Geoffrey Bennington\'s Jacques Derrida

Matriculation No.: 140022148 Module Code.: Master Class/Directed Reading (MO5602/MO5609) Word Count.: 4,964 How does History shape identity in Geoffrey Bennington’s Jacques Derrida? (1993) 10/03/16 How does History shape identity in Geoffrey Bennington’s Jacques Derrida? (1993) “'Ah, you want me to tell you things like “I was born in El-Biar in the suburbs of Algiers in a petit-bourgeois Jewish family which was assimilated but...' Is this really necessary? I just couldn't do it, you'll have to help”.1 […] if this book does not transform me through and through, if it does not give me a divine smile in the face of death, my own and that of loved ones, if it does not help me to love life even more, it will have failed, whatever signs there may be of its success, […].2 It is questionable whether biography can represent someone's life. Geoffrey Bennington's Jacques Derrida is a critique of the literary and historical genre of biography. This critique is made through the use of 59 periphrases, where Bennington attempts to de-construct Derrida in a text written above, and Derrida writes below. This defers meaning by de-stabilizing identity through the writing of two parallel texts. These 59 periphrases have no chronological order, except to represent each year of Derrida's life. Through this method, Derrida within history as defined by the past, has his identity shaped by memory through repetition, this repetition is the text being written about him. This memory of Derrida is constructed by Bennington's lived relationship to Derrida. The deconstruction of biography by Bennington is made through the text to simulate a repetition of Derrida's life, to produce a memory of him for those who do not possess one. This deconstruction is achieved by Bennington through critiquing biography within Derrida's Judaism. In particular, the relation to God is constitutive to his de-stabilized identity. This tradition is de-stabilized by his philosophical predecessors Augustine, Husserl, Heidegger and his mother.3 This shaping of Derrida is represented in the photographs of Derrida by presenting him to the eye, but obscuring his mind. The structure of this essay will unfold these tropes through which Bennington and Derrida4 critique the notion of biography by showing how history shapes the de-stabilized identity of Derrida. We will examine the text as circumfession as a dialogue between Derrida and Bennington through periphrasis. Thus, the dialogue of the parallel texts serve to the instability of meaning through presenting disunity, and shows the failure of photography and biography to essentialize Derrida. 1 Norris Christopher, Introduction in Derrida, Fontana Press, (London, 1987), p. 11 [ Derrida in an interview for Le Nouvel Observateur in 1982 ] 2 Bennington Geoffrey, Jacques Derrida, Religion and Postmodernism, (trans. Geoffrey Bennington), The University of Chicago Press, (London, 1993), p. 77 3 See Appendix 5, a picture of his mother which outlines his loving bond he shared with her since birth alike to Augustine as told by him in his Confessions. 4 See Appendix 2, for the representation of the Bennington text, it details Derrida in the foreground, and yet Bennington is behind him, writing about him.

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Matriculation No.: 140022148 Module Code.: Master Class/Directed Reading (MO5602/MO5609) Word Count.: 4,964 How does History shape identity in Geoffrey Bennington’s Jacques Derrida? (1993) 10/03/16 Firstly, the circumfession is constructed from 'confession and circumcision,' in which as a dialogue Derrida writes below to Bennington above. The deference of meaning by the confessional structure, and the periphrasis de-stabilizes Derrida's identity by writing a dis-unified text. History is the basis for one's identity to be shaped. The objects of history determine who one is as an identity. 5 It is upon this basis that Derrida's identity, as well as Bennington's critique of the attempt to shape historically Derrida's life is made. Bennington explains this structure on the first page; “This book presupposes a contract. And the contract itself established or stabilized on the basis of a friendly bet (challenge, outbidding, or raising the stakes), has determined a number of rules of composition”.6 Thus, the circumfession is where Bennington plays with biography to de-stabilize Derrida's identity in dialogue. Derrida then writes on the deconstruction Bennington reveals, by writing a periphrasis, or a text below the text. This method of circumfession or dialogue seeks to “systematize J. D. 's thought” 7 to de-construct his identity through his thought, on a play upon biography which in repetition, recounts his life. In the art of circumfession Bennington questions the attempt to situate Derrida's identity alongside his contemporaries Foucault and Lacan who superseded Nietzsche and Heidegger. In doing so, Bennington surmises Derrida in one statement; “There is nothing outside the text”.8 This statement from Derrida's Of Grammatology frames the failure of biography, in that Derrida's life can never be related to 'outside' the philosophical tradition and his predecessors in writing. The structure of periphrasis or Bennington's text running above Derrida's is the promise of the memory of Derrida, by the repetition of all the tropes of biographical scholarship. This method shows Bennington's critique in simulating biography. The practice of quotation, commentary, interpretation, identification of a corpus and the context of Derrida's thought is problematic when attempting to historically shape his identity because of the nature of Derrida's thought as one that is not unified. The practice of reading Derrida's texts is therefore pointless, and “no reading could open and we would have no chance of beginning to understand”.8 5 Champagne A. Roland, Preface in Jacques Derrida, Twayne Publishers, (New York, 1995) p. ix-xiii (This text embodies the typical biography in tracing Derrida's life through the tropes outlined being his Jewishness, his philosophical predecessors, and his method of deconstruction itself as metaphorical and poetic.) 6 ibid., p. 1 7 ibid., p. 6 8 ibid., pp. 10-11 9 ibid

