The Death of the Other: On Derrida’s Conceptualisation of Autobiography

Abstract

This article addresses the complex processes of the conceptualisation of autobiography that Derrida puts to work in his thought, and offers a fresh analysis and perspective on his semi-autobiographical text Circumfession as a basis from which to consider these complexities. It focuses on two key critical concepts from Circumfession – the autobiothanatoheterographical (in which the death of the other becomes enmeshed with the life of the self) and everybody’s autobiography (in which the idea of autobiographical singularity possesses universal significance) – and considers the way in which the paradoxical logic of these concepts acts as the theoretical foundation for the reconceptualisation of subjectivity. In the main body the analysis of Circumfession draws out the variety of main themes of the text, and uses these themes as a way into the various concerns that underpin the two key critical concepts. Six themes are identified: the relation of Circumfession to Derridabase in Jacques Derrida; the structure of Circumfession into 59 sections; the fact that each section is only one sentence long; the extracts from the notebooks for a book on circumcision; Derrida’s present experience at the time of writing of his dying mother; and the citations from Augustine’s Confessions. Through the consideration of these themes, a double emphasis on Derrida’s philosophy of time and his ethics of singularity is interpreted as underlying his conceptualisation of autobiography.