Open Access journal ISSN (Print) 1593-7178 - ISSN (Online) 1593-7178 This journal is no longer being updated because: RSS feed has been removed by publisher
Authors:Javier Agüero Águila Pages: 7 - 18 Abstract: This article seeks a possible inheritance scene between Derrida and Freud. In this respect, it attempts to delve into the notion of inheritance itself postulated by Jacques Derrida and answer questions such as what is what is inherited' If Derrida is an (un)faithful inheritor of the Freudian work: what does he claim as inheritance: Freud or psychoanalysis' Finally, the article tries to do a reading of Beyond the Pleasure Principle which, consciously or unconsciously in Derrida, goes through his entire philosophy. Keywords: Après-coup, Derrida, Évènement, Héritage, Histoire PubDate: 2021-12-09 DOI: 10.6093/1593-7178/8703 Issue No:Vol. 36 (2021)
Authors:Giustino De Michele Pages: 19 - 33 Abstract: This contribution aims to localise and discuss Jacques Derrida’s elaboration of Melanie Klein’s work. This recognition draws on two early references (Of Grammatology, Writing and Difference), where Klein’s contributions to psychoanalysis are esteemed to open the way to a performative approach of the problem of the archi-trace, of generalised writing, and of a positive grammatology. Derrida would not inquire further on this path, at least explicitly. Nevertheless, his insistence on some motifs compatible with Klein’s heritage permits to retrieve her presence in two still unpublished seminars of his, belonging to the Politiques de l’amitié series: Manger l’autre (1989-90) and Rhétorique du cannibalisme (1990-91). Through Sigmund Freud’s positions on negation and on cannibalism, it will be possible to recognise the terms of Derrida’s reprise of those early references to Klein. Keywords: Archi-critère, Auto-hétéro-affection, Derrida, Grammatology, Trace PubDate: 2021-12-09 DOI: 10.6093/1593-7178/8705 Issue No:Vol. 36 (2021)
Authors:Silvano Facioni Pages: 34 - 46 Abstract: In Jacques Derrida’s long confrontation with psychoanalysis, besides the names of Freud and Lacan, a special place must be reserved for Nicolas Abraham and Maria Torok. With these two psychoanalyst friends, scholars of Sandor Ferenczi and representatives of the Hungarian psychoanalytic school, Derrida had a long exchange and produced some important texts that can revive the debate between deconstruction and psychoanalysis today. This contribution aims to take a first look at this comparison, identifying the theoretical coordinates of a path that is still little explored in the studies dedicated to Derrida. Keywords: Anasemia, Crypt, Death, Symbol, Transphenomenology PubDate: 2021-12-09 DOI: 10.6093/1593-7178/8706 Issue No:Vol. 36 (2021)
Authors:Ruben Carmine Fasolino Pages: 47 - 59 Abstract: This essay resumes some points regarding the confrontation between Derrida deconstruction and Lacan psychoanalytic theory which I have already discussed in some previous essays. The aim is to show that the intention has never been of criticizing – in the sense of refusing – the position of Lacan from Derrida point of view or, vice versa, reading Lacan through Derrida. The aim has rather been of criticizing – in the sense of discerning – Derrida deconstrucion through Lacan psychoanalytic theory and the latter through the former. The reason for that is to show that both positions state the same in different words and gestures. Keywords: Deconstruction, Hermeneutics, Letter, Psychoanalysis, Significant PubDate: 2021-12-09 DOI: 10.6093/1593-7178/8707 Issue No:Vol. 36 (2021)
Authors:Maurizio Ferraris Pages: 60 - 68 Abstract: Starting from the illuminating sentences made by Jacques Derrida about the importance of writing, the paper analyses the changes we are witnessing thanks to the spreading of the Web. It highlights that the Web functioning system works as our memory or our subconscious. Then, it analyses three spheres of our world, i.e. the infosphere, the biosphere, and the dochuspheare, in order to understand the importance of writings and data, and to better comprehend our nature. Indeed, the Web seems to highlight how our primary and final goal is just to consume. This is what distinguishes human beings from machines and, thus, our true nature, so to say. Keywords: Deconstruction, Infosphere, Memory, Subconscious, Web PubDate: 2021-12-09 DOI: 10.6093/1593-7178/8708 Issue No:Vol. 36 (2021)
