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APPLYING: TO DERRIDA Also by Julian Wolfreys

BEING ENGLISH: Narratives, Idioms, and Performances of National Identity from Coleridge to Trollope

THE OF AFFIRMATIVE RESISTANCE: Dissonant Identity from Carroll to Derrida (forthcoming)

VICTORIAN IDENTITIES: Social and Cultural Formations in Nineteenth-Century Literature (co-editor with Ruth Robbins) Applying: To Derrida

Edited by John Brannigan, Ruth Robbins and Julian Wolfreys First published in Great Britain 1996 by MACMILLAN PRESS LTD Houndmills. Basingstoke. Hampshire RG21 6XS and London Companies and representatives throughout the world

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. ISBN 978-0-333-67070-5 ISBN 978-1-349-25077-6 (eBook) DOI 10.1007/978-1349-25077-6

First published in the United States of America 19% by ST. MARTIN'S PRESS, INC., Scholarly and Reference Division. 175 Fifth Avenue. New York, N.Y. 10010 ISBN 978-0-312-16562-8 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Applying- to Derrida 1 edited by John Brannigan. Ruth Robbins and Julian Wolfreys. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-0-312-16562-8 (cloth) I. Derrida, Jacques-Contributions to criticism. 2. Criticism. 3. . 4. Literature-Philosophy. I. Brannigan. John. II. Robbins, Ruth, 1965- III. Wolfreys. Julian, 1958- PN75.D45A67 1996 80I'.95'092--nc20 96-30918 CIP Text © Macmillan Press Ltd 1996, with the following exceptions: Chapter I © Geoffrey Bennington 1996; Chapter 2 © Derek Attridge 1996; Chapter 10 © J. Hillis Miller 1996; Chapter 12 © Antony Easthope 1996; Chapter 13 © Peggy Kamuf 1996; Chapter 14 © 1996 Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 1996 All rights reserved. No reproduction, copy or transmission of this publication may be made without written permission. No paragraph of this publication may be reproduced, copied or transmitted save with written permission or in accordance with the provisions of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, or under the terms of any licence permitting limited copying issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency, 90 Tottenham Court Road, London WI P 9HE. Any person who does any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages. 10 9 8 7 6 54321 05 04 03 02 01 00 99 98 97 96 Contents

Notes on the Contributors vii List of Abbreviations x Preface and Acknowledgements xii Introduction by John Brannigan, Ruth Robbins and Julian Wolfreys xv

1 X Geoffrey Bennington 1 2 Expecting the Unexpected in Coetzee's Master of Petersburg and Derrida's Recent Writings Derek Attridge 21 3 'But one thing knows the flower': Whistler, Swinburne, Derrida Ruth Robbins 41 4. Writing DeTermiNation: Reading Death in(to) Irish National Identity John Brannigan 55 5 A Note on a Post Card: Derrida, Deronda, Deguy Julian Wolfreys 71 6 The Terror of the Law: Judaism and International Institutions Gary Banham 96 7 Incommunication: Derrida in Translation Karin Littau 107 8 Justice: The Law of the Law Boris Belay 124 9 Assuming Responsibility: Or Derrida's Disclaimer Morag Patrick 136 10 Derrida's Others J. Hillis Miller 153

v vi Contents 11 (Touching On) Tele-Technology Roger Luckhurst 171 12 Derrida and British Film Theory Antony Easthope 184 13 Derrida on Television Peggy Kamuf 195 14 'As if I were Dead': An Interview with Jacques Derrida 212 Works Cited 227 Index 235 Notes on the Contributors

