Insister: An Jacques Derrida

by Hélène Cixous, Esther von der Osten (Translator)

Insister - das mehrsprachige Titelwort nennt mit dem Insistieren und dem Insistierer auch die sister, die ihren Text Jacques Derrida widmet und den langjährigen Dialog oder vielmehr Polylog mit dem verstorbenen Freund fortführt. Das unverhoffte Wiederauffinden eines (im Buch mit abgebildeten) Manuskripts, der handgeschriebene Entwurf von Voiles. Schleier und Segel, den Derrida Cixous von einer Reise nach Südamerika aus zugesandt hatte, gibt Stoff zu einer philosophisch-poetischen Erkundung der Frage des Lesens, des lesenden Schreibens, des lesendschreibenden Gesprächs mit den hinterlassenen Worten, Stimmen und Sprachen des anderen.

Genres: Nonfiction, Philosophy

128 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2006

About the author

Hélène Cixous is a Jewish-French, Algerian-born feminist well-known as one of the founders of poststructuralist feminist theory along with Luce Irigaray and Julia Kristeva. She is now a professor of English Literature at University of Paris VIII and chairs the Centre de Recherches en Etudes Féminines which she founded in 1974.

She has published numerous essays, playwrights, novels, poems, and literary criticism. Her academic works concern subjects of feminism, the human body, history, death, and theatre.

Reviews

[Jonfaith · Rating 5 out of 5]

I am not forgetting that each time I call him, designate him, paradigmatically by this name of Derrida, I make as if I knew whom I was talking about or what whereas not at all, I know so little, and in the instant there is one of them, another one, there are so many ones in him that are dissembled beginning with resemblances that ephemeral but vivid but tenuous, and each one uniquely him. 'You know me a little' he says.

9.29.2023 Reread. Equally enjoyable second reading. I liked Cixous placing Derrida as history’s preeminent reader of Freud. She also placed Derrida as being initially uncertain or perhaps mistaken in the nebulous fields of Heidegger.

Original review:
This was such an astonishing journey. Should we begin with the title, which was Derrida's puny punny name for Cixous? Emerging with similar origins and faiths, both were allowed to simmer and saunter over a lifetime: aside from the predilections, there were/are forces at play which allowed (encouraged?) this philosophical conspiracy. This book straddles elegy and eulogy and somehow escapes the sum. It is constructed with imagined dialogues, stream-of-conscious prose poems and excerpts from texts. It offers the shadow of an altar (alter?) but Inister is only a dream's punch line. This is a haunting text: as it reveals it circles back to an always already appreciation, keeping that impossible distance. I feel fortunate to have spent a day with it.