Authors:Elias Jabre Pages: 69 - 79 Abstract: In Resistances ‒ of psychoanalysis, Derrida analyzes through his reading of Freud the repetition compulsion as this irreducible resistance of the unconscious that makes analysis infinite. He introduces the notion of resistance, that comes from this aporetic logic by which psychoanalysis only makes sense to unbind resistances, although it always encounters a non-resistance that resists. He then shows that psychoanalysis maintains a privileged link with the death drive. Through this reading of resistance, psychoanalysis would transform itself and the political field through another formalization of the borders, on the borderline with deconstruction. Keywords: Death Drive, Deconstruction, Psychoanalysis to Come, Repetition Compulsion, Resistance PubDate: 2021-12-09 DOI: 10.6093/1593-7178/8709 Issue No:Vol. 36 (2021)
Authors:Domenico Licciardi Pages: 80 - 94 Abstract: In Beyond the Pleasure Principle, Sigmund Freud contests August Weismann’s thesis according to which death and sexuality would be late acquisitions of life. By inscribing them at the very source of the living, Freud undermines the purity and originality of the concept of life implied in Weismann’s belief in the immortality of germ cells. For this reason, Freud’s essay has a special place in Jacques Derrida’s thought: according to him, the deconstruction of the ideality of life is at work in Beyond the Pleasure Principle, for it testifies that life is always haunted by its “other” (namely death). Today, the notion of death is structural to the research field in Derrida’s philosophy concerning the life science that has been lately named “biodeconstruction”. However, the notion of death drive has been recently re-evoked by Catherine Malabou, who has elaborated it within a neuroplastic framework that would constitute the critical standpoint of traditional ontology, psychoanalysis, and Derrida’s philosophy. This paper proposes that the concept of plasticity might supply instead relevant cues in relation to either Freud’s notion of death drive and “biodecostruction”. Keywords: Biodeconstruction, Death Drive, Life Death, Neuroplasticity, Plasticity PubDate: 2021-12-09 DOI: 10.6093/1593-7178/8710 Issue No:Vol. 36 (2021)
Authors:Fabrizio Palombi Pages: 95 - 107 Abstract: The contribution aims to select some specific parts of Jacques Derrida’s book, entitled Spectres of Marx (1993), in order to propose a preliminary etymological and historical contextualization of the meaning of the term “spectrum”. This overview will devote special attention to the resemantization of the term that was imposed by Isaac Newton. The article will subsequently examine the theoretical difference between “spectre” and “spirit” through the Derridean neographism of différance and the analysis of William Shakespeare’s “out of joint”. The idea is to clarify the disarticulation of the traditional interpretation of time, proposed by Derrida. These argumentation will, in turn, make reference to specific aspects of Derrida’s reading of circumscribed sections of Martin Heidegger’s philosophical reflection and of Sigmund Freud’s psychoanalytic research. Keywords: Freud, Heidegger, Newton, Spectrum, Spirit PubDate: 2021-12-09 DOI: 10.6093/1593-7178/8711 Issue No:Vol. 36 (2021)
Authors:Rafael Pérez Baquero Pages: 108 - 120 Abstract: This paper aims at delving further into the entanglements between psychoanalytical and poststructuralist assumptions underlying contemporary theories on trauma. Scholars such as Cathy Caruth, Geoffrey Hartman, and Shoshana Felman have elaborated a groundbreaking theory of how to depict overwhelming historical experiences, by means of the notion of trauma. With a view to bringing new light into their ideas, this paper aims at understanding them as responses to the ethical flaws stemming from the poststructuralist perspectives these authors endorses. In order to address this challenge, this article highlights the role that Derrida’s, Paul de Man’s and Levinas’ legacies play within contemporary theories on trauma. Keywords: Ethics, Deconstruction, Post-structuralism, Psychoanalysis, Trauma PubDate: 2021-12-09 DOI: 10.6093/1593-7178/8712 Issue No:Vol. 36 (2021)
