by Jacques Derrida in one of his last books that the great “gigantomachia” of Western philosophy is not that between forms and particulars, being and becoming, but that between being and life, the preface argues that Plato’s Statesman is the perfect dialogue for testing out this claim. Motivated by questions internal to Plato scholarship but also, and even more importantly, by the great emphasis put on the question of life in recent continental philosophy, the preface argues that a close reading of Plato’sStatesman can help us not only to rethink Plato’s philosophy through the question of life but use Plato’s thinking of life to rethink many of the questions regarding life, bare life, biopolitics, and so in, in contemporary philosophy.

The Reproduction of Life Death

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dawne McCance
Keyword(s):  
Molecular Biology ◽  
Academic Freedom ◽  
Jacques Derrida ◽  
Academic Institution ◽  
Pleasure Principle ◽  
Academic Year

During the 1975–76 academic year, Jacques Derrida delivered a seminar, La vie la mort, at the Paris ENS. Based on archival translations of this as-yet untapped seminar, McCance’s The Reproduction of Life Death offers an unprecedented study of Derrida’s engagement with molecular biology and genetics, particularly François Jacob’s interpretation of DNA reproduction in his 1970 book La Logique du vivant (The Logic of the Living). Structured on an itinerary of “three rings,” each departing from and coming back to Nietzsche, Derrida’s seminar ties Jacob’s logocentric account of reproduction to the reproductive program of teaching that characterizes the academic institution, challenging this mode of teaching as auto-reproduction along with the concept of academic freedom on which it is based. McCance’s The Reproduction of Life Death makes another decisive contribution in bringing together Derrida’s critique of Jacob’s theory of auto-reproduction with his reading of reproductivity, the tendency to repeat-reproduce, that is theorized and enacted in Freud’s “speculative” Beyond the Pleasure Principle. The book includes Derrida’s analyses of life death in relation to autobiography and the signature. The book will be of interest to all theorists and disciplines concerned with the question of life.

Deconstruction

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christopher Norris
Keyword(s):  
Jacques Derrida ◽  
Critical Path ◽  
Close Reading ◽  
Paul De Man ◽  
Philosophical Debate ◽  
Knowledge Logic ◽  
Relativist Approach ◽  
Modernist Project ◽  
A Charge ◽  
De Man

Although the term is often used interchangeably (and loosely) alongside others like ‘post-structuralism’ and ‘postmodernism’, deconstruction differs from these other movements. Unlike post-structuralism, its sources lie squarely within the tradition of Western philosophical debate about truth, knowledge, logic, language and representation. Where post-structuralism follows the linguist Saussure – or its own version of Saussure – in espousing a radically conventionalist (hence sceptical and relativist) approach to these issues, deconstruction pursues a more complex and critical path, examining the texts of philosophy with an eye to their various blindspots and contradictions. Where postmodernism blithely declares an end to the typecast ‘Enlightenment’ or ‘modernist’ project of truth-seeking rational enquiry, deconstruction preserves the critical spirit of Enlightenment thought while questioning its more dogmatic or complacent habits of belief. It does so primarily through the close reading of philosophical and other texts and by drawing attention to the moments of ‘aporia’ (unresolved tension or conflict) that tend to be ignored by mainstream exegetes. Yet this is not to say (as its detractors often do) that deconstruction is a kind of all-licensing textualist ‘freeplay’ which abandons every last standard of interpretive fidelity, rigour or truth. At any rate it is a charge that finds no warrant in the writings of those – Jacques Derrida and Paul de Man chief among them – whose work is discussed below.

Death, Mastery, and the Origins of Life

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Benjamin Y. Fong
Keyword(s):  
Origins Of Life ◽  
Close Reading ◽  
Death Drive ◽  
Pleasure Principle

A close reading of Sections IV and V of Beyond the Pleasure Principle, a reading that produces initial articulations of the death drive and the drive to mastery.

The Unstable Object: Glifo, Blow and Sacco at MoMA, 1972

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ingrid Halland
Keyword(s):  
Jacques Derrida ◽  
The Political ◽  
Close Reading ◽  
Structural Element ◽  
Jean Baudrillard ◽  
Stylistic Development ◽  
Epistemological Status ◽  
Architecture And Design

Summary This article discusses three radical objects—the Glifo shelf from 1966, the Blow chair from 1967 and the Sacco chair from 1968—that were all exhibited at Museum of Modern Art’s ground-breaking architecture and design exhibition Italy: The New Domestic Landscape in 1972. The article proposes that these early postmodern objects should not merely be considered a new stylistic development, a new aesthetics or as expressing new conceptions of sociopolitical ideologies; rather, they can be considered as instigating a new epistemological status of objects. A close reading reveals how the structural element of Glifo, Blow and Sacco is hard to trace and how these objects’ physical limits seem to soften or even dissolve. By engaging with the writings of Jean Baudrillard, Jacques Derrida and Manfredo Tafuri, this article claims that the poststructuralist landscape of ideas has a material counterpart in some objects from the late 1960s and then discusses the political and intellectual implications of such unstable objects.

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