Hollander Dana - Exemplarity and chosenness : Rosenzweig and Derrida on the nation of philosophy

I had the benefit of researching and writing this book in several different academic settings, and my thinking was spurred along by a number of fortuitous occasions. I dont imagine I could have conceived and carried out this project had I not been a graduate student at the Humanities Center at Johns Hopkins University, with its unique atmosphere of openness and special intellectual legacy. Among my teachers there, I am especially grateful to Werner Hamacher and Hent de Vries, whose curiosity about and encouragement for the avenues I chose to pursue were wonderfully enabling. Neil Hertz was extraordinarily prescient about where I was headed in handing me Derridas article Onto-Theology of National-Humanism when it was first published. Conversations with Peter Fenves during his year as a visiting professor encouraged me in my ambitions and helped me come to a clearer understanding of how to carry them out. The arrival of Nahum Chandler, who shared his passion for understanding the early Derrida with me and other students, gave me a much-needed boost as I was writing my Derrida chapters. The scholarly, teacherly, and collegial example set by Richard Macksey was a constant source of joy and encouragement.

While a graduate student, a French government Chateaubriand Fellowship and an Oberlin College Alumni Fellowship made it possible for me to spend a year studying and researching in Paris; and a DAAD Short-Term Research Grant funded a half-year research stay in Potsdam and Berlin. A Ray D. Wolfe Fellowship in Advanced Jewish Studies at the University of Toronto provided a hospitable intellectual setting in which to write. I wish to thank Eddie Yeghiayan and the Special Collections department at the library of the University of California at Irvine for facilitating access to the Jacques Derrida Archive. I also thank Hugh Silverman and Wilhelm Wurzer for the opportunity to participate in an International Philosophical Seminar on Derridas Specters of Marx, which provided a productive workshop setting in which to formulate the ideas that I develop in Part IV. I am grateful to the Canada Research Chairs Program and to McMaster University for research funding that supported the writing and production of this volume, and to Jeremy Bourdon and Tema Smith for their help in the final stages.

Much of the thinking about Derrida, Cohen, Rosenzweig, and Levinas that went into what follows was facilitated by courses I taught on modern Jewish thought and twentieth-century continental philosophy at the Johns Hopkins University, the University of Nevada Reno, and the University of Toronto. I thank the students and colleagues who participated in these classes for engaging in a dialogue about the work of these thinkers.

I am especially grateful to Jacques Derrida for granting me access to his archived papers and for his support of my work.

My energy for seeing this project through to its conclusion has come in large part out of a wish to produce something worthy of the curiosity, enthusiasm, and generosity of a number of colleagues and friends who have taken an interest in the work at its various stages, offered valuable feedback and advice, and supported me in other crucial ways: Deborah Achtenberg, Antonio Calcagno, David L. Clark, Astrid Deuber-Mankowsky, Oona Eisenstadt, Alexander Gelley, Robert Gibbs, Willi Goetschel, Martin Kavka, Kathryn Morgan, Michael Naas, Diane Perpich, Randi Rashkover, Kenneth Reinhard, Elizabeth Rottenberg, Christoph Schulte, Nicholas Storch, and Alan Udoff.

I owe a special debt to Arnd Wedemeyer, who accompanied and inspired this project since long before it was a project, and whose unwavering and brilliant support has been indispensable to its realization.

I thank my parents, Vita Hollander and Zander Hollander, for their unfailing and imaginative support and for taking to heart what I set out to do.

Appendix: Jacques Derridas Seminar Cycle Nationalit et nationalisme philosophiques

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