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Matriculation No.: 140022148 Module Code.: Master Class/Directed Reading (MO5602/MO5609) Word Count.: 4,964 How does History shape identity in Geoffrey Bennington’s Jacques Derrida? (1993) 10/03/16 Circumfession is the “law of repetition: what repeats must be the same (there is sameness only if it repeats, and the only repetition is of the same), but can in no case be the identical”.10 This is the feature of circumfession which Bennington uses, to open a dialogue with Derrida to perform a commentary on his deconstruction. This critique succeeds by deferring Derrida's historical identity through writing two texts, instead of a unified one. In the periphrasis, it thus permits a “hidden pretext for writing in my own signature behind his back”.11 Geoffrey Bennington's own memory of Derrida is repeated in the act of writing about him. The text composed by periphrases and circumfession allows the transmission of Bennington's memory of Derrida into a repetition, by placing both interpretations of the past alongside one another, and placing both texts side by side. This structure is a representative of the life of Derrida, in this regard, Bennington postulates that; “according to the logic of logic (of the logos), the sign is a sign of something, it stands in for the thing in its absence, representing it in view of its return: the sign stands between two presents, and can only be understood in relation to the priority of the presence of these two presents.” 12 Bennington's text is this sign, it is a play on the representation of Derrida's identity. Bennington's memory of Derrida provides the groundwork for the repetition of his life as a play. The structure in which to perform how history shapes Derrida's identity is circumfession, which defined as a dialogue between Bennington and Derrida allows this deference of meaning through multiple texts. In the next section, having defined Bennington's text, we will move onto Derrida's life as a means of examining how history shapes identity and Bennington's playing upon this. We will then move onto Derrida's Judaism as an example of Derrida's deferred Jewish identity and Augustine's present Christian identity in relation to God. In the last sections we will examine his philosophical predecessors, his mother, and the photos of him as historical material. Through this, we will defer Derrida, “the gift of me”,13 in Champagnes' words, we must complete this because we are “who can see what he cannot”,14 yet we will never find him, despite biography's and photography's attempts.

10 Bennington Geoffrey, Jacques Derrida, Religion and Postmodernism, (trans. Geoffrey Bennington), The University of Chicago Press, (London, 1993), p. 13 11 ibid., p. 10 12 ibid., p. 24 13 ibid., p. 42 14 Champagne Roland, Chapter Four, Can Speech Acts be Felicitous? The Subversion of J. L. Austin in Jacques Derrida, Twayne Publishers, (New York, 1995), p. 47

