Theory and Practice

143 Pages·2019·0.58 MB·English

by  Jacques Derrida

theory and practice
the seminars of jacques derrida
Edited by Geoffrey Bennington & Peggy Kamuf
Theory and Practice
Jacques Derrida
Translated by David Wills
Edited by Geoffrey Bennington and Peggy Kamuf
The University of Chicago Press ‡ chicago and london
The University of Chicago Press, Chicago 60637
The University of Chicago Press, Ltd., London
© 2019 The University of Chicago
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner
whatsoever without written permission, except in the case of brief quotations in critical articles
and reviews. For more information, contact the University of Chicago Press, 1427 E. 60th St.,
Chicago, IL 60637.
Published 2019
Printed in the United States of America
27 26 25 24 23 22 21 20 19 28 1 2 3 4 5
isbn: 978-0 -2 26- 57234- 5 (cloth)
isbn: 978- 0- 226- 57248- 2 (e- book)
doi: https://doi.org/10.7208/chicago/9780226572482.001.0001
Library of Congress Cataloging- in-P ublication Data
Names: Derrida, Jacques, author. | Wills, David, 1953– translator. | Derrida, Jacques. Works.
Selections. English. 2009.
Title: Theory and practice / Jacques Derrida ; translated by David Wills.
Other titles: Théorie et pratique. English
Description: Chicago : The University of Chicago Press, 2018. |
Series: The seminars of Jacques Derrida
Identifiers: lccn 2018023877 | isbn 9780226572345 (cloth : alk. paper) |
isbn 9780226572482 (e-book)
Subjects: LCSH: Theory (Philosophy) | Practice (Philosophy) | Philosophy, Marxist.
Classification: lcc b842 .d4713 2018 | ddc 194—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018023877
♾ This paper meets the requirements of
ansi/niso z39.48-1 992 (Permanence of Paper).
contents
Foreword to the English Edition : vii
General Introduction to the French Edition : ix
Translator’s Preface : xiii
first session : 1
second session : 19
third session : 39
fourth session : 53
fifth session : 69
sixth session : 83
seventh session : 97
eighth session : 107
ninth session : 117
Index of Names : 127

foreword to the english edition
The French edition of Théorie et pratique (Paris: Galilée, 2017) marks a
departure in several respects from the editorial policies and practices devel-
oped over the previous ten years for the publication of Derrida’s seminars.
As Alexander García Düttmann makes explicit in his introduction to that
edition, he has made a large number of “silent” corrections to Derrida’s
typescript, including reordering or rewriting sentences he judges to be in -
complete or otherwise incoherent, changing Derrida’s use of punctuation and
capitalization, and eliminating Derrida’s characteristic use of what in French
we have come to call reprises—t hat is, repetition for clarity of the begin-
ning of a sentence after an aside or digression. In practice, this means that
significant editorial interventions, invisible to the reader, have been made on
every page of the French volume. Düttmann also introduces several errors or
inaccuracies into the text, most notably misidentifying the year of this semi-
nar as 1975–7 6 (in fact it dates from the following year), and adds some inter-
pretative footnotes that go beyond editorial concerns.
As members of the original editorial team responsible for editing the
French volumes of the seminar, and as general editors of the English trans-
lations, we have preferred to maintain the original editorial policies and
practices. Consequently, the translation presented here is based not on the
published French edition, but directly on the typescript of the seminar it-
self, the original of which is found in the Critical Theory Archive at the
University of California, Irvine. This means that David Wills has translated
the text that Derrida actually wrote, with only minimal editorial interven-
tions in conformity with previous publications in this series. We also rein-
state here the “General Introduction to the French Edition,” and do not
viii ‡ foreword to the english edition
translate Düttmann’s editorial note, which largely discusses his departures,
not followed in this edition, from previous editorial practice.
Geoffrey Bennington
Peggy Kamuf
january 2018
general introduction to the
french edition
The complete edition of Jacques Derrida’s seminars and lectures will give
the reader the chance of an unprecedented contact with the philosopher’s
teaching voice. This edition will constitute a new part of his oeuvre, to be
distinguished from the books and other texts published during his lifetime
or revised by him before his death, and with a clearly different status. It is
not certain that Jacques Derrida would have published the seminars as they
stand: probably he would have reorganized or rewritten them. Taken as a
whole, but also in their relation to Derrida’s philosophical oeuvre, these lec-
tures and seminars will constitute an incomparable research tool and will, we
believe, give a different experience of his thinking, here linked to his teach-
ing, which was always, both in France and abroad, a truly vital resource
of his writing.
The corpus we are preparing for publication is vast. From the begin-
ning of his teaching career, Derrida was in the habit of completely writing
out almost all his lectures and seminars. This means that we have at our
disposal the equivalent of some fourteen thousand printed pages, or forty-
three volumes, on the basis of one volume per academic year. This material
can be classified according to a variety of criteria. First, according to the
place where the teaching took place: the Sorbonne from 1960 to 1964; the
École normale supérieure in the rue d’Ulm, from 1964 to 1984; the École
des hautes études en sciences sociales (EHESS) from 1984 to 2003.1 Then
1. We need to add the American places as well: from fall 1968 to 1974 at the Johns
Hopkins University, then as visiting professor in the humanities from 1975 to 1986
at Yale University, where he gave each year, in the fall or spring semester, a regular
seminar. From 1987 to 2003, Derrida taught regularly at the University of California,
Irvine, and at the New School for Social Research, the Cardozo Law School, and New
York University (1992– 2003). This American teaching (which, with a few exceptions,