Love in the Post: From Plato to Derrida: The Screenplay and Commentary

259 Pages·2014·2.548 MB·English

by  Martin McQuillan, Joanna Callaghan

LOVE IN THE POST:
FROM PLATO TO DERRIDA
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LOVE IN THE POST:
FROM PLATO
TO DERRIDA
The Screenplay and Commentary
JOANNA CALLAGHAN AND
MARTIN MCQUILLAN
With additional material by Jonathan Lahey Dronsfield
London • New York
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Published by Rowman & Littlefield International Ltd
Unit A, Whitacre Mews, 26–34 Stannery Street, London SE11 4AB, United
Kingdom
www.rowmaninternational.com
Rowman & Littlefield International Ltd.is an affiliate of Rowman & Littlefield
4501 Forbes Boulevard, Suite 200, Lanham, Maryland 20706, USA
With additional offices in Boulder, New York, Toronto (Canada), and
London (UK)
www.rowman.com
Copyright © 2014 by Joanna Callaghan, Martin McQuillan and contributors
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or
by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and
retrieval systems, without written permission from the publisher, except by a
reviewer who may quote passages in a review.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
ISBN: HB 978-1-7834-8004-3
PB 978-1-7834-8005-0
EB 978-1-7834-8006-7
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
McQuillan, Martin.
Love in the post : from Plato to Derrida : the screenplay and commentary /
Joanna Callaghan and Martin McQuillan.
pages cm
Original screenplay, inspired by Derrida’s The post card, with critical
commentary.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-1-78348-004-3 (cloth : alk. paper)—ISBN 978-1-78348-005-0
(pbk. : alk. paper)—ISBN 978-1-78348-006-7 (electronic)
1. Love in the post (Motion picture) I. Callaghan, Joanna. II. Love in the
post (motion picture) III. Title.
PN1997.2.L75 2014
791.43'72—dc23
2014023927
™
The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of
American National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper
for Printed Library Materials, ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992.
Printed in the United States of America
Feature film distributed by Heraclitus Pictures
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One of the least deconstructive things you can do in
a movie is to point a camera at someone and ask
them to say something about deconstruction.
Geoffrey Bennington
To make cinema . . . is to send twenty-five
postcards per second to millions of people.
Jean-Luc Godard
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CONTENTS
List of Illustrations ix
Acknowledgements xi
Trailer xiii
Joanna Callaghan and Martin McQuillan
Illustration 1
Martin McQuillan
Love in the Post: The Screenplay 5
Joanna Callaghan and Martin McQuillan
Credits 53
Reflections 57
Joanna Callaghan
The Legs of Freud 97
Martin McQuillan
A Post Card for Kittler 103
Martin McQuillan
Autobiobibliographies 113
Martin McQuillan
The Sex Lives of the Philosophers 123
Martin McQuillan
Eros in the Age of Technical Reproductability 127
Theo Marks
vii
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viii Contents
Interviews: 131
Geoffrey Bennington: ‘An enterprise that is doomed to failure’ 131
Ellen S. Burt: ‘We have flipped over the candle’ 145
Catherine Malabou: ‘Cinema is not a brain reading’ 157
J. Hillis Miller: ‘But I love literature . . . me too (moi aussi)’ 171
Samuel Weber: ‘The rubric of narcissism that no one escapes’ 185
David Wilson: ‘It is called “deltiology”’ 199
Filming Deconstruction/Deconstructing Film 213
Jonathan Lahey Dronsfield
Index 239
About the Contributors 243
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LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
2.1. Joanna edits an interview with Jacques Derrida. 4
5.1. Joanna Callaghan and Martin McQuillan, Bodleian 57
Library Oxford, 2012.
5.2. Joanna receives a recorded delivery letter. 63
5.3. Cast and crew at Dorich House, Kingston. 68
5.4. Theo visits Bettina, an expert in document examination. 70
5.5. Telephone switchboard operators through the ages. 72
and 5.6. Courtesy of Milton Keynes Museum.
5.7. Sophie and Byron at home. 75
5.8. Frauke prepares the room for the next patient. 76
5.9. Image 6: North London clinic, 35mm slide series, 78
2005: Courtesy of Joanna Callaghan.
5.10. Sophie in therapy. 80
5.11. Joanna interviews Theo. 84
5.12. Theo finds love letters to Sophie. 90
5.13. Theo on the edge. 92
6.1. Sophie with her therapist, Frauke. 101
7.1. Example of the world’s first pre-stamped post card, 110
1867, courtesy of David Wilson.
8.1. Matthew Paris, Ashmole 304, Bodleian Library, 121
University of Oxford.
9.1. Theo checks Sophie’s phone for messages from her 126
lover.
10.1. Theo delivers the annual Duke Humphrey Lecture in 129
Oxford.
18.1. Sophie in the gallery. 229
ix
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