Authors:Caterina Resta Pages: 121 - 133 Abstract: Derrida’s relationship with psychoanalysis is very complex. On the one hand, the deconstruction intends to unmask the metaphysical character of the Freudian conceptual apparatus, on the other, Derrida does not renounce to recognize the revolutionary character of psychoanalysis, that is, its vocation to be “knowledge without alibi”. Psychoanalysis today seems to be affected by a double resistance, external as well as internal, which prevents it from expressing its critical and subversive spirit. However, Derrida trusts in the to-come of psychoanalysis, provided that it deals with the great ethical, political and juridical transformations underway, starting from the crucial questions of cruelty and the instinct to master [Bemächtigungstrieb], which are at the origin of ipseity and the ghost of sovereignty. Keywords: Cruelty, Derrida, Instinct to Master [Bemächtigungstrieb], Psychoanalysis, Sovereignty PubDate: 2021-12-09 DOI: 10.6093/1593-7178/8714 Issue No:Vol. 36 (2021)
Authors:Elizabeth Rottenberg Pages: 134 - 146 Abstract: This essay will concentrate, somewhat voyeuristically, on a particular and very special textual encounter. For if there is one text in the psychoanalytic tradition that will have caused Derrida to spill more ink than any other. It’s Freud’s Beyond the Pleasure Principle (1920). For ten years, from 1970-1980, Derrida returns not once but three times, on three separate occasions, in three different contexts, to Freud’s text on repetition compulsion and the death drive, each time devoting more time and energy, that is to say, more pages to it. As we will see in this essay, what emerges from this textual encounter is not only a new kind of pleasure; it is also a chance event of repetition that brings with it something strikingly new. Keywords: Fort/Da, Freuderrida, Play, Pleasure, Speculation PubDate: 2021-12-09 DOI: 10.6093/1593-7178/8715 Issue No:Vol. 36 (2021)
Authors:Kas Saghafi Pages: 147 - 160 Abstract: Taking into consideration the philosophical and psychoanalytic history of the term phantasm, Derrida in his late work provides for deconstruction a new definition of the «phantasm». Thinking the phantasm, Derrida argues, requires «a new logic» beyond logos. This paper attends especially to late use of the term phantasm in Derrida’s work – the phantasm of «living death» and the phantasm of «almightiness» – to tap into resources unexplored by the tradition and to demonstrate that the phantasm need not necessarily be attrached to sovereignty and have a negative valence. Keywords: Blanchot, Deconstruction, Derrida, Event, Phantasm PubDate: 2021-12-09 DOI: 10.6093/1593-7178/8716 Issue No:Vol. 36 (2021)
Authors:Mario Vergani Pages: 161 - 171 Abstract: The essay discusses the relationship between psychoanalysis and deconstruction through the subject of telepathy, defined by Derrida as “a.b.c. of the psychoanalysis”. It is divided into three moments. First of all, it analyses the derridean reading of Freud’s texts dedicated to telepathy; it shows, in second place, the long-distance relationships between several other thinkers who talk about this item. Finally, it points out some major themes on which Derrida’s reflections about telepathy focus: future, otherness, support, encounter, visitation. Keywords: Deconstruction, Derrida, Freud, Psychoanalysis, Telepaty PubDate: 2021-12-09 DOI: 10.6093/1593-7178/8717 Issue No:Vol. 36 (2021)
Authors:Francesco Vitale Pages: 172 - 184 Abstract: The essay focuses on the Derridian definition of «drive for power (Bemächtigungstrieb)» proposed at the end of To Speculate – on “Freud”, a text published in The Postcard (1980) that comes from the seminar La vie la mort, held in 1975-1976 and published in April 2019. It is first of all about making clear the distance that Derrida takes from Freud, in particular with respect to the hypothesis advanced by the latter of a death drive as an irreducible motive of living beings and consequently of psychic life, and more precisely with respect to what, according to Freud, follows from this hypothesis, namely an original cruelty that would condition human life, individual and collective. Secondly, it is a matter of bringing out, through the deconstruction of the «drive for power (Bemächtigungstrieb)» the Derridean conception of the psychic system as a «society of drives». Keywords: Death Drive, Deconstruction, Drive for Power, Psychoanalysis, Teleology PubDate: 2021-12-09 DOI: 10.6093/1593-7178/8718 Issue No:Vol. 36 (2021)