Derek Attridge teaches in the English Department of Rutgers University, New Brunswick. Among his books are Peculiar : Literature as from the Renaissance to James Joyce (Cornell and Methuen 1988) and Poetic Rhythm: An Introduction (Cambridge 1995). He co-edited Post-Structuralist Joyce (Cambridge 1984) and Post- and the Question of History (Cambridge 1986). He has also edited (essays by Jacques Derrida) (Routledge 1992). Gary Banham was until recently a Research Fellow at Manchester Metropolitan University. He has written reviews and articles for The Journal of Nietzsche Studies, Angelikai and the Journal of the British Society for Phenomenology. He is working on his first book, a study of the relationship between Heidegger and Marx. Boris Belay is a doctoral student at the State University of New York at Stonybrook, and has worked under Derrida's supervision. His research focuses on the place and influence of Georges Bataille's political reflections in contemporary French thought. Geoffrey Bennington is Professor of French at the University of Sussex. His publications include Sententiousness and the Novel (1985), Lyotard: Writing the Event (1988), Jacques Derrida (with Jacques Derrida; 1991), Dudding: des noms de Rousseau (1991), Legislations (1994). He is currently working on a book on the quasi• of the frontier entitled La frontiere I. John Brannigan is a researcher in the School of Literature and History at the University of Luton. He is currently working on a study of writers of the 1950s, including John Osborne, Brendan Behan and Sam Selvon, and a study of the relationship between marginality and writing. He is co-editor of French Connections: Literary and National Contexts of the Thought of Jacques Derrida (State University of New York Press, forthcoming 1997). Jacques Derrida is Director of Studies at the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales and Professor of Humanities at the University of California, Irvine. He has published numerous arti• cles and books, including Points ... , The Gift of Death, Memoirs of the Blind, Cinders, Given Time, and The Other Heading.

vii viii Notes on the Contributors Antony Easthope is Professor of English and Cultural Studies at the Manchester Metropolitan University. His books include Poetry as Discourse (Routledge 1983), What a Man's Gotta Do (Paladin 1986) and British Post-Structuralism (Routledge 1988). Peggy Kamuf is Professor of French and Comparative Literature at the University of Southern California. She is the author of Fictions of Feminine Desire and Signature Pieces, as well as numerous articles. She is the Editor of A Derrida Reader: Between the Blinds and is the translator of numerous essays and books by Jacques Derrida. Karin Littau was educated at the University of Warwick, and is now a lecturer in English at the University of the West of England in Bristol. Her research is concerned with the political aesthetics of rewriting, within which field she has published articles in MLN, Theatre Research International, and Forum for Modern Language Studies. She is the author of Theories of Reading (forthcoming), and is currently working on refractions of the feminine, the interstices between representation, women's (re)writing and meta fiction; in addition, she is the reviewer for 'Deconstruction' in The Year's Work in Critical and Cultural Theory. Roger Luckhurst teaches literature and theory at Birkbeck College, University of London, and has published articles relating to de• construction in Diacritics, Contemporary Literature, and Critique. A book on the fiction of J. G. Ballard is due for publication. J. Hillis Miller is Distinguished Professor of English and Comparative Literature at the University of California, Irvine. Before coming to Irvine, he taught at the Johns Hopkins University for nineteen years and then at Yale for fourteen years. He has pub• lished a number of books and articles in nineteenth- and twentieth• century English and American literature and literary theory. His most recent books include Versions of Pygmalion, Ariadne's Thread and Illustration. Topographies was published by Stanford University Press in 1994. He is at work on four books, one entitled Diegesis, another entitled Black Holes, a third to be called Others and a book project on Speech Acts in Henry James. Miller was President of the Modem Language Association in 1986. Morag Patrick teaches political philosophy at the University of Manchester where she recently completed her doctoral research on the ethical and political significance of Derrida's work. Ruth Robbins is a lecturer in literary studies at the University of Luton. She has research interests in late-nineteenth-century litera• ture and has published articles on Hausman, Wilde and Vernon Notes on the Contributors ix Lee. She is the editor, with Julian WoHreys, of both Victorian Identities: Social and Cultural Formations in Nineteenth-Century Literature (1995) and French Connections: Literary and National Contexts of the Thought of Jacques Derrida (forthcoming). Julian WoHreys teaches in the Department of English at the University of Dundee. He is the author of Being English: Narratives, Idioms, and Performances of National Identity from Coleridge to Trollope (1995), Affirmative Resistances: Sounding and Si(gh)ting Textual Dissonance (forthcoming), Writing London (forthcoming), and Victoriographies (forthcoming 1999). He is the co-editor of Victorian Identities (1995), French Connections: Literary and National Contexts of the Thought of Jacques Derrida (forthcoming), and Literary Theories: A Case-Study in Critical Performance (forthcoming). List of Abbreviations

The following abbreviations are used throughout the text for the works of Jacques Derrida referred to in this collection. Where more than one work is published in translation in the same year, the dates are given by alphabetical reference (e.g. 1986a). Full biblio• graphical details are provided in the Works Cited list at the end of the book.

