Insister of Jacques Derrida [Paperback]

Helene Cixous (Author), Peggy Kamuf (Translator)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0804759081 | ISBN-13: 978-0804759083 | Publication Date: January 14, 2008

Hélène Cixous is arguably the most insightful and unbridled reader of Jacques Derrida today. In Insister, she brings a unique mixture of scholarly erudition, theoretical speculation, and breathtaking textual explication to an extremely close reading of Derrida's work. At the same time, Insister is an extraordinarily poetic meditation, a work of literature and of mourning for Jacques Derrida the person, who was a close friend and accomplice of Cixous's from the beginning of their careers.

In a melodic stream-of-consciousness Cixous speaks to Derrida, to his memory and to the words he left behind. She delves into the philosophical spaces that separated them, filling them out to create new understandings, bringing Derrida's words back to life while insisting on our inability to ever truly communicate through words. "More than once we say the same words," Cixous writes, "but we do not live them in the same tone."

Insister of Jacques Derrida joins Veils, the two loosely autobiographical texts of Derrida and Cixous published together by Stanford in 2001.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"I have often declared my admiration for Hélène Cixous, for the person and for the work: immense, powerful, so multiple but unique in this century."—Jacques Derrida

"Insister of Jacques Derrida, so expertly translated by Derrida's principal and most faithful translator, Peggy Kamuf, is an indispensable, daring, heartfelt and moving book. It presents a flawless, committed reading that is in the spirit of Derrida in its serious playfulness, its poetic sinuousness, its elegant reasoning and rhetoric while also being wholly in Cixous' own singular voice. This is not merely a study of Derrida, it is a haunting dialogue with his memory and with his phantom."—Julian Wolfreys, Loughborough University

About the Author

Hélène Cixous is Emeritus Professor of Literature at the Université de Paris VIII. One of the most celebrated contemporary writers and theorists, her recent publications in English include Dream I Tell You (2006), Portrait of Jacques Derrida as a Young Jewish Saint (2004), Hélène Cixous: The Writing Notebooks (2004), and Veils (Stanford, 2001).

Product Details

• Paperback: 160 pages
• Publisher: Stanford University Press (January 14, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0804759081
• ISBN-13: 978-0804759083
• Product Dimensions: 7.7 x 5.4 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8.8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,264,872 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars ease and assist, December 3, 2008

By 

Alvaro Lewis "jwatson5" (Redwood City, CA USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Insister of Jacques Derrida (Paperback)

The Insister of Jacques Derrida is the perfect title for this book. Cixous really is the in-sister for Derrida. She is in on all of the his in-jokes and he even shares his dreams with her. Some of these dreams are about large dogs, often with large teeth, sometimes with their large teeth in his hand. Another dream allows him to bask in the satisfaction of Chirac for Derrida's having parked without complications a large Boeing airplane in a nice out of the way spot in the city. What becomes evident in this book is how important Derrida's ear was to his own and Cixous' career, as well as how mutually affectionate and stimulating this relationship was for the two of them. He is always listening, engaging his interlocutor, and his French is without fault. Cixous, for her part, does her best to keep Derrida's sentences alive and in this work she gives thoughtful focus to three works: <Geneses, Genealogies, Genres and Genius>, <Veils>, and <Resistances--of Psychoanalysis>. Much of the writing is moving but still the sharing is largely hermetic. As in most deconstructive writing there is much fervid writing abounding in selected word roots. In this work -sist-, as in insist, persist, sister, flourishes, as does a meditation on mochte and mag from German. One will also find neologisms such as toolateo' clock and Freuderridian among others.