Authors:Alberto Andronico Pages: 186 - 201 Abstract: The thesis of this essay is that a jurist should read Derrida because deconstruction allows to take a step beyond the theory of law that still today believes that it must leave aside issues such justice or power, thus repeating obsessively that law is nothing but law founded on law. What is at stake, however, is a step beyond the law (and its theory) which is also a step beyond, pointing towards a different origin. Keywords: Deconstruction, Democracy, Force, Justice, Law PubDate: 2021-12-10 DOI: 10.6093/1593-7178/8721 Issue No:Vol. 36 (2021)
Authors:Claudio D'Aurizio Pages: 202 - 213 Abstract: This paper follows some traces of a problem that often emerges in Jacques Derrida’s works: the relation between the devil and psychoanalysis. Many references to this connection appear in his texts, even if they have not been explored by Derrida’s readers yet. The Post Card. From Socrates to Freud and Beyond (1980) is the main text of this investigation, as this book introduces two conceptual figures that often return in Derrida’s deconstruction. The first one is the step, which refers both to the devil’s limping and to Freud’s speculation in Beyond the Pleasure Principle (1920). The second one is the expression “devil’s advocate”, used by Freud in the same text to present and justify his theoretical discoveries. This article claims that both these figures hide a deep connection with Derrida’s conception of deconstruction. Keywords: Deconstruction, Derrida, Fort/da, Freud, Psychoanalysis PubDate: 2021-12-10 DOI: 10.6093/1593-7178/8722 Issue No:Vol. 36 (2021)
Authors:Michele Di Bartolo Pages: 214 - 221 Abstract: The deconstructive approach to texts is similar to psychoanalytic listening, due to its attention to apparently marginal aspects. However Derrida warns against the tendency of psychoanalysis to go beyond the signifier in the direction of the signified and tries to valorise the Freudian texts which seem to contradict this tendency. Starting with Das Unheimliche, the possibility of overcoming the semantism and hedonism that characterize previous writings emerges in Freudian discourse. The compulsion of repetition seems to name another concept of mimesis, capable of deconstructing the symbolic order. Keywords: Deconstruction, Hermeneutics, Mimesis, Psychoanalysis, Resistance PubDate: 2021-12-10 DOI: 10.6093/1593-7178/8723 Issue No:Vol. 36 (2021)
Authors:Carmine Di Martino Pages: 222 - 232 Abstract: Inserted in the wider debate around the relationship between Derrida and psychoanalysis, this essay investigates the different status of ipseity arising from the encounter between deconstruction and psychoanalysis. The aim is to show how Derrida provides us with a “positive” knowledge about the “subject” – a “subject” that is divided, differentiated, irreducible to the conscious intentionality of an egological pole – and its genealogy, via some word-concepts: heteronomy, election, response. Keywords: Derrida, Election, Heteronomy, Psychoanalysis, Response PubDate: 2021-12-10 DOI: 10.6093/1593-7178/8724 Issue No:Vol. 36 (2021)
Authors:Martino Feyles Pages: 233 - 244 Abstract: In the first part of the article some of Freud’s texts are analyzed to show that: (1) Freud’s analysis of pleasure has an uncertain epistemological status, which lies between the fictional, the philosophical and the scientific; (2) in Beyond the Pleasure Principle the thesis on the nature of pleasure, despite its problematic epistemological legitimacy, takes on a metaphysical significance. In the second part of the article, the interpretation proposed by Derrida in Spéculer – sur “Freud” is analyzed to show that: (3a) Freud's analysis depends on a preliminary interpretation of the notion of pleasure that is not critically questioned; (3b) because of this preliminary assumption, Freudian language always remains metaphorical. Finally (4), starting from Spéculer – sur “Freud”, some general considerations on the relationship between psychoanalysis and deconstruction are proposed. Keywords: Deconstruction, Derrida, Freud, Pleasure, Psychoanalysis PubDate: 2021-12-10 DOI: 10.6093/1593-7178/8726 Issue No:Vol. 36 (2021)