A Alterites. 1986a. AL Acts of Literature. 1992a. Ap Aporias. 1993a. Atmw 'At this moment in this work here I am'. 1991a. C Cinders. 1991b. D Dissemination. 1981a. DA 'The Deconstruction of Actuality: An IJ;l.terview with Jacques Derrida'. 1994a. DO 'Deconstruction and the Other'. 1984b. DR A Derrida Reader: Between the Blinds. 1991c. EO The Ear of the Other: Otobiography, Transference, Translation. 1985a. EW "'Eating Well," or the Calculation of the Subject: An Interview with Jacques Derrida'. 1991d. F 'Fourmis'. 1994b. FAW 'Fors: The Anglish Words of Nicolas Abraham and Maria Torok'. 1986b. FL 'Force of Law: The Mystical Foundation of Authority'. 1991e. G .1986d. GD The Gift of Death. 1995b. GT Given Time: 1. Counterfeit Money. 1992b. HAS 'How to Avoid Speaking: Denials'. 1992c. JD Jacques Derrida. 1993. LI . 1988a. MC 'My Chances/ Mes Chances: A Rendezvous with Some Epicurean Stereophonies'. 1984a. MCF 'Mochlos; or, the Conflict of the Faculties'. 1992d.

x List of Abbreviations xi MO 'The Monolingualism of the Other or the Prosthesis of Origin'. 1995a. MP Margins of Philosophy. 1982a. MPM Memoires for Paul de Man. 1986c. NM 'Nietszche and the Machine: Interview with Jacques Derrida'.1994c. OC Of Crammatology. 1976. OH The Other Heading: Reflections on Today's Europe. 1992e. OS Of Spirit: Heidegger and the Question. 1989.

P 'Passions: 1/ An Oblique Offering"'. 1992f. P Points ... Interviews 1974-1994. 1995c. Pl'a Politiques de l'amitie. 1994e. PI Psyche: Inventions de l'autre. 1987b. PC : From Socrates to Freud and Beyond. 1987a. pf Le passage des frontieres. 1994d. Pos . 1981b. PsE Points de suspension: Entretiens. 1992g. S Signeponge/Signsponge. 1983a. S 'Sending: On Representation'. 1982b. SA 'The Spatial Arts: an Interview with Jacques Derrida'. 1994g. Sc Schibboleth pour Paul Celano 1986d. SM : The State of the Debt, the Work of Mourning, and the New International. 1994g. SNS Spurs: Nietzsche's Styles/ Eperons: Les Styles de Nietzsche. 1979. SPC 'Shibboleth for Paul Celan'. 1994f. SST 'Some Statements and Truisms about Neo-Logisms, Newisms, Postisms, Parasitisms, and other Small Seismisms'.1990. T 'Telepathy'. 1988b. ta D'un ton apocalyptique adopte naguere en philosophie. 1983b. TB 'Des Tours de Babel'. 1985b. TP The Truth in Painting. 1987c. IT 'Le Toucher: Touch/To Touch him'. 1993b. WD . 1978. Preface and Acknowledgements

Applying: to Derrida gathers together thirteen essays and an inter• view with Jacques Derrida, all of which come from the 'Applied Derrida' conference which took place at the University of Luton on 20-23 July 1995. This is not the place to expound upon the name of the conference, 'Applied Derrida'; this is not the place to give con• sideration either to the term'Applied' or the proper name 'Derrida'. Many of the essays in this collection generously discourse on both, and include, to paraphrase Geoffrey Bennington, the conference's keynote speaker, discussion of what it means to 'apply' Derrida today. Even Jacques Derrida - even? inevitably - applied himself out of a sense of responsibility to respond to the questions put to him on the subject of application. The essays cover a diverse range of topics, from Coetzee, Swinburne, Behan, love, Irish national identity, to the law, the other, ethics, tele-technology, film theory, Judaism. This diversity, a diversity as to 'style' as well as 'content' - none but the most churlish of critics could accuse this book of 'prac• tising' deconstruction or 'deconstructionism' according to any pro• gramme - hardly begins to reflect the diversity of interests, fields, disciplines, topics, themes, approaches, to which the conference bore witness in its event. There were 69 speakers, many of whose papers will be published at other times, elsewhere; aside from the more conventional papers there was a poetry reading by Canadian poet Adeena Karasick (who also gave a paper), an installation by young British artist Matt Hawthorn, a film screening and impromptu discussion generously agreed to at the proverbial eleventh hour by Ken McMullen, for which we thank him, as we do Matt and Adeena. Yet the diversity of which we speak, and on which we reflect, does not do justice to the sense of shared purpose and involvement among the participants, a sense which extended throughout both speaking and non-speaking delegates. We shall say no more of this here either, except to refer you to Jacques Derrida's comments in re• sponse to the final question of the interview. The reader will come to understand at once the diversity and rapport which existed as

