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Glasnostalgia

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 June 2015

John Llewelyn
John Llewelyn*
Affiliation:
University of Edinburgh
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Abstract

On the first page of Glas Derrida writes in the left column that “This” is a legend, not a fable. “This” could be that or this pronoun. It could be Hegel's signature, Sa signature referred to a few lines earlier, Hegel's corpus, also referred to earlier, what Derrida is in the course of writing, and much else. Not Hegel's whole corpus, however, but two passages: the religion of flowers and the phallic column of India. On each page there are two columns. The right column has to do especially with Jean Genet, especially with Genet's writing about flowers, especially the flower of the broom, genêt; but genêt is also a common noun for a kind of Spanish horse. In other words, the religion of flowers and its role as an introduction to the religion of animals are in play also in the right column. And just as the right column plays on the possibilities of taking a mark as a proper and a common name, so too does the left column, for example on the chances of hearing the name of the eagle in the name of the philosopher when these names are pronounced à la française. So pronunciation has an important part in this. But reading has an important part in pronunciation, legein in logos. The fable thought of as pure thought without mark, immaculate conception, is at stake in Glas. “Glas” means the voice that speaks, as “fable” is from fari, to speak. So is the reader about to discover in Glas something that sticks in the throat of the Hegelian system, resisting digestion there, a materialism of the idea that resists Aufhebung to absolute knowledge? Or is Derrida lifted thither in the eagle's talons? For does not the dialectic thrive on resistance? Would it not be a bad reading of Hegel's text that failed to comprehend this? But

What would it mean not to comprehend (Hegel) the text Sa ? If it is a matter of a finite failure, the failure is in advance included, comprehended in the text. If it is a matter of an infinite fault or lack, one would have to say that Sa does not think itself, does not say itself, does not write itself, does not read itself, does not know itself, which no longer means anything, by definition. Sa always ends by being full, heavy, pregnant with itself.

Type
Articles
Information
Bulletin of the Hegel Society of Great Britain , Volume 9 , Issue 2: number 18 , Spring/Summer 1988 , pp. 33 - 42
Copyright
Copyright © The Hegel Society of Great Britain 1988

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References

1 References in the text are to Derrida, Jacques, Glas, trans. Leavey, John P. Jr. and Rand, Richard, Lincoln and London, University of Nebraska Press, 1986 Google Scholar; Derrida, Jacques, Glas, Paris, Galilée, 1974 Google Scholar. The letters a and b indicate the left and right columns, in that order; the figure i indicates a judas.

2 Hegel, G.W.F., Phenomenology of Spirit, trans. Miller, A.V., Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1977, p. 286 Google Scholar.

3 Derrida, Jacques, The Post Card from Socrates to Freud and Beyond, trans. Bass, Alan, Chicago and London, University of Chicago Press, 1987 CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Derrida, Jacques, La carte postale: De Socrate à Freud et au-delà, Paris, Flammarion, 1980 Google Scholar.

4 Hegel, op. cit., p. 54.

5 Derrida, Jacques, “Signature Event Context”, in Margins of Philosophy, trans. Bass, Alan, Chicago, University of Chicago Press, Brighton, Harvester Press, 1982 Google Scholar; Derrida, Jacques, “Signature événement contexte”, in Marges de la philosopie, Paris, Minuit, 1972 Google Scholar.

6 Derrida, Jacques, “Ja, ou le faux-bond”, Digraphe, 11, 1987, p. 119 Google Scholar.

7 Hegel, op. cit., p. 288.

8 Derrida, Jacques, “En ce moment même dans cet ouvrage me voice”, in Laruelle, François, ed., Textes pour Emmanuel Levinas, Paris, Jean-Michel Place, 1980 Google Scholar.

9 Derrida, Jacques, “Entre crochets”, Digraphe, 8, 1976, p. 111 Google Scholar.

10 Ibid., p. 112.

11 Derrida, Jacques, L'oreille de l'autre: otobiographies, transferls, traductions, Lévesque, Claude and McDonald, Christie V., eds, Montréal, VIB, 1982, p. 152 Google Scholar.

12 Ibid., p. 152.

13 Ibid., pp. 120, 121.

14 Ibid., pp. 118, 119.

15 Derrida, Jacques, L'oreille de 'lautre, p. 153 Google Scholar.

16 Derrida, Jacques, Speech and Phenomena, trans. Allison, David D., Evanston, Northwestern Univresity Press, 1973, p. 104 Google Scholar; Derrida, Jacques, Le voix et le phénomène, Paris, Presses universitaires de France, 1967, p. 117 Google Scholar.

17 Derrida, Jacques, “Sending: On Representation”, trans. Peter, and Caws, May Ann, Social Research, 49, 1982, pp. 325–326 Google Scholar; Derrida, Jacques, “Envoi”, in Psyché: Inventions de l'autre, Paris, Galilée, 1987, pp. 142–143 Google Scholar.