Bøger af Zsuzsa Baross

Those familiar with the work of Derrida will recognize the double term in the title as variations, in translation, of Derrida's untimely essay Survivre. "e;To survive"e; – in this infinite mood and indefinite form that sets no limit to number, person, or time – is at once the theme and the undercurrent that runs through the diverse texts gathered together in this volume. "e;To survive"e;, for such is our exceptional situation, also animates the act of writing: to shelter a personal existence and actualize the promise writing holds for saving something more than (bare) life. Derrida termed it "e;sur-vie"e; or "e;living on"e;. The texts date from different times and phases of the mutating epidemic. In chronological order, they register the progressive evolution and complication of the sense of this "e;novel"e; crisis. The first is contemporaneous with the immediate virus outbreak and with Agamben's provocative dismissal of the "e;health"e; crisis. The "e;Two Transcripts"e; are of video interventions that appeared on Jerôme Lebre's Youtube channel "e;Philosopher en temps d'epidemie"e; – one of several platforms to call for critical discourse; a third intervention, completing the triptych, was recorded in French but never published. Here an extended, more developed version closes the volume. Engaging Derrida's "e;Survie,"e; it also responds to the recent death of Jean-Luc Nancy. At the center, anchoring the volume, is a complex text that can be read as a belated postscript to the first volume On Contemporaneity after Agamben, and / or as a premature preface to its forthcoming successor (The Time That Remains). It asks about the newly acquired sense of the "e;World"e; in Paul Celan's often cited last phrase: "e;The world is gone"e;. Living On / To Survive is essential reading for students and scholars in literature, philosophy and psychology. Publication details of these and related titles are provided in the prelims to the book.

Who are our contemporaries today? Alain Badiou, Jean-Luc Nancy, or Giorgio Agamben, or the already neglected Althusser or Lacoue-Labarthe? From among the thinkers of the last "e;great generation"e; of the past century, who are the precursors whose voice is strong enough to speak to our present today? when the nature of time itself is uncertain: a time of "e;mutation"e; (Nancy), a "e;change of epoch"e; (Blanchot), an "e;epoch without an epoch"e; (Stiegler), or more catastrophically, the time of the geocide (Deguy)? Is it Bataille (Inner Experience) or Blanchot (The Writing of the Disaster) who anticipates the future that is already our present? Or Derrida who announced the unsurpassable dilemma of the law of hospitality? Announced a future to be presented only as a "e;monstrosity"e;? Or is it rather Deleuze, whose geo-philosophy already dispenses with the subject, privileges matter over spirit, and subordinates the great movements of peoples and animals - of history and revolution, the political and the social as relative - to the de- re-territorializing powers of the forces of the Earth? Or again, is it not philosophy but rather art that measures up to the intensity of the forces pressing against us in the present? The exhausted prose of Beckett, the broken verse of Celan? The stammer of Artaud?

In 2004, Jacques Derrida gave one of his final interviews prior to his death. Regarding the future of his work, Derrida advanced two contradictory hypotheses: "I will not be read"; and "despite a handful of good readers ...I am yet to be read". This book is an homage to the spirit of Derrida, and seeks to grasp the significance of his death.