xii Preface and Acknowledgements xiii s/he reads across this collection, where and when a theme, a topic, an idea is picked up and traced across the essays. Balancing the tone, the tones - plus d'un ton - of such a collection is never easy, and, in editing this collection, we wanted to main• tain, to let happen and be responsive to, something of the spirit of the event of the conference, allowing something to overflow the merely printed nature of these essays. Clearly, essays such as Geoffrey Bennington's, Boris Belay's and Julian Wolfreys's all imply an immediate audience, albeit in very different modes of address, and to require revisions which lose the performative aspect of such pieces would very much miss the point. Similarly, one would not intervene in an interview such as the one which closes this collection in order to make it seem more appropriate to the printed form. Yet at the same time, collections gathered from conferences run the risk of appearing somehow too immediate, not sufficiently organised, rethought, given a 'proper form' (whatever that might be). These are questions of professionalism and institutionalisation, questions which have circulated for a long time around the names of 'deconstruction' and 'Jacques Derrida'. The scholars gathered here are all sufficiently aware of such questions, sufficiently versed in the and rhetoric of such issues. Their essays all anticipated the necessity of 'getting the tone right', while recognising that there is and should always be - si• multaneously - more than one tone, no more than one tone. As is customary, but no less genuine and heartfelt for all the custom, we would like to thank and acknowledge all those involved in both the conference and the book. First, we would like to thank our students, Matt Nicol, Matthew Butcher, Richard Fower, Catherine Minnis, Jackilyn Glen, Katharine Wickens, Naomi Burke, and Nicola Collins, for providing much needed support and help throughout the conference with good humour and commitment. We would also like to thank everyone 'off• stage' at the University of Luton responsible for ensuring the smooth running of the event. Particularly we would like to express our thanks to the Dean of Humanities, Tim Boatswain, for his encouragement, enthusiasm, graciousness and involvement up to and throughout the conference. At Macmillan, Charmian Hearne deserves unreserved praise and thanks for her encourage• ment and commitment to the project. Needless to say there are also those who come under the 'without whom' category who already know how we feel about them. xiv Preface and Acknowledgements Finally thanks must go to everyone who spoke, everyone who attended, everyone who travelled to be present and committed themselves to three days in unbearable heat without air-condition• ing! On Friday 21 July, Geoffrey Bennington commented in his Keynote Address - and reiterates here in his essay - that the confer• ence could be taken as an attempt to re-name Jacques Derrida as Applied Derrida. Later the same evening, in the interview which took place between Jacques Derrida, Ruth Robbins and Julian Wolfreys, Jacques Derrida admitted that he was Applied Derrida. At Saturday's plenary session, Boris Belay prefaced his presenta• tion by noticing a typographical error in the conference programme which effectively gave him a new surname, so that, henceforth, he was renamed 'Boris Belay Derrida'. It only remains to say, as Julian Wolfreys did in this closing remarks at Sunday's final session, that nous sommes tous Derrida applique.

JOHN BRANNIGAN, RUlli ROBBINS, JULIAN WOLFREYS Luton, Bedford, Perth Introduction John Brannigan, Ruth Robbins, and Julian Wolfreys

Applying: To Derrida. What is at stake in such a phrase, do you think, and what is at stake, today, in a title such as this which ges• tures obliquely towards the collection of essays gathered here? What are we going to be able to read here, always supposing, of course, that we think we understand the grammar of such a state• ment? always supposing that we .comprehend what we might call, for the moment at least, the 'internal' of the phrase, where the emphases are to be found, how the colon works on the reader from its place in the structure, how the three words relate to one another, what the relationship is between the proper name and the other words, and so on. And, given that we can come to an agreement about the title, what are we going to be able to read in and across this collection, collected by, and as the event of, this strange title? - There are various strong and weak readings of this phrase, applying: to Derrida, which force themselves upon us, both before and after this collection, and one of the questions which such read• ings reiterate, across the several essays to be found herein, is the question of what it means. to be responsible; in particular what it means to be responsible to the other which addresses us in the proper name. Responsibility is always taken, often too easily, in the name of... - Yes, I'm well aware of such a phrase. - But what such and such a name names is always something other than that name, something much more than the name itself could name. Indeed, as you can see from the title of this collection, the title names the name, and the name named names that, in an other fashion, what is being named in the title of this book, to which we attempt to respond. We attempt to respond to this name, Derrida, as though it were calling us to responsibility, as though this name named the other or came as the voice of the other to call us, to name us 'Derrida'. The implications for such a naming are profound and numerous, and we can only begin to address such implications, as it were, in passing.

