One night in 1979 Derrida was listening to his son Pierre talking with Paul de Man; they were discussing musical instruments after a jazz concert in Chicago. Here is what Jackie recalls:
It was then I realized that Paul had never told me he was an experienced musician and that music had also been a practice with him. The word that let me know this was the word "âme" when, hearing Pierre, my son, and Paul speak with familiarity of the violin's or the bass's soul, I learned that the "soul" is the name one gives in French to the small and fragile piece of wood--always very exposed, very vulnerable--that is placed within the body of these instruments to support the bridge and assure the resonant communication of the two sounding boards.
Jacques Derrida, Memoires for Paul de Man (1989); this part trans. by Kevin Newmark
Always a piece on the fringe that attract Derrida's attraction. And generally speaking, soul resides on the edge of things, it seems!
Showing posts with label Derrida. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Derrida. Show all posts
Wednesday, February 11, 2009
Tuesday, February 10, 2009
Teaching in grade school
What did Wittgenstein and Derrida have in common? They were both (at one stage of their lives) elementary school teachers!
Wittgenstein between 1922-26 (the years when he was between 33 and 37) famously taught in a primary school before he was forced to quit after hitting a student on his head for the child to lose consciousness. W only had two books published during his life time: the Tractatus and a vocabulary book for elementary school students. What a glorious and muy enloquecido teacher to have.
Derrida, instead of a compulsory military service, taught at a primary school in Algeria for two years when he was 27, 28 or thereabouts. This was around 1957, the hottest years in Algeria before independence. What kind of teacher he was, I can't tell.
I find it quite interesting, for me at this age, to teach in grade school along with my university position, if that's possible at all. A forced circulation of the teaching body among institutions of different age groups can only do good for the educational system in general. Themes out of school would be the only interesting and immediately pertinent in our collective survival.
Wittgenstein between 1922-26 (the years when he was between 33 and 37) famously taught in a primary school before he was forced to quit after hitting a student on his head for the child to lose consciousness. W only had two books published during his life time: the Tractatus and a vocabulary book for elementary school students. What a glorious and muy enloquecido teacher to have.
Derrida, instead of a compulsory military service, taught at a primary school in Algeria for two years when he was 27, 28 or thereabouts. This was around 1957, the hottest years in Algeria before independence. What kind of teacher he was, I can't tell.
I find it quite interesting, for me at this age, to teach in grade school along with my university position, if that's possible at all. A forced circulation of the teaching body among institutions of different age groups can only do good for the educational system in general. Themes out of school would be the only interesting and immediately pertinent in our collective survival.
Saturday, January 24, 2009
An earlyriser
Picture this Derrida as an earlyriser, just like Valéry well before him:
Et il a toujours travaillé tôt le matin: levé à quatre, cinq heures, il écrit jusqu'à dix.
Max Genève, Qui a peur de Derrida? (2008)
I should follow his example, too.
Et il a toujours travaillé tôt le matin: levé à quatre, cinq heures, il écrit jusqu'à dix.
Max Genève, Qui a peur de Derrida? (2008)
I should follow his example, too.
Friday, January 23, 2009
O, saisons, o, SHADOWS!
Richard Holmes is one author I wanted to be, if I had another life, that is. His Footsteps surely belong to our list for the WALKING exhibition. Here is Holmes on Shelley:
In Act One of Prometheus Unbound, there is a haunting passage in which Shelley describes the "two worlds of life and death." Combining classical ideas of Hades, Platonic notions of the interne dreary spheres of daemons and the Dantean vision of the Christian Inferno, he suggests the existence of a world of "doubles," of "shadows" which repeat or mirror everything on earth, "all forms that think and live". These are not so much ghosts of the dead as ghosts of the living. We all have our doubles in this second world (the idea is most familiar nowadays in science fiction rather than poerty). Only at the moment of death or destruction are the real and the double united, "and they part no more." Thus to meet your double, or to see it attacking someone, signified imminent peril: death perhaps, or the invasion of the real, normal world by the world of shadows.
Richard Holmes, Footsteps (1985)
So that world co-exists with this one, not anywhere else but here, and it repeats everything that's happening here. The two are united only at the time of the former's destruction. Why then does the second exist? Only to show that the frist can never claim unicity. They are identical but for the fact that they are not the same. And this doubleness is the proof that you are alive... when dead, the two merges into one.
A very strange idea, indeed. Our life, being one, abhors its unicity. Or life, by its nature, needs constant differenciation. DIFFERANCE. We know how much Derrida was interested in British Romanticism.
In Act One of Prometheus Unbound, there is a haunting passage in which Shelley describes the "two worlds of life and death." Combining classical ideas of Hades, Platonic notions of the interne dreary spheres of daemons and the Dantean vision of the Christian Inferno, he suggests the existence of a world of "doubles," of "shadows" which repeat or mirror everything on earth, "all forms that think and live". These are not so much ghosts of the dead as ghosts of the living. We all have our doubles in this second world (the idea is most familiar nowadays in science fiction rather than poerty). Only at the moment of death or destruction are the real and the double united, "and they part no more." Thus to meet your double, or to see it attacking someone, signified imminent peril: death perhaps, or the invasion of the real, normal world by the world of shadows.
Richard Holmes, Footsteps (1985)
So that world co-exists with this one, not anywhere else but here, and it repeats everything that's happening here. The two are united only at the time of the former's destruction. Why then does the second exist? Only to show that the frist can never claim unicity. They are identical but for the fact that they are not the same. And this doubleness is the proof that you are alive... when dead, the two merges into one.
A very strange idea, indeed. Our life, being one, abhors its unicity. Or life, by its nature, needs constant differenciation. DIFFERANCE. We know how much Derrida was interested in British Romanticism.
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