Derrida Jacques - For Strasbourg: Conversations of Friendship and Philosophy

For Strasbourg

Conversations of Friendship and Philosophy

JACQUES DERRIDA

Edited and Translated by Pascale-Anne Brault and Michael Naas

Copyright 2014 Fordham University Press

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This book brings together four texts that were originally published in French under the following titles: Le lieu dit: Strasbourg, by Jacques Derrida, in Penser Strasbourg ditions Galile, 2004; Dialogue entre Jacques Derrida, Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe, and Jean-Luc Nancy, in Rue Descartes, no. 52 (2006): 8699, Succession Derrida/Succession Lacoue-Labarthe/Jean-Luc Nancy; Ouverture, discussion avec Jean-Luc Nancy, Rue Descartes 45 (2004): 2655, Succession Derrida/Jean-Luc Nancy; Rsponsabilit du sens a venir, conversation avec Jean-Luc Nancy, in Sens en tous sens: Autour des travaux de Jean- Luc Nancy, Editions Galilee, 2004.

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Derrida, Jacques.

[Essays. Selections. English]

For Strasbourg : conversations of friendship and philosophy / Jacques Derrida ; edited and translated by Pascale-Anne Brault and Michael Naas.

pages cm

Includes bibliographical references.

Summary: For Strasbourg consists of a series of essays and interviews by French philosopher and literary theorist Jacques Derrida (19302004) about the city of Strasbourg and the philosophical friendships he developed there over a forty year period. It is a profound interrogation of the relationship between philosophy and place, philosophy and language, and philosophy and friendshipProvided by publisher.

ISBN 978-0-8232-5648-8 (hardback)ISBN 978-0-8232-5649-5 (paper)

1. Derrida, JacquesFriends and associates. 2. PhilosophyFrance. 3. PhilosophersFranceInterviews. 4. Nancy, Jean-LucInterviews. 5. Lacoue-Labarthe, PhilippeInterviews. 6. Strasbourg (France)Intellectual life.
I. Title.
B2430.D482E5 2014
194dc23

2013048885

Published in the United States of America
16 15 14 5 4 3 2 1
First edition

Jacques Derrida loved the city of Strasbourg. Though he never lived or held a teaching position there, from the early 1970s right up to his death in 2004 Derrida traveled frequently to this city on the Franco-German border just over three hundred miles from Paris for everything from lectures, conferences, and colloquia to dissertation defenses, book signings, and artistic events. Attracted from the very beginning to this city because of its unique location and history, its multiplicity of languages and cultures, over time Derrida came to find Strasbourg an even more special place as organizations and movements that were dear to him came to be housed in or identified with the city, from the European Parliament to the International Parliament of Writers and the Parliament of Philosophers.

But it was above all friends who drew Derrida back to Strasbourg for more than three decades: friends in the municipality, friends in the artistic community, but especially friends in the universitybeginning with Jean-Luc Nancy and Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe. It was through these friends that Strasbourg, City of Parliaments and City of Refuge par excellence, became for Derrida a city of conversation and hospitality, indeed, of friendship and philosophy.

It was thus absolutely fitting that in June 2004, just four months before his death, the Parliament of Philosophers and the Department of Philosophy at Marc Bloch University, where Nancy and Lacoue-Labarthe were both teaching, would invite Jacques Derrida to Strasbourg for three days of meetings and conversations around his work. From June The collection For Strasbourg: Conversations of Friendship and Philosophy grew out of these events in Strasbourg, though Derrida himself never planned such a publication.

The work begins with the long tribute Derrida paid the city of Strasbourg during his three days there in June 2004. Titled The Place Name(s)Strasbourg (though it could easily bear the title or the dedication For Strasbourg), the essay recounts in great detail, and in very moving terms, Derridas affection for the city of Strasbourg, his many visits to this city, and, especially, his decades-long intellectual friendship with Nancy, Lacoue-Labarthe, and others. Through reflections, anecdotes, and shared memories with these two philosopher friends, Derrida is able to paint a fascinating portrait of French intellectual life over a thirty-year period, with stories about the many conferences he attended in Strasbourg, his testy relationship with the French university system, his break with Tel Quel, his association with Editions Galile, the founding of GREPH and of the International College of Philosophy, the importance of conferences at Cerisy-la-Salle, and so on.

This essay is a great testament to the importance of Strasbourg as a city of hospitality and of refuge for contemporary thought and, especially, for the kind of philosophy that was being done by Derrida, Nancy, and Lacoue-Labarthe and that could find a home nowhere else. Originally published in the appropriately titled volume Penser a Strasbourg (Thinking of/in Strasbourg, 2004), the essay bears witness not just to Derridas deep attachment to this border city but to his continuing interrogation of the relationship between thought and place, philosophy and language, language and nationality, philosophy and friendship. It thus raises a series of important philosophical, political, and ethical questions that might all be placed under the aegis of what Derrida came to call in his seminars of the 1980s philosophical nationalities and nationalism.

But The Place Name(s)Strasbourg is first of all a work of memory and of friendship. Punctuated by names and memories, it reads like a long good-bye to a city and its inhabitants, the last episode in Derridas

The second text included in this collection has its origin in the same three days of homage and celebration in Strasbourg, and it brings Derrida together once again with Jean-Luc Nancy and Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe. During the final day of Derridas visit, a session was organized at Marc Bloch University around the work of four doctoral students, who presented their work and discussed it with Derrida. This session was then followed by a roundtable discussion between Derrida, Nancy, and Lacoue-Labarthe that took as its point of departure these student presentations but that then went on to address questions related to the three thinkers own work, questions, for example, regarding Heidegger and his politics, community and generation, and, most poignantly, death, finitude, mourning, survival, and immortality. We thus hear Derrida, four months before his death, conversing with Strasbourgs two most famous philosophers about the all too relevant and pressing questions of legacy, the archive, the afterlife, and immortality.

First published in the journal Rue Descartes, this wide-ranging discussion between these three philosopher friends combines sharp insights into one anothers work with personal anecdotes, friendly ribbing, and good humor. It is the kind of serious but also playful discussion that is possible only among close friends. As the editors of