To the Archive: A Postal Tale

Abstract

Click to increase image sizeClick to decrease image size Notes 1. For a discussion on the idea of “post,” see, for example, Bernhard Siegert, Relays: Literature as an Epoch of the Postal System (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1999). 2. Epoch, epoche, refers to that which releases, to that which makes what is released possible, to a giving that makes what is given possible. This is the idea behind Heidegger's thinking of Being as epochal sending; he writes: “Epoch does not mean here the span of time in occurrence, but rather the fundamental characteristics of sending, the actual holding-back of itself in favor of the discernibility of the gift, that is, of Being with regard to the grounding of beings,” Martin Heidegger, On Time and Being (San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1972), 9. 3. Jacques Derrida, Archive Fever (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996), 3. 4. Jacques Derrida, The Post Card (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1978), 63. 5. Bernhard Siegert, Relays, 11. Additional informationNotes on contributorsBriankle G. ChangBriankle G. Chang is Associate Professor of Communication at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. He is the author of Deconstructing Communication: Representation, Subject, and the Economies of Exchange (1996)