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Matriculation No.: 140022148 Module Code.: Master Class/Directed Reading (MO5602/MO5609) Word Count.: 4,964 How does History shape identity in Geoffrey Bennington’s Jacques Derrida? (1993) 10/03/16 In this second section, having examined the structure of circumfession, we can move onto Derrida's life. However, this structure created from the dialogue of Derrida below and Bennington above, albeit not chronological, plays with the tropes of a biography by simulating it, yet not doing them. This promise to stabilize Derrida is how individuals attempt to shape Derrida's historical identity, but de-stabilize it. In writing the text, Derrida proclaims that “one always ask for pardon when one writes”, 15 within this, the circumfession is constructed. We can now highlight aspects of Derrida's life selected by Bennington, which for him de-stabilize his identity and the “uniqueness of the Jewish experience”.16 In periphrasis nine, Derrida explains his relation to religion and literature; the truth in this case that I'm not sure comes under any religion, for reason of literature, nor under any literature, for reason of religion, making truth has no doubt nothing to do with what you call truth, for in order to confess, it is not enough to bring to knowledge, to make known what is, for example to inform you that I have done to death, betrayed, blasphemed, perjured, it is not enough that I present myself to God or you, the presentation of what is or what I am, either by revelation or by adequate judgment, "truth" then, having never given rise to avowal, to true avowal, the essential truth of avowal having therefore nothing to do with truth, […].17 This statement is centred around the concept of truth in religion, it is within confession which the truth of 'confessing' wants to construct. For Derrida, any biographical note Bennington critiques will never produce his identity, because history shapes his identity in ways other than his original one. The avowal of a biography announcing the repetition of memory for Derrida, has nothing to do with truth. The literature produced about his historical identity will never be truthful, it will betray his presence to Bennington. We have surmised the structure of Derrida's biographical life in terms of literature and of God, we can now bridge onto the third aspect in which history shapes Derrida's identity, Judaism. Judaism is a vital trope of Derrida's identity as it consolidates his writing style, the relation between himself and God, his mother and his philosophical predecessors. The “two resurrections” 18 where Derrida must write himself within the text, are the Derrida they write about in biographies and his real, lived historical identity. We now turn to Judaism in relation to God as one tradition that promises a stable self alike to Philosophy and Christianity. As Cixous remarks; “One must approach him (Derrida) by means of the writing cutting across the means of writing”.19 15 Bennington Geoffrey, Jacques Derrida, Religion and Postmodernism, (trans. Geoffrey Bennington), The University of Chicago Press, (London, 1993), p. 46 16 Champagne A. Roland, Chapter Five, Is Language Biodegradable? From Lacan Back to Plato in Jacques Derrida, Twayne Publishers, (New York, 1995), p. 57 17 ibid., p. 48 18 ibid., pp. 53-54 19 Helene Cixous, IX Second Skin in Portrait of Jacques Derrida as a Young Jewish Saint, Colombia University Press, (New York, 2004), p. 123

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Matriculation No.: 140022148 Module Code.: Master Class/Directed Reading (MO5602/MO5609) Word Count.: 4,964 How does History shape identity in Geoffrey Bennington’s Jacques Derrida? (1993) 10/03/16 Derrida's Judaism demarcated his historical identity. At a young age being expelled for being Jewish, and furthermore discovering he was circumcised at age twelve proved traumatic in relating to himself. He writes pronouncing this recognition of his 'age-deferred' identity with Judaism in conjunction with his thought; “Circumcision, that's all I've ever talked about, consider the discourse on the limit, margins, marks, marches, etc . , the closure, the ring (alliance and gift), the sacrifice, the writing of the body, the pharmakos excluded or cut off, the cutting/sewing […]”.20 Jewish men are defined by this practice which separates them from Christians, which then defines their relation to God as one of the chosen people. In this sense, Jews bear the word of God through the stone tablet given to Moses by God, and Christians bear it on their hearts. Thus, allowing Saint Augustine to perform a confession through his heart, through a text of self-expression. This recognition of Derrida's deferred identity in relation to Judaism and God, is cast as a metaphor here as Bennington, or the text itself. Gendron states that; “the self can never be present to itself as itself as a subject”.21 The relation of the Jew to God is key in its nature of being the Chosen people, they are the vehicles of God's identity, in this they define their deferred identities. Derrida in this regard, parallels the Confessions, having a dialogue with a God (Bennington) that is present in speech, but absent in presence. He explains in periphrasis seventeen that Augustine is the basis for his confession, the; martyr of the secret of confession, and Saint Augustine, of whom I read that "having returned to God, he probably never confessed, in the modern sense of the word," never having had, any more than I, beyond even truth, "the opportunity to 'confess,' '' which precisely does not prevent him from working at the delivery of literary confessions, i . e . at a form of theology as autobiography, I wonder, interested in the depth of the bedsore, not in writing or literature, art, philosophy, science, religion or politics but only memory and heart, not even the history of the presence of the Present […].22 Derrida is thus de-constructed in the imitation of Augustine's text, as an attempt to explicate Derrida's relation to circumfession in being a Jew as a deferred historical identity. We shall now turn to his philosophical predecessors Augustine, Husserl, Heidegger and his mother, in our attempt to show how history shapes identity against “[...] the fear of death and my failure to discover truth (Confessions,VII, v, 7)” 23 in this critique of biography and failure of photography to hold Derrida. 20 Bennington Geoffrey, Jacques Derrida, Religion and Postmodernism, (trans. Geoffrey Bennington), The University of Chicago Press, (London, 1993), p. 70 21 Gendron Sarah, Ch. 4 “The Ether of Metaphysics in Repetition, Difference, and Knowledge in the Work of Samuel Beckett, Jacques Derrida and Gilles Deleuze, Studies in Literary Criticism & Theory, Vol. 19, Peter Lang Publishing, (New York, 2008), p. 114 22 ibid., pp. 86-87 23 ibid., p. 112

