The Postcard: From Socrates to Freud and Beyond by Derrida (June 1, 1987) Paperback

by Jacques Derrida

French

Genres: Philosophy, Nonfiction, Theory, France, Literary Criticism, Classics, Psychology

Paperback

First published January 1, 1980

About the author

Jacques Derrida was a French philosopher best known for developing deconstruction, a method of critical analysis that questioned the stability of meaning in language, texts, and Western metaphysical thought. Born in Algeria, he studied at the École Normale Supérieure in Paris, where he was influenced by philosophers such as Heidegger, Husserl, and Levinas. His groundbreaking works, including Of Grammatology (1967), Writing and Difference (1967), and Speech and Phenomena (1967), positioned him at the center of intellectual debates on language, meaning, and interpretation.
Derrida argued that Western philosophy was structured around binary oppositions—such as speech over writing, presence over absence, or reason over emotion—that falsely privileged one term over the other. He introduced the concept of différance, which suggests that meaning is constantly deferred and never fully present, destabilizing the idea of fixed truth. His work engaged with a wide range of disciplines, including literature, psychoanalysis, political theory, and law, challenging conventional ways of thinking and interpretation.
Throughout his career, Derrida continued to explore ethical and political questions, particularly in works such as Specters of Marx (1993) and The Politics of Friendship (1994), which addressed democracy, justice, and responsibility. He held academic positions at institutions such as the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales and the University of California, Irvine, and remained an influential figure in both European and American intellectual circles. Despite criticism for his complex writing style and abstract concepts, Derrida’s ideas have left a lasting impact on contemporary philosophy, literary theory, and cultural criticism, reshaping the way meaning and language are understood in the modern world.

Reviews

[Kelly · Rating 5 out of 5]

The only safe Derridean text--

[Jonfaith · Rating 2 out of 5]

The determinations of this substance are only attributes that do not attain to self subsistence, but remain merely names of the many named One. This One is clothed with the manifold powers of existence and with the “shapes” of reality as with an adornment that lacks a self; they are merely messengers, having no will of their own, messengers of its might, visions of its glory, voices in its praise.

Initially this was a dream realized. Derrida wrote fiction, well, a “fiction” anyway. Like many Freudian escapes, it soon proved terrorizing. I’m not sure what the hell happened in or after that first section. Letters sent undermine communication, it is an absence delayed. I scratched my head, but only after the fact. Such despair. We leave the Envois, we have the Pleasure Principle and the apposite unpleasure. Where does it end? Derrida offers something: life death. I then began to skim. I am defeated albeit with a hope for a more completed future.

[DoctorM · Rating 4 out of 5]

I've loved this book since...well...the late '80s. I have no idea how to describe it. It's one of those wonderful intellectual games only the French can play. But like "A Thousand Plateaux", it's just something you can drop into at random and enjoy. Or at least find jouissance.

A friend read this first and kept telling me that "Every (something) is a postcard from Socrates to Freud". I was never clear what went in the blank space: Every...work of literature? Every psychoanalysis? Every neurosis? Every episteme? Every orgasm? Though I suppose that doesn't matter: each of those things is true.

So--- read, explore, recite aloud at night after many tequila shots. There's enough here to keep you entranced for many a night.

[Sharon · Rating 1 out of 5]

I hated this book and most the class of which it was a part. An entire book written about the futility of writing. It reminded me of "The Emporer's New Clothes." I wrote a 10-page final for this class, on which I got an "A-." If I'd turned in a blank page, I would have gotten an "A."

[Pats · Rating 5 out of 5]

i will be reading and re-reading this forever.

[eleanor · Rating 4 out of 5]

you know you’ve done a weird module when it comes to week 9 and you’re reading derrida & you don’t even find it that weird

[Harris]

Man I hate psychoanalysis

[Echo]

"and when I call you my love, my love, is it you I am calling or my love? You, my loe, is tit you I thereby name, is it to you that I address myself? I don't knwo if the question is well put, it frightens me. But Iam sure that the answer, if it gets to me one day, will have come to me from you. You alone, my love, you alone will have known it. … when I call you my love, is it that I am calling you, yourself, or is ti that I am telling my love? and when i tell you my love is it that I am declaring my love to you or indeed that I am telling you, yourself, my love, and that you are my love. I wan tso much to tell you."

