The French Connections of Jacques Derrida

Edited by Julian Wolfreys, John Brannigan, and Ruth Robbins

Subjects: French Studies
Paperback : 9780791441329, 232 pages, April 1999
Hardcover : 9780791441312, 232 pages, April 1999

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Table of contents

Abbreviations

Preface
Julian Wolfreys, John Brannigan, and Ruth Robbins

Acknowledgments

1. "Mallarmé, par Jacques Derrida"
Michael Temple

2. In the Wake of ...: Baudelaire · Valéry · Derrida
Ruth Robbins and Julian Wolfreys

3. "We have nothing to do with literature": Derrida and Surrealist Writing
John Brannigan

4. Musique-rythme: Derrida and Roger Laporte
Ian Maclachlan

5. Domesticated Reading: Paulhan, Derrida, and the Logic of Ancestry
Michael Syrotinski

6. I Remember ... (Points of Suspension)
Jessica Maynard

7. Oulipian Grammatology: La règle du jeu
Burhan Tufail

8. Structuralism, Biology, and the Linguistic Model
Christoher Johnson

9. French Kissing: Whose Tongue Is It Anyway?
John P. Leavey Jr.

10. Translating Istrice: Derrida's Response from Poetry to the Poem
Boris Belay

11. Between Barthes, Blanchot, and Mallarmé: Skia(Photo)-Graphies of Derrida
Laurent Milesi

Notes of Contributors

Works Cited

Index

Addresses for the first time the issue of Derrida's relation to French poetics, writing, thought, and culture.

Description

The French Connections of Jacques Derrida offers stimulating and accessible essays that address, for the first time, the issue of Derrida's relation to French poetics, writing, thought, and culture. In addition to offering considerations of Derrida through studies of such significant French authors as Mallarmé, Baudelaire, Valéry, Laporte, Ponge, Perec, Blanchot, and Barthes, the book also reassesses the development of Derrida's work in the context of structuralism, biology, and linguistics in the 1960s, and looks at the possible relationships between Derrida's writing and that of the Surrealist and Oulipa groups. Derrida is introduced as one whose work is as much poetic as it is philosophical, and who is strikingly French and yet not unproblematically so.

[Contributors include Boris Belay, John Brannigan, Christopher Johnson, John P. Leavey, Jr., Ian Maclachlan, Jessica Maynard, Laurent Milesi, Ruth Robbins, Michael Syrotinski, Michael Temple, Burhan Tufail, and Julian Wolfreys.]

Julian Wolfreys is the author of Being English, published by SUNY Press, and editor of The Derrida Reader: Writing Performances. John Brannigan is Lecturer in English and Head of Irish Studies at the University of Luton; he is also the editor (with Ruth Robbins and Julian Wolfreys) of Applying: to Derrida. Ruth Robbins is Lecturer in English at the University of Luton and has edited (with Julian Wolfreys) Victorian Identities.

Reviews

"This is a supple and thought-provoking book that caught my interest and kept it alive. It contributes a fresh understanding of Derrida's philosophy." — Jean-Michel Rabaté, University of Pennsylvania

"What a great topic: just the sort of background book that courses in contemporary poetics, French and other, might use. No one but Jacques Derrida has done such a stunning job of changing the way we see, think, read, and (don't we wish) write." — Mary Ann Caws, Graduate School, City University of New York