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Matriculation No.: 140022148 Module Code.: Master Class/Directed Reading (MO5602/MO5609) Word Count.: 4,964 How does History shape identity in Geoffrey Bennington’s Jacques Derrida? (1993) 10/03/16 We have established Bennington's text as one of dialogue, the circumfession is a method of Bennington to promise a memory of Derrida. We then explicated the nature of Derrida's biography as one having basis in Judaism in relation to his identity. We shall now turn to his philosophical predecessors Augustine, Husserl, Heidegger and his mother in the ways in which his philosophy circumscribes his identity. Derrida's confessions in regards to his mother we will examine given the basis his mother played in Judaism. In periphrasis twenty seven, Derrida mourns his mother's death; “This time for a singular period, yes, here I am, since always here he is in alliance with death, with the living death of the mother, […]”.24 His mother's death is a repeating element within the question of constructing a biography of Derrida. It is used to not only highlight Derrida's belonging to Judaism through his mother, but also plays upon Augustine's love towards his own mother Monica. As aforementioned, the Bennington text as an attempt to de-construct, and question the notion of a biography as a means of assessing Derrida's thought, parallels Augustine's Confessions in structure. Often Derrida quotes Augustine to illustrate how his own circumfession imitates his by talking to an absent God, who is present in the text as Augustine as being spoke to, but does not reply. Equally in Bennington's text, Derrida speaks to Bennington through his periphrases yet not directly, and no reply is made, they remain de-stabilizing parallel texts undoing the notion of biography through this deferring of meaning in a dialogue structure. Here, Derrida illustrates how Augustine views his own confessions as a means of truth of identity; “There remains the pleasure of these eyes of my flesh. I speak of it in the form of confessions which the ears of Thy temple may hear, [brotherly and pious ears] . . . (Confessions, X, xxxiv, 51)”.25 Derrida is de-constructing these notions by quoting him in relation to how despite the 'presence' of the flesh of ears to hear his confessions as such, no-one is there to hear, and therefore a de-stabilization of self-identity. Here Augustine as a philosophical predecessor to Derrida acts as a figure in which the construction of Bennington's text parallels, and thus by imitating, de-stabilizes identity through simulation. We now move to his relation to Husserl and Heidegger, as a component of his phenomenological basis in his Jewish esoteric writing tradition and furthermore in his mourning of the loss of his mother.

24 Bennington Geoffrey, Jacques Derrida, Religion and Postmodernism, (trans. Geoffrey Bennington), The University of Chicago Press, (London, 1993), p. 137 25 ibid., p. 100