Authors:Burt C. Hopkins Pages: 245 - 256 Abstract: The importance of Derrida’s pre-deconstructive critique of Husserl’s last phenomenological works for his deconstructive critique of his first work will be demonstrated. On the basis of this, I argue 1) the importance of Derrida’s embrace of Husserl’s account of the coincidence of historical and ideal meaning in the Crisis of European Science and Transcendental Phenomenology for his deconstructive critique of signification in the Logical Investigations as paradigmatic for Husserl’s phenomenology as a whole; 2) Derrida’s historically driven appeal to role of the phenomenon of the voice in the epoch of metaphysics cannot withstand historically critical scrutiny; and 3) one result of 2) is to render Derrida’s deconstruction of Husserl null and void. Keywords: Deconstruction, Derrida, Historicity, Husserl, Ideality PubDate: 2021-12-10 DOI: 10.6093/1593-7178/8727 Issue No:Vol. 36 (2021)
Authors:Matteo Mollisi Pages: 257 - 271 Abstract: The aim of this paper is to grasp some theoretical and ethical implications of the way in which Derrida, in particular in the two confrontations with Lacan and Patočka respectively at the heart of The Purveyor of Truth and The Gift of Death, appropriates the image of the “purloined letter” of E.A. Poe. This will appear closely connected to an absolutely central directive in the complex of Derrida’s path: the deconstruction, carried out by Derrida also by means of a conceptuality of psychoanalytic inspiration, of a metaphysical concept of “history” in favor of an originary “historicity”. Going back to the course on Heidegger held by Derrida in 1964-1965, we will show how the real stake of this plot lies in the way he inherits the Heideggerian “logic” of the unity of dissimulation and disclosure that both Lacan and Patočka associate with the image of the purloined letter. Keywords: Derrida, Heidegger, History, Lacan, Patočka PubDate: 2021-12-10 DOI: 10.6093/1593-7178/8728 Issue No:Vol. 36 (2021)
Authors:Bruno Moroncini Pages: 272 - 286 Abstract: The essay discusses the relationship between deconstruction and psychoanalysis through the reconstruction of the different interpretations of the Freudian text Beyond the Pleasure Principle developed by Jacques Lacan in his seminar on the ethics of psychoanalysis in 1959-1960 and Jacques Derrida in his seminar on “Life and Death” in 1975. If for Lacan the death drive does not concern the phenomenon of natural life but of linguistic and historical life and implies a critique of Darwin’s evolutionary theory, for Derrida the most relevant effect of Freud’s essay is the indetermination of the life-death difference and Freud’s abandonment of any scientific and philosophical logic in favour of a form of “speculation” that is the premise of the method of deconstruction. Keywords: Death Drive, Deconstruction, Derrida, Freud, Lacan PubDate: 2021-12-11 DOI: 10.6093/1593-7178/8729 Issue No:Vol. 36 (2021)
Authors:Alex Obrigewitsch Pages: 287 - 298 Abstract: How to speak of the relation between psychoanalysis and deconstruction' Might the truth of the former be evinced by the very work of the latter, always already at work in the questioning of the subject in the former' Taking up the thought of Maurice Blanchot in confronting the truth of analysis (which Lacan links to myth), this paper aims to disclose this secret truth in its very default, (re)inscribing the fundamental myth of psychoanalysis not as that of Oedipus, but rather that of Narcissus and Echo. In complicating the reflections of Lacan, Leclaire, and Legendre in contestation with themselves through the mirror of Blanchot’s writings, the absent and unspeakable truth of analysis is lured out by a linguistic, abyssal play of mirrors. Thus, perhaps, might the difference between deconstruction and psychoanalysis be seen as echoing or (re)doubling a difference internal to each itself. Keywords: Blanchot, Double, Narcissus, Psychoanalysis, Truth PubDate: 2021-12-11 DOI: 10.6093/1593-7178/8730 Issue No:Vol. 36 (2021)