xv xvi Introduction

The reader will find much commentary and interpretation lat~r on in this collection which has to do directly with application, with applying, with the verb 'to apply'; with the simple, conventional meanings of application, with the more obscure, archaic meanings, and with the possibility of entirely new readings of the idea of application, which is a possibility which the name 'Derrida' seems to connote. Indeed, at the end of this collection Jacques Derrida comments on the possibility of 'a new ', an 'other meaning'. And this is precisely where we wanted to lead, to the possibility of opening out beyond the ending, to the possibility of writing application otherwise (in the name of Derrida), so that, as this book seems to end with an interview, it suggests an opening on to other writings, other readings. But the question of 'application' is always there, always 'between' the essayists in this collection. You might tum, for example, to essays signed in the following names: Peggy Kamuf, Geoffrey Bennington, Boris Belay, Julian Wolfreys. Already there is an ongoing - and, once again, 'internal' - dialogue or communica• tion about this notion of 'application'. So, let's tum our attention to the second part of this curious title (if that is what we can assume its function to be, given its placement, location, and the function which such location apparently serves), Applying: To Derrida. To Derrida. This phrase is curious enough on its own. Detaching it from its place as the right-hand piece of an installed structure does nothing to render it any clearer in its purpose. Let's consider it in a couple of different ways, interpreting its function or purpose differ• ently every time, To Derrida [Derrida(er)}: A verb? How would we conjugate this? I Derrida Je Derrida[e] You Derrida Tu Derrida[es] He/She/It Derridas II/EIle Derrida[e] We Derrida Nous Derrida[ons] You (pI) Derrida Vous Derrida[ez] They Derrida IIs/Elles Derrida[ent] In the present tense this seems a regular enough verb, assuming as we have, that, in translation, it would belong to that family of French verbs with regular endings, although that upper case 'D' has to go, otherwise the verb is nothing more nor less than a form Introduction xvii or series of basic pronominal acts: I Derrida, you Jane. So, to continue: I derrida, I will derrida, I derridaed, I have derridaed, I used to derrida; I will, therefore, have derridaed. What might such a verb indicate? What sort of application or action might this verb communicate to us? Keep these questions in mind as we proceed. You may want to respond to some, or all, of them, as we go along. However, for now, let's return to the phrase. To Derrida. This looks like the kind of phrase you frequently see on a page in a book in-between the cover, the title page and the contents page (indeed, accompanied by 'Applying', those are all places where you will find the phrase, to Derrida, in this book, along with its appear• ance as part of the title of this introduction); you might expect to find this on what becomes, in that place between the official margins or borders of a book at a place for dedications. The 'in• between', the entre is of importance throughout this collection. But the phrase, To Derrida: a dedication, perhaps? But, then, you won't find this phrase - if it is a dedication - in the appropriate place, in a place reserved for the absent one, for the other, in a place which, in the form of an encrypted memorial or inscription, a form of monu• mental reminiscence, behaves as if that person, the one named Derrida, were dead: as if Derrida were dead. Or quasi-dead, as Derrida himself says of himself in the interview at the end of the collection. As he points out, using the name in certain ways amounts to addressing the subject as if he were dead. But the person named can still be alive and still have a dedication. So, to Derrida, a possible dedication, even though not in the 'proper' place. One possible reading. But then it is not even a dedication, properly speaking, because it disregards the proper name in full; something is missing. Such a 'properly named' dedication would, doubtless, read something like 'To Jacques Derrida', or 'Applying: Essays in Honour of Jacques Derrida' (as another possible title) or even 'to J. D.' (as in fact a certain dedication does remark itself elsewhere). To write 'To Derrida' seems to indicate a lack of respect (if this is a dedication), for surely something is left out, something like the mark of respect ... xviii Introduction - which is often, frequently, almost all the time, the purpose of dedications, their function within the institutional and conventional place to mark the cliched mark of respect which, precisely because of convention, institution, is no longer the of respect but merely its simulacrum; no real respect expressed at all, all being swallowed up in the place dictated. If such a mark of respect is not found in the place where it gets inscribed conventionally, does this really indicate any less respect, any lessening of responsibility to the other, any lessening of a response to a certain obligation? - I think not and for a very simple reason: throughout these pages you will find, under different names, in diverse hands, with several signatures and a multiplicity of tones - within a single essay or across the essays - the constant mark of dedication, a dedication which is also an