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Matriculation No.: 140022148 Module Code.: Master Class/Directed Reading (MO5602/MO5609) Word Count.: 4,964 How does History shape identity in Geoffrey Bennington’s Jacques Derrida? (1993) 10/03/16 Augustine's recounts his mourning of Saint Monica's death in Book IX, Derrida does the same in the form of circumfession. Thus, Augustine as a philosophical predecessor is the groundwork of the structure of the text, Derrida plays with the de-stabilization of his historical identity by imitating a relation between him and Augustine. A relation of the deferred Jewish identity of Derrida and Christian self-identity of Augustine, and the loss of their mothers is constructed, and yet in doing so, eradicates assimilating his identity in his critique of biography by this simulation of Augustine's life. We now transition to Husserl and Heidegger who are the fathers of Derrida's philosophical system. The significance of the philosophical thought is seminal to the idea of displacing Derrida's identity, and de-constructing the notion of biography through its emphasis on the foundation of selfconsciousness. Husserl attempted to ground the European sciences in a new way of thinking about metaphysics, the way to contemplate and analyse the eidos (essence of thought), as transcendentally condensed by a transcendental ego-consciousness. However, despite the hopes of bypassing metaphysics through an epoche or bracketing of consciousness. The method to examine the 'things themselves' as opposed to the Western metaphysical modes of interpretation such as substance or modes, fails. Bennington highlights in relation to how Derrida's own system produces an instability of self-identity of meaning, for; “there is ideality only through and by repetition: this repetition brings with it an alterity that forbids the unity of the foundation it was supposed to insure”.26 Thus, Husserl attempts to equate presence with self-consciousness, which cannot be done, something always is lost, this is why Derrida cannot be essentialized through biography or photography. Bennington explains here; “The blink of the present instant (der Augenblick) is thus haunted from the start by a past and a future. And so it cannot maintain its privilege as a philosophical foundation (all thought about time is shaken by this)”.27 In this sense, Derrida's identity in relation to Husserl is also troubled by this fact, by attempting to relate him to a philosophical past we miss the present of Derrida. We shall now turn to Heidegger and Derrida's mother as the last section to demonstrate that Bennington's and Derrida's deconstruction of biography is represented in the photographs of Derrida, clear to the viewer's eye, but obscuring the essence of Derrida's historical identity.

26 Bennington Geoffrey, Jacques Derrida, Religion and Postmodernism, (trans. Geoffrey Bennington), The University of Chicago Press, (London, 1993), p. 64 27 ibid., p. 69

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Matriculation No.: 140022148 Module Code.: Master Class/Directed Reading (MO5602/MO5609) Word Count.: 4,964 How does History shape identity in Geoffrey Bennington’s Jacques Derrida? (1993) 10/03/16 Derrida in Positions remarked that all he was doing was practising Heidegger's thought, but within the texts of philosophy, as opposed to metaphysics. To situate Derrida in relation to Heidegger, his influence is seminal in relation to how the self-identity of meaning, central to the notion of biography, de-stabilizes history's shaping of identity. Being a student of Husserl, Heidegger borrowed from phenomenology but gave it an anthropological shift in his notion of Dasein. In the section Unconscious of Bennington's text, he outlines Heidegger as a predecessor to Derrida as one that outlines that any framing of human knowledge will always fail. Thus; “according to Heidegger's suggestion, metaphysics remains subject to the-forgotten-question of the meaning of Being, and thus in part to the precomprehension of the word “being”.28 Thus, Heidegger built upon Husserl's suggestion of the fore-understanding, regardless of metaphysics, the reason why we can subsume our understanding, is by a structure outside of reason. It is 'enframing' which biography attempts to 'enframe' Derrida's deferred self-identity before ever reaching his essence. As Bennington suggests, Derrida's translation of the term Destruktion 29 from Heidegger's suggestion of starting again from Parmenides questioning being itself is key. This is instead of 'beings' or the entities of metaphysics such as world, nation-states or identity. It is vital because of its relevance to how Derrida himself sought to undo the metaphysics of texts, and in this, Bennington's own deconstruction of biography does not examine the peripheral material to write a 'different' biography of Derrida. But in his play upon the identity of Derrida as destabilized, he uses the tropes of a 'typical' biography of Derrida's life, his Jewishness and his philosophical tradition but in periphrasis, to challenge this typical biography through deference. Therefore, Derrida takes his system of thought from Heidegger, despite his Nazism and Derrida's Jewishness, this ethical ambivalence is used by Derrida to discuss his own destabilized identity. Bennington highlights this; Which could lead one to believe that we are coming closer to Heidegger again, following a pendulum movement that would be none other than the invisible hyphen in "Jewgreek," or else that we are presenting Derrida as producing a synthesis of Heidegger and Levinas. But if synthesis there be, we must be careful not to think of it as a measured mixture of being and the other, or as the final Aufhebung of this opposition or this difference, which would be history itself.30 28 Bennington Geoffrey, Jacques Derrida, Religion and Postmodernism, (trans. Geoffrey Bennington), The University of Chicago Press, (London, 1993), p. 133 29 ibid., p. 169 30 ibid., pp. 311-312

