Insister of Jacques Derrida
by Hélène Cixous
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Hélène Cixous is arguably the most insightful and unbridled reader of Jacques Derrida today. In Insister, she brings a unique mixture of scholarly erudition, theoretical speculation, and breathtaking textual explication to an extremely close reading of Derrida's work. At the same time, Insister is an extraordinarily poetic meditation, a work of literature and of mourning for Jacques Derrida the person, who was a close friend and accomplice of Cixous's from the beginning of their careers. show more In a melodic stream-of-consciousness Cixous speaks to Derrida, to his memory and to the words he left behind. She delves into the philosophical spaces that separated them, filling them out to create new understandings, bringing Derrida's words back to life while insisting on our inability to ever truly communicate through words. "More than once we say the same words," Cixous writes, "but we do not live them in the same tone." Insister of Jacques Derrida joins Veils, the two loosely autobiographical texts of Derrida and Cixous published together by Stanford in 2001. show lessTags
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I am not forgetting that each time I call him, designate him, paradigmatically by this name of Derrida, I make as if I knew whom I was talking about or what whereas not at all, I know so little, and in the instant there is one of them, another one, there are so many ones in him that are dissembled beginning with resemblances that ephemeral but vivid but tenuous, and each one uniquely him. 'You know me a little' he says.
This was such an astonishing journey. Should we begin with the title, which was Derrida's puny punny name for Cixous? Emergng with similar origins and faiths, both were allowed to simmer and saunter over a lifetime: aside form the predilections, there were/are forces at play which allowed (encouraged?) this philosophical show more conspiracy. This book straddles elegy and eulogy and somehow escapes the sum. It is constructed with imagined dialogues, stream-of-conscious prose poems and excerpts from texts. It offers the shadow of an altar (alter?) but Inister is only a dream's punch line. This is a haunting text: as it reveals it circles back to an always already appreciation, keeping that impossible distance. I feel fortunate to have spent a day with it. show less
This was such an astonishing journey. Should we begin with the title, which was Derrida's puny punny name for Cixous? Emergng with similar origins and faiths, both were allowed to simmer and saunter over a lifetime: aside form the predilections, there were/are forces at play which allowed (encouraged?) this philosophical show more conspiracy. This book straddles elegy and eulogy and somehow escapes the sum. It is constructed with imagined dialogues, stream-of-conscious prose poems and excerpts from texts. It offers the shadow of an altar (alter?) but Inister is only a dream's punch line. This is a haunting text: as it reveals it circles back to an always already appreciation, keeping that impossible distance. I feel fortunate to have spent a day with it. show less
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140+ Works 2,420 Members
Born in 1937 in Algeria, Helene Cixous came to Paris, where she is currently professor of English, in 1955. After a dissertation on James Joyce, The Exile of James Joyce (1968), she began to publish novels, critical essays, and plays, most notably Le Portrait de Dora (1976), a feminist retelling of a Freudian case history. Jacques Derrida has show more named Helene Cixous the greatest contemporary French writer. Cixous has been an active participant in the development of literary criticism after structuralism and has been a leading figure in the French feminist movement. (Bowker Author Biography) show less
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- Genres
- Nonfiction, Literature Studies and Criticism, Philosophy, Sexuality and Gender Studies
- DDC/MDS
- 194 — Philosophy & psychology Modern western philosophy Philosophy of France
- LCC
- PQ2663 .I9 .I5713 — Language and Literature French, Italian, Spanish and Portuguese literatures French literature Modern literature 1961-2000
- BISAC
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- 1
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- (3.25)
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- English, French
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- Paper, Ebook
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- 5