Authors:Felice Ciro Papparo Pages: 299 - 317 Abstract: This paper wants to address the Derrida’s deconstructive – as well as articulated and well-founded – “reading” of the thought of Paul Valéry, focusing on the Cahiers and recovering two key-concepts contained therein: the voice and the implex. By reviewing the “aversions” of Valéry toward Freud and Nietzsche, as well as their “proximities”, both highlighted by Derrida in his text, we would like to re-establish the complexity and multiformity of both “notions”, bringing them back to their syntactic-conceptual root, which is peculiar to the Valerian way of thinking. In our view, indeed, when compared to the typical tone of Valéry’s reasoning, there is something “forced” in the hermeneutic grid used by Derrida, which risks to “veil” the problematic and critical aim that underlies the Valéry’s “rethinking” of the status of “subjectuality”, when he tries to locate – in the voice as well as in the implex – the “unerasable” marks of subjectual “doing”, a doing understood as a properly human poietic-poetic attitude, aimed at a re-construction and re-configuration of one’s own field of existence – beyond the stereotypies and exhibitionisms of an individual clinging to his own venerated figure. Keywords: Implex, Psychoanalysis, Subjectuality, Valéry, Voice PubDate: 2021-12-11 DOI: 10.6093/1593-7178/8731 Issue No:Vol. 36 (2021)
Authors:Adrian Switzer Pages: 318 - 330 Abstract: Focusing on two of Derrida’s works on Freud – Freud and the Scene of Writing (1967) and Archive Fever (1994) – the article first traces the literalization of figures of writing from the early to late work. Specifically, the article reads Archive Fever as the realization of the theme of the materialization of writing technologies first introduced in the 1967 essay. By tracing the tendency of technological figures of writing to converge what is singular and what is repeatable in analogical relations, the article identifies the singularity of such relations with their materialization in writing technologies. Such technological and material singularity, the article concludes, provides Derrida with a model of (un)natural relation between deconstruction and psychoanalysis – with the struck-through “un” a sign of the «right on [à même]» of technologized, material writing. The morbid, finite bond that Derrida forges between deconstruction and psychoanalysis, then, operates speculatively across an (un)natural paternal-fillialism that Derrida gleans from Freud’s interpretation of Moses as Jewish arch-patriarch. Keywords: Archive, Figuration, Materiality, Paternal-Fillialism, Writing Technologies PubDate: 2021-12-11 DOI: 10.6093/1593-7178/8732 Issue No:Vol. 36 (2021)
Authors:Francesco Saverio Trincia Pages: 331 - 350 Abstract: Ther essay aims to analyse and deconstruttively explain the “beyond” of the title. Moving from the the going beyond the husserlian first Logisch Untersuchung realized by Jacques Derrida in La voix et le phénomène, it becomes possible to understand the sense of this deconstrutive going beyond, first of all through the understanding of the crucial concept of difference as différance between expressive and significant sign, that is «index». The difference as différance allows at the same time their interconnection. The transcendental value of the «index» is cancelled by the reversal of the soliloquy of the conscience with itself in the «writing» («écriture»). The derridean interpretation of the unconscious in Sigmund Freud as an «originary suppement» is explained in La voix et le phénomène. It is also briefly analysed. Furthermore, the essays by Rudolf Bernet and Jocelyn Benoist and their ambivalent interpretation of Derrida’s phenomenology are examined. The essay ends with the decostructive reading of the last chapter of the book. Keywords: Benoist, Bernet, Differánce, Freud, Originary Suppement PubDate: 2021-12-11 DOI: 10.6093/1593-7178/8734 Issue No:Vol. 36 (2021)