Gil Anidjar Research Articles

Coalition: The Politics of Decision

Coalition: The Politics of Decision

Between Past and Present, Jew and Arab: An Exchange between Gil Anidjar and David N. Myers

Amira Hass,Haaretz's fearless journalist, recently told the following joke, an allegory of sorts, set during the Turco-Russian war. Moishele is about to depart for the front, and so his mother offers some sensible advice. “Please take care of yourself, my son. Pace yourself. Kill a Turk all right, but then make sure you rest afterwards. Eat something. Sleep a little. Then go back if you must, kill another Turk, and take another break. Drink lots of fluids, and make sure you maintain and replenish your strength.” “But Mamele,” retorts Moishele, “What if while I am eating and resting, there comes a Turk to kill me?” “Oy va voy, my son! Why would anyone do such a thing? What could he possibly have against you?”

Dorsal Chances: An Interview with David Wills

Click to increase image sizeClick to decrease image size Notes 1. Martha Nussbaum, The Fragility of Goodness: Luck and Ethics in Greek Tragedy and Philosophy, 2nd edn (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001). 2. Aristotle, Ethics, rev. edn, trans. J.A.K. Thomson (London, Penguin: 1976), VI.iv.1140a19‐20. 3. David Wills, ‘Thinking Back: Towards Technology, via Dorsality’, parallax, 10:3 (2004), pp. 36‐52 (p. 38). 4. David Wills, ‘Thinking Back’, p. 51, fn.1. 5. Dorsality: Thinking Back through Technology and Politics (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, forthcoming spring 2008). 6. ‘There are individuals walking along. Somewhere (usually behind them) the hail rings out’, or ‘The hailed individual will turn round. By this mere one‐hundred‐and‐eighty‐degree physical conversion, he becomes a subject.’ [my emphasis] ‘Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses (Notes towards an Investigation)’, in Lenin and Philosophy and Other Essays, trans. Ben Brewster (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1971), pp. 170–86 (p. 174). 7. Emmanuel Levinas, Totality and Infinity: An Essay on Exteriority, trans. Alphonso Lingis (Pittsburgh: Duquesne University Press, 1969), pp. 65–66. 8. Emmanuel Levinas, Totality and Infinity, p. 262. 9. Emmanuel Levinas, Totality and Infinity, p. 85. 10. Emmanuel Levinas, Totality and Infinity, p. 86. 11. Jacques Derrida, L'animal que donc je suis (Paris: Galilée, 2006). 12. Emmanuel Levinas, Totality and Infinity, p. 132. 13. Emmanuel Levinas, Totality and Infinity, p. 152. 14. Jacques Derrida, Specters of Marx: The State of the Debt, The Work of Mourning and the New International, trans. Peggy Kamuf (New York, London: Routledge, 1994), p. 53. 15. Emmanuel Levinas, Totality and Infinity, p. 213. 16. See ‘Techneology or the Discourse of Speed’, in The Prosthetic Impulse, ed. Marquard Smith and Joanne Morra (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2006), pp. 237–63. 17. Jacques Derrida, Deconstruction Engaged: The Sydney Seminars, ed. Paul Patton and Terry Smith (Sydney: Power, 2001). 18. Jacques Derrida and Bernard Stiegler, Echographies of Television: Filmed Interviews, trans. Jennifer Bajorek (Cambridge: Polity, 2002). 19. Jacques Derrida, ‘Faith and Knowledge: The Two Sources of “Religion” at the Limits of Reason Alone’, in Acts of Religion, ed. Gil Anidjar (London, New York: Routledge, 2002), pp. 40–101. 20. Jacques Derrida, Specters of Marx, p. 169. 21. Jacques Derrida, Deconstruction Engaged, p. 76. 22. Martin Heidegger, The Question Concerning Technology and Other Essays, trans. William Lovitt (New York: Harper and Row, 1977), pp. 3–35; 36–49. 23. Jacques Derrida, Politiques de l'amitié (Paris: Galilée, 1994); Jacques Derrida, Politics of Friendship, trans. George Collins (London, New York: Verso, 1997). 24. David Wills, ‘Full Dorsal: Derrida's Politics of Friendship’, Postmodern Culture, 15:3 (2005). 25. An avenue developed by Derrida in ‘“Perhaps or Maybe”, Jacques Derrida in conversation with Alexander Garcia Düttmann, ICA, 8 March 1996’, PLI Warwick Journal of Philosophy, 6 (Summer 1997), pp. 1–18. 26. Jacques Derrida, Politics of Friendship, pp. 30; 29. 27. Friedrich Nietzsche, Ecce Homo, in The Anti‐Christ, Ecce Homo, Twilight of the Idols and Other Writings, trans. Judith Norman (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), pp. 69–152 (p. 131). 28. ‘Every art [tekhnē] is concerned with bringing something into being, and the practice of an art is the study of how to bring into being something that is capable either of being or not being, and the cause of which is in the producer and not in the product. For it is not with things that are or come to be of necessity that art is concerned, nor with natural objects (because they have their own origin in themselves). And since production is not the same as action, art must be concerned with production, not with action. There is a sense in which art and chance operate in the same sphere, as Agathon says: Art has a love for chance, and chance for art.’ [our emphasis] Aristotle, Ethics, VI.iv.1140a.6–20. 29. Jacques Derrida, Politics of Friendship, p. 197. 30. Jacques Derrida, Politics of Friendship, p. 105. 31. Jean‐Luc Nancy, Corpus (Paris: Métailié, 1992); L'Intrus (Paris: Galilée, 2000). 32. Roland Barthes, A Lover's Discourse: Fragments, trans. Richard Howard (New York: Hill and Wang, 1978). 33. David Wills, ‘Jasz Annotations: Negotiating a Discursive Limit’, paragraph, 21 (1998), pp. 131–49. 34. See David Wills, ‘Notes Towards a Requiem or the Music of Memory’, Mosaic, 39:3 (2006), pp. 27–46. 35. David Wills, Prosthesis (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1995), p. 11. 36. See Wills, Prosthesis, p. 88ff.