application, a dedication on the part of the various writers as a response, a responsible response, to the other, who has said in a ghostly voice, who seems to appear behind the figures of the writers gathered together here, saying the words: - I am Applied Derrida Do you hear this voice, do you hear these words, are you receiving the transmission? - but someone, not me, may come and ask you (you can hear their voice already) - why make all this fuss about the title? After all we chose it for this collection of essays: and if anyone can be expected to 'know' what it means, then surely we should. Publishers insist that the titles of academic books ought to be transparent ... - or quasi-transparent; diaphanous . .. as part of their marketing strategies. If you cannot tell what a book is about from its name, then why pick it out from the catalogue or off the bookcase? No one has the time to live out the ideal of reading in which every text would be carefully scrutinised. The title is the very thing that we are supposed to be able to take for granted. - On the other hand, it's precisely the habitual- those things we take for granted (that we take as 'read') on which the attempt to Introduction xix think 'like Derrida', on which applying (to) Derrida - are predi• cated. And these are the things on which Derrida himself has con• centrated: his thought, his name no less, requires us to rethink, revisit, reread those things which are not precisely in the text - the peripherals like footnotes, margins, parentheses and, indeed, titles - for these are often precisely the things which invoke or provoke meanings in potentia. Transmission is the word. Meanings are nothing if they are not a sending across; translations from medium to medium. - Which brings us back again to the entre, the in-between which such transmissions often map. Exactly. Derrida requires us to understand that there is both loss and gain in the processes of transmission and translation. If we take anything for granted - as 'read' - then an opportunity is missed. And the title which we have installed requires that we do not take things as read, especially today, after Derrida (which is still the same as saying before Derrida, as others have commented) or in the name of Derrida. - It's not a free-for-all, of course. There are rules for seizing the opportunities afforded by transmission. (The rules, however, are not constant since that would encourage the formation of habits, and might allow us to take things as read.) Nonetheless, we are re• quired to be responSible - another word which resounds in this volume, and has already found itself remarked in this introduction. Derrida is not a mystic or a guru and his methods preclude the pos• sibility of following him blindly. The onus of responsibility is on he or she who would apply (to) Derrida. If 'deconstruction is .not a method', if it cannot be 'reduced to methodological instrumentality or a set of rules and transposable procedures' and if it is 'not even an act or an operation' (Derrida, ed. Kamuf, 273), then any attempt to apply it is necessarily complicated, and, as a number of the essays herein suggest, the notion of application, of what it means to apply or be applied, can no longer be taken simply as read. The wannabe Derridean needs to know that: needs to understand that there aren't necessarily any right ways to do 'it' - but that there are wrong ways; and it is up to us to accept the responsibilities attendant on our applications, to act in good faith, to try to do the right things. Principles of communication and signification involve us in the ethics of self and other. To whom do we speak if not to someone xx Introduction other? Yet if we take seriously Derrida's concerns with what appears to be the peripheral in our messages, then we must also be serious about the problematic of definitions of 'ourselves' and those others with whom we seek to communicate. And if we define our• selves as others - as border people - then in troubling those bound• aries, we find ourselves in the potentially creative space between. Between can be an exposed location, open to attack from any direction. Between also opens up fissures in our habitual certainties of (self-) definition. Moreover, between is the site of application leading from one discourse to another, which modifies each in tum and tum about. Without between there is no self and no other: and it is the sine qua non of transmission, for without the space between you cannot send anything across to anyone (without between there would be no one there) or to anywhere (without between there would only be here). Receipt of the transmission depends on our mutual and respons• ible willingness to occupy between, to await the word of the other from a location which is incomprehensible. It's a two-way thing at least, which as we know, after Derrida, always runs the risk of non• delivery or delivery otherwise: are you receiving, am I sending, this transmission? - Someone may be. But, if communication is understood as a desired transmission from A to B, the space through which com• munication passes can be neglected (not read). Sending and receiv• ing are not separate acts. Something happens between them. To you, I am writing. To me, you are reading, even though these posi• tions are not static, not fixed, not easily definable. From now on anything can happen in the space between us. Are you reading? I am writing to