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A review by wmbogart
Portrait of Jacques Derrida as a Young Jewish Saint by Hélène Cixous
Continuing my summer of Cixous! I know deconstruction (and, gasp, post-structuralism) is grating for some. Not me! And with a title like this, obviously I'm going to read it.
Cixous takes the deconstructive approach in playing with words, their origins, homophones, tenses, to try to get to what "Jewish" might mean as a sign. She applies this to Derrida, not solely in a biographic sense but in the spirit of his writing and his thought. I don't think I ever consciously drew the parallel between this approach and the word analysis of Abraham Abulafia or Eleazar of Worms (neither of whom are mentioned here, just a connection from the breaking down of words into elements and the section on Pardes), but there's a case for deconstruction as rooted in Jewish tradition.
There's also a lot here on circumcision, and Derrida's Circumfession which, full disclosure, I've never read. Not just circumcision as a marker of Judaism, but what it means to cut or remove something from its origin and create a second origin in the event of removal. She writes that "all poets are Jews" sharing in "common exile." The poet is circumcised by language, as the language too is circumcised in translation. In philosophy and in the (at times tongue-in-cheek) wordplay, Cixous does somehow get to a portrait of Derrida in spirit and approach.
More importantly, perhaps MOST importantly not just in relation to the text but in relation to the world at large - take a look at the cover of this book. The one on this website. Is this the single funniest book cover? Has to be, right? It's incredible. Their poses, the angle of the photo, the typography, the layout, all very, very cool.
Cixous takes the deconstructive approach in playing with words, their origins, homophones, tenses, to try to get to what "Jewish" might mean as a sign. She applies this to Derrida, not solely in a biographic sense but in the spirit of his writing and his thought. I don't think I ever consciously drew the parallel between this approach and the word analysis of Abraham Abulafia or Eleazar of Worms (neither of whom are mentioned here, just a connection from the breaking down of words into elements and the section on Pardes), but there's a case for deconstruction as rooted in Jewish tradition.
There's also a lot here on circumcision, and Derrida's Circumfession which, full disclosure, I've never read. Not just circumcision as a marker of Judaism, but what it means to cut or remove something from its origin and create a second origin in the event of removal. She writes that "all poets are Jews" sharing in "common exile." The poet is circumcised by language, as the language too is circumcised in translation. In philosophy and in the (at times tongue-in-cheek) wordplay, Cixous does somehow get to a portrait of Derrida in spirit and approach.
More importantly, perhaps MOST importantly not just in relation to the text but in relation to the world at large - take a look at the cover of this book. The one on this website. Is this the single funniest book cover? Has to be, right? It's incredible. Their poses, the angle of the photo, the typography, the layout, all very, very cool.