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Matriculation No.: 140022148 Module Code.: Master Class/Directed Reading (MO5602/MO5609) Word Count.: 4,964 How does History shape identity in Geoffrey Bennington’s Jacques Derrida? (1993) 10/03/16 Finally, we turn to Derrida's discussion of his mother, in parallel to the mourning of Augustine of the death of his mother as a critique of biography, through the play of imitation. The image below displays the nature of Augustine's own love for his mother upon her deathbed, and Derrida uses this trope to discuss his own love for his mother as one of imitation. Saint Monica being Augustine's mother and Derrida calling his own mother “Saint Georgette” 31 is an evident irony placed by Derrida to force a comparison between him and Augustine,32 which by doing so, actually does the opposite of a biographical trope, it de-constructs by implying it, but not doing it. Derrida highlights; “what were my mother's last more or less intelligible sentences, still alive at the moment I am writing this, but already incapable of memory, in any case of the memory of my name, a name become for her at the very least unpronounceable”.33 In Stock's opinion, Augustine through his; “self-expression would assure him a lasting place in the history of human understanding”.34

31 Bennington Geoffrey, Jacques Derrida, Religion and Postmodernism, (trans. Geoffrey Bennington), The University of Chicago Press, (London, 1993), p. 17 32 ibid., p. 19 (the picture outlines the love between Saint Augustine and his mother Monica upon her deathbed, paralleled by Derrida and his mother) 33 ibid., p. 22 34 Stock Brian, The Self in Augustine the Reader : Meditation, Self-Knowledge, and Ethics of Interpretation, Belknap Press, (Harvard, 1998), p. 278

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Matriculation No.: 140022148 Module Code.: Master Class/Directed Reading (MO5602/MO5609) Word Count.: 4,964 How does History shape identity in Geoffrey Bennington’s Jacques Derrida? (1993) 10/03/16 In the depths of mourning for the loss of his mother, Derrida defers the possibility of allowing the reader and Bennington to play with Derrida's pain as substance to parallel with Augustine, and thus critiques the notion of biography. In this respect, Derrida's predecessor is not a philosopher in fact, it is his Jewish mother who in this sense is the most philosophical of them all, here we can see this towards the end of periphrasis four, such that he says in regards to writing and her significance; I owe the reader, in truth that I owe my mother herself for the reader will have understood that I am writing for my mother, perhaps even for a dead woman and so many ancient or recent analogies will come to the reader's mind even if no, they don't hold, those analogies, none of them, for if I were here writing for my mother, it would be for a living mother who does not recognize her son, and I am periphrasing here for whomever no longer recognizes me, […].35 The day of December 24, 1988 where his mother says 'I want to kill myself' affects Derrida like no other statement of his mothers, it forces him to 'prayer and tears' alike to Augustine. He exclaims that alongside the theological circumcision that affected his life, his wish of death was seminal in his deferred Jewish identity, as a trauma of memory. The picture of his mother details this in that Derrida was born after his brother, present but absent because of this age deference to his sibling.

35 Bennington Geoffrey, Jacques Derrida, Religion and Postmodernism, (trans. Geoffrey Bennington), The University of Chicago Press, (London, 1993), p. 25