you. The space of communication is the non-definable space of negoti• ation and difference, where I am writing, you are reading, we are seeking to communicate, even if our attempt to communicate, to apply (to) one another is marked by the possibility of failure. There are always those who, already, in advance of reading this collec• tion, will have failed to receive what we and the others - and the other - have to say, have come to say, in the name of Derrida, in our acts of 'derridaing', to go back to that uncomfortable, though regular, verb. Knowledge has no part to play in this space. It is merely what we intend to write or read. Intentions are always outside communication, because writing, reading, are wayward Introduction xxi acts which may never reach their destined (intended) meaning. I am writing because you will not understand. You are reading because I do not understand. - I know some things about you. You are reading this. And I could interact with you. Stop reading this. But you will ignore me, or misread me. If I try to tell you what this book is about, you will dis• cover that the book is not so. Something has been lost on the way to delivery. Why are you reading this? Do you expect to be told im• portant things here? Have I upset your expectations of an introduc• tion? It was not what I intended, but if you have any complaints, questions, queries, please apply (in writing): to Derrida. - But what is the address? - This is the address, the address is addressed in this title: to Derrida; this is the address, this is what each essay addresses: Applying: to Derrida. The address, that which everyone writing here addresses, is not addressed to Derrida as though Derrida were the intended addressee. Nor even - as if he were dead - is this the address of a final destination, a dead-letter box, where all the mail which never gets delivered, gets delivered. Neither are we simply suggesting 'return to sender', which is what we might otherwise be doing were we to dedicate this collection to Derrida. Even though this seems to be the address, we would still have to acknowledge that if we were to 'return to sender', then it's a case of 'address unknown'.! - Writing to: You, Derrida, the other. The space of writing, because it is always a writing to someone or other, is the space of conver• sion, translation, where meanings, applications, identities, histories, places, are unsettled and changed. I am, because I am writing, because I am writing to, writing from, writing in, out of, on to, and because I will have been read as other than I am. There is always a context that is inseparable from the text. This writing is because you are reading. Do not stop reading. Reading is our responsibility to the other, our responsibility to keeping the writing of others alive and meaning. Meaning otherwise. Reading is never alive unless it is reading otherwise. Each of these essays is an experiment in reading otherwise. Reading Derrida otherwise. Reading Television, Deronda, Irish National Identity, Kant, Whistler and Swinburne otherwise. Reading otherwise converts the space of meaning into a space in which we might encounter the other. At this very moment xxii Introduction in this work here is (the other). The text reserves a space for the arrival of the other by virtue of the necessity of reading. The read• ability of the text is what opens the work out to other voices, while keeping in reserve the space of, the space for, the other. - By implication, it is also a reserved space, shy and retiring, mannerly and proper. It must be read otherwise for the voice of the other to emerge. It must be read with delicious and perpetual vul• garity. The text must be subject to rude, unmannerly, scornful read• ings. It is no disservice to the writers of these essays to say that many are disrespectful of the boundaries, the limits of the text, of disciplines, of what are called fields of study. They do vulgar, rude, sometimes irreverent things to texts. This is, to borrow Derrida's words, those words already borrowed below by Peggy Kamuf, 'beginning to be irresponsible', paradoxically in the name of re• sponsibility. And all in the name of converting that space of com• munication into a space of otherness. To tum the transmission over, to betray the transmission, to the other. - All of which seems to suggest a responsibility to the other, but a responsibility which cannot be engaged programmatically, as Kamuf suggests. Let me just quote Kamuf a little further from her essay on television, as a way of addressing, returning to, our title Applying: To Derrida: - At the very least, however, this application of the title, besides prescribing that we begin to be irresponsible, would leave us trying to figure out how to apply a law that is not simply a law or that is not a simple law but is always the sort of double injunction or double bind of the undecidable ... we are still and perhaps even more than ever seeking to apply that law, as if it were possible. Applying Kamuf a little irresponsibly here, I see in her words pre• cisely the kind of double bind articulated in our title and traced throughout the paradox of introducing what cannot be introduced: a 'programme' (of essays, in this case) without programme. As if it were possible. There's that phrase again: as if, which seems to suggest itself as the signature of the between. As if, with regard to the question of the programme, of