Theory@buffalo 18

Bys: Gil Anidjar, Kelly Oliver, Marc Cr?pon, et al.

Because of his early silence on the issue, when Jacques Derrida is pressedconcerning "the materialist text" in Positions (1971), his response might seemenigmatic: If "matter in this general economy designates . . . radical alterity," then"what [he] write[s] can be considered 'materialist.'" Far from absent, materialitywill have been silently at work in Derrida, perhaps, from the beginning and ingeneral. (Indeed, in 1971--the year of the interview--Derrida delivered aseminar at the ?cole normale sup?rieure fulfilling the "Matter [mati?re]" rubricfor the philosophy agr?gation.) Even if, however, a certain material insistence canlead to a generalization of textuality in the deconstructive sense, Derrida at thesame time warns that even materialism often organizes itself around atranscendental signified and therefore always risks amounting to another, moredeeply entrenched because more apparently opposed, metaphysics. Such is thecase, traditionally speaking, of realism or empiricism. The dividing line thereforelies neither between the ideal and the material nor, for that matter, betweenmetaphysics and non-metaphysics. Accordingly, Derrida refuses to say that "theconcept of matter is in and of itself either metaphysical or nonmetaphysical"; aquestion, rather, of singular configurations in an uneven history, it "dependsupon the work to which it yields." theory@buffalo 18 includes essays by Gil Anidjar, Marc Cr?pon, David E. Johnson, Peggy Kamuf, Kelly Oliver, and Samuel Weber on thismaterial work in Derrida.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0984566244
• ISBN13: 9780984566242
• Release Date: June 2015
• Publisher: theory@buffalo