Derrida and Antiquity

419 Pages·2010·2.364 MB·English

by  Miriam Leonard (editor)

CLASSICAL PRESENCES
General Editors
Lorna Hardwick James I. Porter
CLASSICAL PRESENCES
Thetexts, ideas, images, and materialcultureofancient Greece and
Romehavealwaysbeencrucialtoattemptstoappropriatethepastin
order to authenticate the present. They underlie the mapping of
change and the assertion and challenging of values and identities,
oldandnew.ClassicalPresencesbringsthelatestscholarshiptobear
on the contexts, theory, and practice of such use, and abuse, of the
classicalpast.
Derrida and Antiquity
Edited by
MIRIAM LEONARD
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Acknowledgements
I am very grateful to colleagues for the support I received at the
UniversityofBristol,theStanfordHumanitiesCenter,andUniversity
College London while this book was being conceived and put
together. I would like to thank Ann Bergren, Marc Cre´pon, John
Henderson, John Sallis, and Phiroze Vasunia for their input at
various stages. A particular thanks to Jim Porter both qua series
editor and more generally for his intellectual companionship as
well as to Lorna Hardwick and Hilary O’Shea for their editorial
advice.Theadviceoftheanonymousreaderhasalsobeeninvaluable.
Thanks too to Jackie Pritchard for her expert copy-editing. This
project has been a collaborative effort from the start and I am
extremely gratefulto the contributors for theircooperation. Finally,
I owe a great debt to Pascale-Anne Brault and Michael Naas for
agreeing with such generosity to translate the Derrida essay which
opensthisvolume.
ThankyoutoE´ditionsduseuilforpermissiontotranslateandreprint
the essay by Jacques Derrida ‘Nous autres Grecs’, from Nos Grecs et
leurs modernes: les strate´gies contemporaines d’appropriation de
l’Antiquite´, textes re´unis par Barbara Cassin, # E´ditions du seuil,
1992.
M.L.
akg-images/MarionKalter
Contents
Acknowledgements v
ListofContributors ix
Introduction:‘Today,ontheEveofPlatonism...’
MiriamLeonard 1
JacquesDerrida,‘WeOtherGreeks’
translatedbyPascale-AnneBraultandMichaelNaas 17
PARTI: DERRIDAANDTHECLASSICALTRADITION
1.Earmarks:Derrida’sReinventionofPhilosophicalWriting
in‘Plato’sPharmacy’
MichaelNaas 43
2.DerridaandPresocraticPhilosophy
ErinO’Connell 73
3.NegativeTheologyandConversion:Derrida’sNeoplatonic
Compulsions
StephenGersh 101
PARTII: ANTIQUITYANDMODERNITY
4.Derridabetween‘Greek’and‘Jew’
MiriamLeonard 135
5.Derrida’sImpressionofGradiva:ArchiveFever
andAntiquity
DanielOrrells 159
PARTIII: APOLITICSOFANTIQUITY
6.Derrida’sDyingOedipus
RachelBowlby 187
viii Contents
7.PossibleReturns:DeconstructionandthePlacingof
GreekPhilosophy
AndrewBenjamin 207
8.DerridaPolutropos:PhilosophyasNostos
BruceRosenstock 235
PARTIV: THEQUESTIONOFLITERATURE
9.Aristotle’sMetaphor
DuncanF.Kennedy 267
10.WritingbeforeLiterature:Derrida’sConfessions
andtheLatinChristianWorld
MarkVessey 289
PARTV: PLATONICBODIES
11.ThePlatonicRemainder:Derrida’sKhoˆraandthe
CorpusPlatonicum
PaulAllenMiller 321
12.ErosintheAgeofTechnicalReproductibility:Socrates,
Plato,andtheEroticsofFiliation
IkaWillis 342
References 370
Index 387
List of Contributors
AndrewBenjaminisProfessorofCriticalTheoryandPhilosophical
AestheticsandDirectoroftheResearchUnitinEuropeanPhilosophy
at Monash University. His books include: The Plural Event (1993),
Present Hope: Philosophy, Architecture, Judaism (1997), Philosophy’s
Literature(2001),DisclosingSpaces:OnPainting(2004),andOfJews
and Animals (2010). He is also editor of Post-Structuralist Classics
(1988)andtheseriesWalterBenjaminStudies(ContinuumBooks).
Rachel Bowlby is Northcliffe Professor of Modern English at Uni-
versity College London. Her books include Just Looking (reissued
2010), Still Crazy after All These Years: Women, Writing and Psycho-
analysis (1992), Shopping with Freud (1993), Feminist Destinations
and Further Essays on Virginia Woolf (1997), Carried Away: The
Invention of Modern Shopping (2000), and Freudian Mythologies:
Greek Tragedy, Modern Identities (2007). Her translations include
Derrida’sOfHospitalityandPaperMachine.
Stephen Gersh is Professorof Medieval Studies at the Universityof
NotreDame.Hisbooksinclude:MiddlePlatonismandNeoplatonism:
The Latin Tradition (1986), Concord in Discourse: Harmonics and
Semiotics in Late Classical and Early Medieval Platonism (1996),
Plato in the Middle Ages: A Doxographical Approach (with Maarten
J.F.M.Hoenen)(2002),andNeoplatonismafterDerrida(2006).
DuncanKennedy isProfessorofLatinLiteratureandtheTheoryof
Criticism at the University of Bristol. His publications include The
ArtsofLove(1993)andRethinkingReality:LucretiusandtheTextua-
lisation of Nature (2002), and many articles on Latin poetry and
literary theory.
MiriamLeonardisLecturerinGreekLiteratureanditsReceptionat
UniversityCollegeLondon.SheisauthorofAthensinParis:Ancient
GreeceandthePoliticalinPost-WarFrenchThought(2005)andHow
to Read Ancient Philosophy (2008). She has also written several
articles and essays on Derrida’s engagement with Plato, Aristotle,