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Matriculation No.: 140022148 Module Code.: Master Class/Directed Reading (MO5602/MO5609) Word Count.: 4,964 How does History shape identity in Geoffrey Bennington’s Jacques Derrida? (1993) 10/03/16 In conclusion, Geoffrey Bennington's Jacques Derrida de-constructs the notion of biography through the tropes of a biography. This is made through the use of periphrasis and circumfession to defer the self-identity of meaning. By de-constructing the notion, Derrida in turn destabilises his identity as one that cannot be ascertained. As a memory, the repetition of his life in this text by Bennington serves as an example of memory for Bennington. The tropes of Derrida's life which we have analysed in how history shapes his identity, are his belonging to the Jewish tradition in relation to God, which has been metamorphosed as Bennington, the text and his mother. We have then analysed how his philosophical predecessor Augustine provides the basis of the circumfession structure of the text, as a means of furthermore deferring his identity by a conflation with him and Augustine. His basis in the phenomenology of Husserl and Heidegger provide Derrida with the understanding his self-identity, and thus allows his understanding, and consequent deconstruction of it. Although his historical identity is made concrete in the image below,36 to our eye he is represented. But by being so, his historical mind is thus obscured forever, therefore in Nancy's opinion, “Derrida's philosophy does not exist, nor does Derrida's thinking”.37 Through Derrida's play it is true what Dadaro's suggests in that; “Jacques Derrida's Circumfession will now change the way we shall read Augustine's Confessions, and, thus, the way we shall read Augustine”.38

36 Bennington Geoffrey, Jacques Derrida, Religion and Postmodernism, (trans. Geoffrey Bennington), The University of Chicago Press, (London, 1993), p. 356 37 Wood David, 2 Jean-Luc Nancy Elliptical Sense in Derrida: A Critical Reader, Blackwell Publishers, (Oxford, 1992), p. 45 38 Dadaro Robert, (eds. John D. Caputo and Michael J. Scanlon), Three, Loose Canons, Augustine and Derrida on Their Selves in God, the Gift and Postmodernism, Indiana University Press, (Bloomington, 1999), p. 79

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Matriculation No.: 140022148 Module Code.: Master Class/Directed Reading (MO5602/MO5609) Word Count.: 4,964 How does History shape identity in Geoffrey Bennington’s Jacques Derrida? (1993) 10/03/16 To claim that Derrida's identity can be made concrete in representation of him in photos is problematic as the Geoffrey Bennington text has shown, and this biographical task proves impossible to essentialize Derrida also evident in his representation in biography. It is impossible because of the nature of memory as such, it is a remembrance, a repetition of what was. Augustine in part fourteen of Book X outlines the nature of memory as repetition, examining the distance between the object experienced in the present and in its remembrance; “Before I recalled them and thought about them, they must have been present in my memory, because it was from there I was able to summon them by the act of remembering. Perhaps there remembering in the same way as cattle bring up food from the stomach when they chew the cud”. 39 The deconstruction of the notion of biography by Bennington is this 'chewing of the cud', by the act of remembrance through repetition, by bringing the presence of Derrida to our minds, we simultaneously represent him, and obscure his image beyond anything recognizable in the original. Again Augustine in parallel to Derrida, expresses his doubts regarding the image and what it represents in; “Whether this process takes place by means of things or not, it is not easy to say […] Can it be that the memory is not present to itself in its own right but only by means of an image of itself?”.40 It is this thesis that we have demonstrated through examining the structure of Bennington's text, as one of deferment of Derrida's identity as a critique of the impossibility of biography. The impossibility of biography finds its groundwork in the existence of historical memory itself, as soon as one attempts to remember a person, to re-assemble their historical identity, their essence is thus re-constituted, and their origin is lost through this re-construction. This deconstruction of the impossibility of biography is accomplished by implying the act of a typical biography of Derrida would do; to examine his philosophy, his Jewishness, his relation to his mother and the photographs of his being throughout his life, but not in a chronology. It is by fulfilling the thing one critiques to an extent more than the thing itself, which shows the absurdity of biography, and the failure of photography to capture Derrida's historical identity. Royle quotes Cixous to surmise how history shapes identity by obscuring it, thus she says that; “no dead person has ever said their last word”.41 39 Augustine, part 14 of Book X in Confessions, Penguin, (London, 1961), p. 221 40 ibid 41 Royle Nicholas, Last in In Memory of Jacques Derrida, Edinburgh University Press, (Edinburgh, 2009), p. 187

