Giustino De Michele, “The Animality of the Letter-Matter. Auto-Hetero-Affection as the Defining Characteristic of a Deconstructive Positive Conception of Materiality,” Revista Portuguesa de Filosofia 81, no. 1–2 (2025): 409–36, https://doi.org/10.17990/RPF/2025_81_1_0409.
| Item Type | Journal Article |
|---|---|
| Author | Giustino De Michele |
| Abstract | In his Perjury and Pardon seminar Jacques Derrida outlines a positive conception of materiality. He does so while criticising Paul de Man’s textual conception of it. For Derrida, this is too linguistic, too formalist, and thus incapable of accounting for a bodily quality of matter. But Derrida also criticises a secure referentiality from before spoken language as is entailed by a pre-critical recourse to ordinary language. Between these two options, he seeks for a third definition of materiality, whose main characteristic is auto-deixis. In turn, this characteristic is formulated by Derrida as coincident with auto-hetero-affection, which, according to him, is the attribute that defines finite animality. The introductory part of the paper shows how this late definition is enrooted in Derrida’s early development of a grammatological project, which implied a critical consideration of the confluence of cybernetics, semiotics, and life sciences. The central part of the paper demonstrates how Derrida’s definition stems from a close reading of De Man’s texts. The last part analyses the meaning of this definition and develops its epistemological consequences. |
| Date | 2025 |
| Language | English |
| Rights | © 2025 by Aletheia - Associação Científica e Cultural |
| Volume | 81 |
| Pages | 409-436 |
| Publication | Revista Portuguesa de Filosofia |
| DOI | 10.17990/RPF/2025_81_1_0409 |
| Issue | 1-2 |
| Journal Abbr | RPF |
| ISSN | 0870-5283 ; 2183-461X |
| Date Added | 5/2/2025, 4:39:53 PM |
| Modified | 5/2/2025, 5:06:00 PM |
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