And Yet It Quakes! (Nietzsche and Voltaire)

One of a handful of texts written by Sarah Kofman in the interim between the publication of her Explosion (1992, 1993), a 700-page analysis of Ecce Homo, and her sudden death in 1994, ‘And Yet It Quakes!’ is an unflinching contribution to her perennial analysis of Nietzsche's legacy. The essay opens with a presentation of the responses of Voltaire and Nietzsche to natural catastrophe: an earthquake in Lisbon in the case of the former, an earthquake in Ischia for the latter. Drawing on a metaphoric architecture of quaking or shakenness to draw together a variety of themes and problematics, the essay elaborates a rich comparative study of these two thinkers on the basis of their hasty passing-on from the ‘“humanitarian” considerations’ which such catastrophes might evoke. After analysing the influence of Voltaire on Nietzsche and the rich synergies between the two, with particular reference to irony and laughter, to aristocratism, and to the function of a polemical hostility to Rousseau within their various projects, Kofman's essay closes with a complex — and somewhat ambivalent — affirmation of the radicality of the Nietzschean project. (This text, first published in Furor shortly before Kofman's death, is collected in the posthumous Imposture de la beauté et autres textes (Galilée, 1995) and in Tributs à Voltaire (Furor, 2017). The ayant-droit is favourable to publication.)

Reading Derrida Reading Kofman

This article examines the relationship that Jacques Derrida and Sarah Kofman developed throughout their lifetimes, both as close friends and as philosophers who shared many common research interests. In his tribute to Sarah Kofman, published in Les Cahiers du Grif in 1997, Derrida stated that ‘These interests and exercises go far beyond the limits of a short narrative, indeed of a terminable analysis’, thus challenging the reader to delve into these ‘elliptical greetings’. The numerous interactions present in Kofman's and Derrida's respective bodies of work are not without conflicts nor dissymmetry, and their often oblique modes of acknowledgement are far from any ‘balance’ on either side. Revisiting some of the différends among two great thinkers of différance, this article highlights the Derridean logic of gift and debt at work between them. Focusing on the posthumous tribute Derrida pays to his friend (left untitled, which is itself a revealing gesture), one can sense that there is much at stake in that piece that touches on the major question of forgiveness and the affirmation of survie or living on, thus setting a scene of reading where Derrida's debt towards Kofman turns out to be more telling than one may have expected.

Derrida's Missing Woman

Since Sarah Kofman's death in 1994, many critics have investigated her friendship with Jacques Derrida, and have tried to make sense of its striking dissymmetry. Contrary to those merely deeming Kofman ‘an orthodox Derridean’ (Alice Jardine), thus ascribing to her the unrewarding role of the disciple, Penelope Deutscher and more recently Ginette Michaud, among others, have endeavoured to interpret Derrida's odd silences and omissions regarding Kofman's work in a more subtle manner. Drawing on these readings, this article questions the erasure of ‘Sarah Kofman’ from Derrida's oeuvre by comparing it to the paradoxical effacement of ‘woman’ in the philosopher's texts, arguing that ‘Sarah Kofman’ both as a proper name and as a corpus figures the ‘woman’ missing from Derrida's work. Drawing on the work of feminist critics like Jardine, Miller and Spivak, the article retraces the ambiguous function of ‘woman’ in Derrida's writing, before stressing parallels between ‘Sarah Kofman’ and the Derridean ‘woman’.

Sarah Kofman and the Allure of Music

This article delves into the discreet yet persistent presence of music in Sarah Kofman's work. Three strands or movements of unequal length are explored here, each of which touches upon a specific volume of Kofman's: Nietzsche and Metaphor, L'Imposture de la beauté and, lastly, Rue Ordener, Rue Labat. More specifically, the article shows how her interpretations of Nietzsche's writings on music are almost paradigmatically neutral in their readerly fidelity to the originals, whereas Rue Ordener, Rue Labat suggests a more emotionally charged rapport with music. In closing, the article considers the possibility that these two, ostensibly divergent modes of reading and writing are very much in tune with each other in that they blur the line between interprétation as philosophical commentary and interprétation as musical performance.

Burnout der Autorität

Avital Ronell is currently one of the world´s most renowned and stimulating literary scholars; she has worked with Jacques Derrida and Sarah Kofman, among others. Her new book analyses the decline of various forms of authority. In writing about Alexandre Kojève, Sarah Kofman and Hannah Arendt, Ronell examines the melancholy which accompanies the diagnosis of the burnout of authority. Didn´t we conceive of authority as a stabilizing factor for many forms of life, criticizing which was always borne by respect for what was criticized? Indeed, deconstruction never simply equals destruction. In times of widespread political regression, of which populism is only one manifestation among others, Ronell's inventive ideas have a contemporary significance.

Sarah Kofman, Freud y lo femenino

Este trabajo se propone rescatar a una pensadora contemporánea poco (re)conocida hoy, como fue Sarah Kofman y, en particular, atender a la relevancia de sus ajustes críticos con el discurso freudiano sobre la feminidad. Desde una innegable afinidad intelectual con el padre del psicoanálisis, esta pensadora analiza las quiebras de su discurso cuando se trata de conceptualizar la femineidad, que la discípula entiende y revisa en Freud no sólo como insuficiente, sino como expresión de un subtexto patriarcal presente ya en filósofos tan reconocidos como Rousseau o el propio Kant. A partir de aquí, se entrará a discutir si estas posiciones de Kofman pueden ser leídas o no en clave de un discurso crítico-feminista.