programming and not program• ming - the double bind of this collection - through a title which implies and yet which attempts to resist implying a theme, a topic, a subject. In short we have gathered these essays as part of a re• sponse to Derrida, but a response which tries not to define Derrida, Introduction xxiii 'what Derrida does', without imposing on Derrida the strictures of a methodology in the form of an 'applied deconstruction' - that is to say a methodology or theory called deconstruction which, once defined, once domesticated or institutionalised, could then be applied to whatever topic or subject we chose - so that, in responding to Derrida without programme, we are attempting to be responsible to the other. For, as Derrida has sug• gested, to be responsible to the other, to await the arrival of the other, you cannot programme the event; the nature of the event is that it is not, nor should it be, pre-programmed, even though we might act 'as if', in writing an introduction to a collection of essays entitled Applying: To Derrida, for example. The event without pro• gramme is open to chance, happening from moment to moment; it is unpredictable. How are we to keep to the spirit of the event in a published collection? - Certainly there is the implication of programme, of the attempt to programme the event of this collection in that certain essays have been selected, but these essays, each very different from every other, are still open to reading, rereading, and awaiting the arrival of the other in the form of a reader whose response we cannot predict, whose reception we cannot govern, and for whom the transmission will have arrived, if it arrives at all, in no way that we could control or direct, as if we were the sorting office or the central exchange, trying in this introduction to direct the calls, re-route the signals. The introduction conventionally acts all too often as a zip code or postal code, a series of codified determinations seeking to ensure prompt and proper delivery; yet, when all is said and done nothing could be less certain. And so we have not here presented in postal form an address detailing the subject matter, the topics, the sometimes shared focus of a number of essays, except in the most cursory manner. - What we will say, sharing our dream of the programme without programme, is that each of the essays here does not follow a pro• grammatic application of Derrida. All behave responsibly to 'Derrida', in this irresponsibility and to this proper name, respond• ing to this proper name as their other, which is why they are always already applied, you know, applied Derrida. And this perhaps will begin to explain our title, our imaginary verb, and, concomitantly, the absence of a dedication. By chance, Thomas xxiv Introduction Dutoit offers a discussion of the surname/ surnom, the family name or nickname in his introduction - entitled appropriately enough 'Translating the Name?' - to a recent book by Derrida, On the Name. 2 As Dutoit points out here, there is a potential confusion between the English and French meanings (x-xi), between the idea of the surname as a family name, a name shared between a group of people, and the surnom, the sur- or super-name, the added name, the extra or excess name, the supplemental name. We might suggest that, in using the name otherwise, as a subtitle or verb form, we are doing no more than what each of these essayists has already done, which is to announce a responsibility to a certain family name, while simultaneously supplementing that name, naming with that name the supplement which is also, to borrow from Dutoit's discussion, a renaming (xi), but a renaming in excess of the original name, a naming otherwise, naming the other within the name. To derrida. A verb which describes the action of awaiting the other but also of renaming, naming the other within; to derrida is to speak otherwise through renaming and celebrating. We might then suggest as a possible French translation of 'to derrida', taking the hint from Thomas Dutoit as he himself supplements and renames Derrida on the name (xi), the French verb renommer. This verb, which only inadequately translates as 'to rename' in English, can be translated, as Dutoit points out, as "'to name often and with praise, to celebrate'" (xi), while still suggesting the possibility of re• naming, of naming as always being a renaming. As Derrida says in the interview, he was applied Derrida, he was given the name Derrida, he was renamed Derrida. The act of naming, of applying the name, is an act of renaming and an act of celebrating, while also attempting to convey the supplement in the name, beyond what the name names. Here are the chances to which our title alludes, to which we gesture in this title which is also partly a form of verb as well as a noun. Re-naming Derrida Applied Derrida (see Geoffrey Bennington's essay below) we do no more than write 'to Derrida', celebrating Derrida, what Derrida has taught us, through the act of re-naming, while introducing through this re-naming, the supple• ment to the name composed and recomposed through and between each of these essays. And beyond. Introduction xxv Notes

1. With apologies to Elvis. 2. Thomas Dutoit, 'Translating the Name?', in Jacques Derrida, On the Name (1993), ed. Thomas Dutoit, trans. David Wood, John P. Leavey, Jr, and Ian McLeod (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1995), ix-xvi.