Mariacarla Gadebusch Bondio, Blood in history and blood histories, Micrologus' Library, no. 13 Florence, Sismel, Edizione del Galluzzo, 2005, pp. 388, illus., €49.00 (paperback, 88-8450-162-8).

Mariacarla Gadebusch Bondio, Blood in history and blood histories, Micrologus' Library, no. 13Florence, Sismel, Edizione del Galluzzo, 2005, pp. 388, illus., €49.00 (paperback, 88-8450-162-8). - Volume 51 Issue 3

L'Université sans profession (the University without profession): The Privilege of the Conflict of the Faculties

Jacques Derrida has institutionalized his belief that philosophy must be integral to the founding of any university. In 1982 he presented, with others, a report to the French government ‘to justify...

When the Difference Sediments in Law: Interview with Gil Anidjar

Author(s): Robert Alagjozovski and Gil Anidjar | Роберт Алаѓозовски и Гил Аниџар
 Title (English): When the Difference Sediments in Law: Interview with Gil Anidjar
 Title (Macedonian): Кога разликата ќе стане закон: Интервју со Гил Аниџар
 Translated by (English to Macedonian): Robert Alagjozovski | Роберт Алаѓозовски
 Journal Reference: Identities: Journal for Politics, Gender and Culture, Vol. 5, No. 2 (Summer 2006)
 Publisher: Research Center in Gender Studies - Skopje and Euro-Balkan Institute 
 Page Range: 15-33
 Page Count: 18
 Citation (English): Robert Alagjozovski and Gil Anidjar, “When the Difference Sediments in Law: Interview with Gil Anidjar,” Identities: Journal for Politics, Gender and Culture, Vol. 5, No. 2 (Summer 2006): 15-33.
 Citation (Macedonian): Роберт Алаѓозовски и Гил Аниџар, „Кога разликата ќе стане закон: Интервју со Гил Аниџар“, превод од англиски Роберт Алаѓозовски, Идентитети: списание за политика, род и култура, т. 5, бр. 2 (лето 2006): 15-33.

