Daniel_Cheung
08-13-2007, 10:15 AM
Geneses, Genealogies, Genres, and Genius: The Secrets of the Archive, Beverly Bie Brahic (trans.), Columbia University Press, 2006, 96pp., $25.50 (hbk), ISBN 0231139780.
http://ndpr.nd.edu/review.cfm?id=10643
Reviewed by Krzysztof Ziarek, University at Buffalo
Jacques Derrida's Geneses, Genealogies, Genres, and Genius: The Secrets of the Archive is one of his last published texts (?ditions Galil?e, 2003), a lecture delivered at the inauguration of the Cixous Archive at the Biblioth?que Nationale de France (BNF). As such, it is in part an homage to H?l?ne Cixous, whom Derrida salutes as one of the most important contemporary French writers, still very much underappreciated in her own country, and in part a broader reflection on the notion of genius and on the idea of literature. Derrida ascribes the lack of appreciation for Cixous's writing in France to the specific way in which Cixous's writing pressures and revises -- often through homophonic, syllabic, and syntactic play -- the linguistic, literary, and institutional conventions of the French language: "What H?l?ne Cixous's work does to these codes is a storm so unpredictable and so intolerable that there is no question of her garnering a following." (54) Against this backdrop, Derrida proceeds to demonstrate the literary and philosophical import of Cixous's texts, anchoring his analysis in a series of language plays, largely homophonic, which he traces through several of Cixous's prose writings. These are among the best and most interesting moments of Derrida's own text, as they tend to be rooted in a close reading of Cixous's language and a celebratory appreciation of the "genius" of her writings. Perhaps the most salient of these is the homophonic play between several words beginning with the sound "g" (for instance, in the title of the conference at which Derrida presented the paper: "Geneses, Genealogies, Genres") and the French word jet, which Derrida links on the one hand to the Latin root of key philosophemes like subject, object, or project, and on the other to the sense of throwness, describing the manner of being-in-the-world in Heidegger's thought. (49-51) Without having time to develop these implications in any significant detail, Derrida suggests rich and far reaching implications that the inventiveness of Cixous's language opens up for the parameters of philosophical reflection on being...
http://ndpr.nd.edu/review.cfm?id=10643
Reviewed by Krzysztof Ziarek, University at Buffalo
Jacques Derrida's Geneses, Genealogies, Genres, and Genius: The Secrets of the Archive is one of his last published texts (?ditions Galil?e, 2003), a lecture delivered at the inauguration of the Cixous Archive at the Biblioth?que Nationale de France (BNF). As such, it is in part an homage to H?l?ne Cixous, whom Derrida salutes as one of the most important contemporary French writers, still very much underappreciated in her own country, and in part a broader reflection on the notion of genius and on the idea of literature. Derrida ascribes the lack of appreciation for Cixous's writing in France to the specific way in which Cixous's writing pressures and revises -- often through homophonic, syllabic, and syntactic play -- the linguistic, literary, and institutional conventions of the French language: "What H?l?ne Cixous's work does to these codes is a storm so unpredictable and so intolerable that there is no question of her garnering a following." (54) Against this backdrop, Derrida proceeds to demonstrate the literary and philosophical import of Cixous's texts, anchoring his analysis in a series of language plays, largely homophonic, which he traces through several of Cixous's prose writings. These are among the best and most interesting moments of Derrida's own text, as they tend to be rooted in a close reading of Cixous's language and a celebratory appreciation of the "genius" of her writings. Perhaps the most salient of these is the homophonic play between several words beginning with the sound "g" (for instance, in the title of the conference at which Derrida presented the paper: "Geneses, Genealogies, Genres") and the French word jet, which Derrida links on the one hand to the Latin root of key philosophemes like subject, object, or project, and on the other to the sense of throwness, describing the manner of being-in-the-world in Heidegger's thought. (49-51) Without having time to develop these implications in any significant detail, Derrida suggests rich and far reaching implications that the inventiveness of Cixous's language opens up for the parameters of philosophical reflection on being...