APPLYING: TO DERRIDA Also by Julian Wolfreys BEING ENGLISH: Narratives, Idioms, and Performances of National Identity from Coleridge to Trollope THE RHETORIC 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. Deconstruction. 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 © Jacques Derrida 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 Language: Literature as Difference 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-Structuralism and the Question of History (Cambridge 1986). He has also edited Acts of Literature (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 concept 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 Glas.1986d.