“All the World to Nothing”: Badiou, Žižek and Pauline Subjectivity in Richard III

Richard III is the only Shakespearean character to invoke Saint Paul (and the villainous king does so five times). The anomaly has been noted as a side topic but this essay shows that Shakespeare's rendering of Pauline subjectivity informs the play as a whole. This understanding of Richard has only become visible in our own Pauline moment. As Gil Anidjar puts it, current critical thought is in a “moment of the renewed reception of Paul”, albeit an “insufficiently acknowledged” moment. Giorgio Agamben, Alain Badiou, Jacques Derrida, Jean-Francois Lyotard and Slavoj Žižek have all recently addressed the relationship between Paul's paradoxically active (through love) submission to God's Grace and our current problematics of subjectivity without necessarily insinuating a specific Christian belief. Badiou's work, in particular, allows us to see anew or, perhaps, for the first time, the paradoxical “charisma” of this notorious sovereign.

"Our Place in Al-Andalus": Kabbalah, Philosophy, Literature in Arab Jewish Letters. Gil Anidjar

<i>"Our Place in Al-Andalus": Kabbalah, Philosophy, Literature in Arab Jewish Letters</i>. Gil Anidjar

Memory, History, Forgiveness

This dialogue between Paul Ricoeur and Sorin Antohi took place in Budapest on March 10, 2003 at Pasts, Inc., Center for Historical Studies, which is affiliated with Central European University (CEU). Ricoeur was the honorary president of Pasts, Inc., and its spiritus rector. On March 8, he had given a lecture on "History, Memory, and Forgetting" in the context of an international conference entitled "Haunting Memories? History in Europe after Authoritarianism," and organized by Pasts Inc. and the Körber Foundation. On March 9, Ricoeur had received the first Honoris Causa doctorate ever granted by CEU. Ricoeur had already visited Hungary in 1933. At the time, he was participating in a Boy Scouts European jamboree at Gödöllö (where he also saw Horthy on his white horse). After WWII, he went back to Hungary to meet with Lukács. Mona Antohi has transcribed and edited the recording of the dialogue. The two interlocutors have then made some minor revisions. The original text, in French, is available on the website of Pasts, Inc. (www.ceu.hu/pasts). This English version, translated and annotated by Gil Anidjar, will be included in Sorin Antohi's book, Talking History. Making Sense of Pasts, forthcoming in 2006 from CEU Press. His own Romanian translation of the dialogue was published in the Iasi-based journal, Xenopoliana (3-4, 2004), as was the Hungarian translation by Réka Toth, which appeared in the Budapest-based journal, 2000 (November-December 2003).

Jacques Derrida: Acts of Religion

This collection of Derrida’s essays is entitled Acts of Religion, not “thoughts,” “essays,” or “writings” on religion. It is an appropriate title. These works, selected from Derrida’s oeuvre from 1980 to 2001 by Gil Anidjar of Columbia University, constitute an endeavor to clarify and re-think the terms and critical techniques used in philosophical discussions of religion. As Anidjar puts it in his introduction, they “do not merely constitute an exploration of familiar theologemes,” but rather consist “of a manifold and powerful effort to situate and raise again questions of tradition, faith, and sacredness and their relation to the premises of philosophy and political culture” (3). This effort is a combination of three separate but interrelated “acts”: an act of remembering, an act of looking forward, and an active defense of the ongoing project of linguistic critique itself. In “Faith and Knowledge,” (1996) Derrida examines the philosophical history of the distinction between religion and reason, and formulates a theory of common origin, a “fiduciary ‘link’ [that] would precede all determinate community, all positive religion, every onto-anthropo-theological horizon” (55, his italics). This link (the root word, religio) is an act of faith, required to transcend the “one,” to reach the absolute other. Understood thus, religion and what he terms “teletechnoscience” stem from the same source; even as they position themselves as opposed, they rely upon one another, and spread together (positioned as opposites), a process that Derrida terms “globalatinization.” This theory of common origin is also a memory of a “sacred language,” an Review Essay: Jacques Derrida: Acts of Religion

The Jew, the Arab: A History of the Enemy, by Gil Anidjar and Israel, the Impossible Land, by Jean-Christophe Attias and Esther Benbassa

<i>The Jew, the Arab: A History of the Enemy</i>, by Gil Anidjar and <i>Israel, the Impossible Land</i>, by Jean-Christophe Attias and Esther Benbassa

“Our Place in al-Andalus”: Kabbalah, Philosophy, Literature in Arab Jewish Letters by Gil Anidjar (review)

“Our Place in al-Andalus”: Kabbalah, Philosophy, Literature in Arab Jewish Letters by Gil Anidjar (review)