This biography of Jacques Derrida (–) tells the story of a Jewish boy from Algiers, excluded from school at the age of twelve, who went on to become the most widely translated French philosopher in the world – a vulnerable, tormented man who, throughout his life, continued to see himself as unwelcome in the French university system. We are plunged into the different worlds in which Derrida lived and worked: pre-independence Algeria, the microcosm of the École Normale Supérieure, the cluster of structuralist thinkers, and the turbulent events of and after. We meet the remarkable series of leading writers and philosophers with whom Derrida struck up a friendship: Louis Althusser, Emmanuel Levinas, Jean Genet, and Hélène Cixous, among others. We also witness an equally long series of often brutal polemics fought over crucial issues with thinkers such as Michel Foucault, Jacques Lacan, John R. Searle, and Jürgen Habermas, as well as several controversies that went far beyond academia, the best known of which concerned Heidegger and Paul de Man. We follow a series of courageous political commitments in support of Nelson Mandela, illegal immigrants, and gay marriage. And we watch as a
Benoit Peeters, Derrida: A Biography
철학한다는 것, 그것은 죽는 법을 배우는 것입니다.
p
나는 미셸 푸코(Michel Foucault)의 평전을 읽고 남긴 글에서 ‘아버지의 이름을 거부한 아들’이라는 주제를 논의의 출발점으로 삼았다. 여기서 아들은 푸코 자신이다. 푸코의 오이디푸스적 개명은 혈연과 성장배경, 구시대의 전통을 떠나 자신만의 이름으로, 자신만의 이야기를 세상에 전하겠다던 당당한 지식인의 모습과 겹친다. 흥미롭게도, 같은 시대를 거쳐 간 (그리고 서로 만만치 않은 인연을 나눈) 데리다(Jacques Derrida)의 평전에서도 이름을 스스로 바꾼 아들이 등장한다. 정확하게는 이름이 아닌 성(姓)을 바꾼 것이다. 여기서 아들은 데리다의 장남 피에르다. 피에르 데리다는 외할머니의 이름을 따 피에르 알페리(Pierre Alféri)라는 이름으로 첫 저서를 출판했다. 심지어 단순한 가명이나 필명이 아닌 제도적 개명이었다. 철학에서 출발하여 문학으로, 어쨌든 아버지의 유산에서 자유로울 수 없는 도상에 발을 걸친 피에르에게 ‘데리다’라는 성은 그만큼 큰 산이었다(p).
저자 브누아 페터스(Benoit Peeters)는 서론의 말미에서 일찌감치 자신의 목표를 천명했다. “과연 평전 작가는 자신의 ‘주인공’ 앞에서 자신이 쓴 평전을 들고 감히 버텨낼 수 있을까?”(17p) 이보다 수준 높은 성과지표를 본 적이 없다. 미켈란젤로의 작품에 관한 비평문 10페이지를 써서 미켈란젤로에게 보여주는 상황을 상상해보자. 이는 뱅크시가 어디선가 볼지도 모른다고 생각하며 뱅크시에 관하여 써서 미술잡지에 투고하는 것과는 차원이 다른 문제다. 저자의 작업은 더없이 훌륭했지만 그래도 버텨내기 힘들 것이다. 한 인간을 총체적으로 이해한다는 것은 얼마나 어려운가? 하물며 그 한 인간이 위대한 철학자라고 부를 수 있을 만한 마지막 인물이라면? 지금 어두컴컴한 서재에서 열심히 철학을 하고 앉아 있는 사람들에게는 정말 미안하지만, 나는 위대한 철학자의 시대가 다시 올 것 같지 않다. 인류가 사상적으로 퇴화했다는 뜻은 아니다. 그저 오늘날 병적으로 집착하는 다원주의에의 강박이 위대한 단일 인격체의 부상을 가만히 두고 보지는 않으리라는 막연한 우려에서 하는 말이다.
데리다는 경계인이다. 프랑스령 알제리의 유대인 가문에서 태어난 그는 프랑스에도, 알제리에도, 유대인에도 온전히 속하지 못했다. 어
Derrida: A Biography
This biography of Jacques Derrida (–) tells the story of a Jewish boy from Algiers, excluded from school at the age of twelve, who went on to become the most widely translated French philosopher in the world – a vulnerable, tormented man who, throughout his life, continued to see himself as unwelcome in the French university system. We are plunged into the different worlds in which Derrida lived and worked: pre-independence Algeria, the microcosm of the École Normale Supérieure, the cluster of structuralist thinkers, and the turbulent events of and after. We meet the remarkable series of leading writers and philosophers with whom Derrida struck up a friendship: Louis Althusser, Emmanuel Levinas, Jean Genet, and Hélène Cixous, among others. We also witness an equally long series of often brutal polemics fought over crucial issues with thinkers such as Michel Foucault, Jacques Lacan, John R. Searle, and Jürgen Habermas, as well as several controversies that went far beyond academia, the best known of which concerned Heidegger and Paul de Man. We follow a series of courageous political commitments in support of Nelson Mandela, illegal immigrants, and g
Hadfield, Andrew. Edmund Spenser: A Life. Oxford: Oxford University Press, xxi + pp. ISBN $ cloth.
Benoît Peeters. Derrida: A Biography. Trans. Andrew Brown. Cambridge: Polity Press, vii + pp. $ cloth. First published in French as Derrida. Paris: Flammarion, pp. ISBN $ cloth.
The present text is not a review of the two biographies listed above. It is instead a reflection on the similarities between the authors treated in them, similarities thrown into relief by the accident of publication close to each other in time. If it is indeed altogether accidental: at the outset of the twenty-first century, literary biography seems to be on the rise as a genre. It has certainly overcome the disrepute into which it fell—along with historically grounded literary studies in general—in the nineteen-seventies and ’eighties. As I shall have little to say in detail about these books here—my assignment, as I shall shortly explain, is a different one—I wish to signal my admiration and gratitude for both. One is the first modern scholarly biography in well over half a century of the greatest English narrative poet of the Elizabethan age, Edmund Spenser. (Alexander Judson’s excellent
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