[Gloria · Rating 4 out of 5]

still wasn't feeling so good..

[Justin Dobbs · Rating 5 out of 5]

Man this is one crazy book. You'll probably need the vocabulary to go with it or you'll be lost in the shire.

[isaac smith]

"What is at stake in this haste, therefore, is something other, of another order. This
urgency cannot be deciphered in the import of the demonstrative declaration, the
manifest argumentation. The only justification for proceeding in this way, in terms of
classical logic or rhetoric, would be the following: one must first come back [revenir] to
“normality” (but then why not begin with it?), and to the “earliest,” most precocious
normality in the child (but then why not begin with it?" (298)

"Neither a narrative, nor a story, nor a myth, nor a fiction. Nor is it the system of a
theoretical demonstration. It is fragmentary, without conclusion, selective in that it
gives something to be read, more an argument in the sense of a schema made of dotted
lines, with ellipses everywhere." (298)

"to mine the PP as its proper stranger, to hollow it into an abyss from the vantage of an
origin more original than it and independent of it, older than within it, will not be,
under the name of the death drive or the repetition compulsion, an other master or a
counter-master, but something other than mastery, something completely other. In
order to be something completely other, it will have to not oppose itself, will have to not
enter into a dialectical relation with the master (life, the PP as life, the living PP, the
PP alive)." (317-318)

"What is to play train, for the (grand) father? To speculate: it would be never to throw
the thing (but does the child ever throw it without its being attached to a string?), that
is, to keep it at a distance continuously, but always at the same distance, the length of
the string remaining constant, making (letting) the thing displace itself at the same
time, and in the same rhythm, as oneself. This trained train does not even have to come
back [revenir], it does not really leave. It has barely come to leave when it is going to
come back." (315)

"Demon is that very thing which comes back [revient] without having been called by the
PP. The demon is the revenance which repeats its entrance, coming back [revenant]
from one knows not where . . . inherited from one knows not whom, but already
persecutory, by means of the simple form of it return, indefatigably repetitive,
independent of every apparent desire, automatic." (341)

"A median, differing or indifferent zone (and it is differing only by being indifferent to
the oppositional or distinctive difference of the two borders), relates the primary process
in its “purity” (a “myth,” says the Traumdeutung) to the “pure” secondary process
entirely subject to the PP. A zone, in other words a belt between the pp and the PR,
neither tightened nor loosened absolutely, everything en différance de stricture. The
differantial stricture of a belt." (351)

"If death is not opposable it is, already, life death. This Freud does not say, does not say
it presently, here, nor even elsewhere in this form. It gives (itself to be) thought without
ever being given or thought." (285)

[Lance Grabmiller · Rating 3 out of 5]

The first half is interesting epistolary fiction and the rest is a varied collection of the usual Derrida deconstruction (aiming primarily at Freud). A lot going on here...perhaps too much. Derrida's constant play on words requires an almost constant stream of footnotes once it reaches the non-fiction section. Way too much for my brain in many parts and my lack of knowledge on psychoanalysis (or Freud) did not help, but I also think some of this could have been broken up into separate volumes. Still, a fascinating read and the wheels of my brain are still turning too fast to do any justice in some sort of summary.

[Dan]

Acquired Dec 13, 1999
City Lights Book Shop, London, Ontario

[Douglas Murphy · Rating 4 out of 5]

Well, it feels quite strange to be reading Derrida at all in 2023, as language and reproducibility get torn to pieces around us, but I always enjoy wrestling with the old head-stretcher.

[Heba Mansaf · Rating 4 out of 5]

Well…

[Alex Obrigewitsch · Rating 4 out of 5]

I found myself wanting to write that this is not the best of Derrida's works.
But what is best? What transcendental measuring-stick can stand up to Derrida?
I suppose all I can say (or mean to say) is that this work isn't my favorite (whatever that means (to say)).
Read it for Envois, stay for some analysis (if one may call it that) of psychoanalysis.
I'm not sending you to read this text; no, I'm not sending anything that couldn't possibly not reach its destination.

[Steven Felicelli · Rating 1 out of 5]

I think I've mastered some pretty esoteric shit - but some Derrida still reads like Chinese to me - this & Glas most notably - one star on me, not Derrida

[Carl · Rating 5 out of 5]

Difficult. That was expected, though.