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Matriculation No.: 140022148 Module Code.: Master Class/Directed Reading (MO5602/MO5609) Word Count.: 4,964 How does History shape identity in Geoffrey Bennington’s Jacques Derrida? (1993) 10/03/16 Bibliography Primary Literature Geoffrey Bennington, Jacques Derrida, Religion and Postmodernism, a series edited by Mark C. Taylor, translated by Geoffrey Bennington, The University of Chicago Press, London, 1993 Saint Augustine, Confessions, (trans. R.S Pine-Coffin), Penguin Books, Penguin, London, 1961 Secondary Literature Brian Stock, Augustine the Reader : Meditation, Self-Knowledge, and Ethics of Interpretation, Belknap Press, Harvard, 1998 Christopher Johnston, System and Writing in the Philosophy of Jacques Derrida, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1993 Christopher Norris, Derrida, Fontana Press, London, 1987 David Mikics, Who was Jacques Derrida, An Intellectual Biography, Yale University Press, London, 2009 David Wood, Derrida: A Critical Reader, Blackwell Publishers, Oxford, 1992 Geoffrey Bennington, Not Half No End, Militantly Melancholic Essays in Memory of Jacques Derrida, The Frontiers of Theory, Edinburgh University Press, Edinburgh, 2010 Helene Cixous, Portrait of Jacques Derrida as a Young Jewish Saint, (trans. Beverley Bie Brahic), Colombia University Press, New York, 2004 Jean-Francois Lyotard, The Confession of Augustine, Cultural Memory in the Present, Stanford University Press, Stanford, 2000 John D. Caputo and Michael J. Scanlon eds., God, the Gift and Postmodernism, Indiana University Press, Bloomington, 1999 Kenneth Burke, The Rhetoric of Religion, Studies in Logology, University of California Press, London, 1970 Patrick O' Connor, Derrida: Profanations, Continuum Studies in Continental Philosophy, Continuum International Publishing Group, London, 2010 Roland A. Champagne, Jacques Derrida, University of Missouri-Louis, Twayne Publishers, New York, 1995

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Matriculation No.: 140022148 Module Code.: Master Class/Directed Reading (MO5602/MO5609) Word Count.: 4,964 How does History shape identity in Geoffrey Bennington’s Jacques Derrida? (1993) 10/03/16 Sarah Gendron, Repetition, Difference, and Knowledge in the Work of Samuel Beckett, Jacques Derrida and Gilles Deleuze, Studies in Literary Criticism & Theory, Vol. 19, Peter Lang Publishing, New York, 2008 Articles Gerasimos Kakoliris, How Radical is Derrida's Deconstructive Reading? Derrida Today. Volume 2, Issue 2, ISSN 1754-8500, Available Online, Nov 2009, pp. 177-186 Herman Rapaport, Deregionalizing Ontology: Derrida's Khōra, Derrida Today, Volume 5, Issue 1, ISSN, 1754-8500, Available Online, May 2008, pp. 95-118 E-Books Nicholas Royle, In Memory of Jacques Derrida, Edinburgh University Press, Edinburgh, 2009

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Matriculation No.: 140022148 Module Code.: Master Class/Directed Reading (MO5602/MO5609) Word Count.: 4,964 How does History shape identity in Geoffrey Bennington’s Jacques Derrida? (1993) 10/03/16 Appendices Appendix 1; p. 5

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Matriculation No.: 140022148 Module Code.: Master Class/Directed Reading (MO5602/MO5609) Word Count.: 4,964 How does History shape identity in Geoffrey Bennington’s Jacques Derrida? (1993) 10/03/16 Appendix 2; p. 11

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Matriculation No.: 140022148 Module Code.: Master Class/Directed Reading (MO5602/MO5609) Word Count.: 4,964 How does History shape identity in Geoffrey Bennington’s Jacques Derrida? (1993) 10/03/16 Appendix 3; p. 365

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Matriculation No.: 140022148 Module Code.: Master Class/Directed Reading (MO5602/MO5609) Word Count.: 4,964 How does History shape identity in Geoffrey Bennington’s Jacques Derrida? (1993) 10/03/16 Appendix 4; p.29

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Matriculation No.: 140022148 Module Code.: Master Class/Directed Reading (MO5602/MO5609) Word Count.: 4,964 How does History shape identity in Geoffrey Bennington’s Jacques Derrida? (1993) 10/03/16 Appendix 5; p. 249

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Matriculation No.: 140022148 Module Code.: Master Class/Directed Reading (MO5602/MO5609) Word Count.: 4,964 How does History shape identity in Geoffrey Bennington’s Jacques Derrida? (1993) 10/03/16 Appendix 6; p. 195

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