Derrida’s Thinking of the Event



• Derrida’s Thinking of the Event

  Item Type	Journal Article
  Author	François Raffoul
  Abstract	Derrida’s thinking of the event engages a certain inappropriability of the event, always resistant to anticipation and even to comprehension. For Derrida, an event is always inappropriable, displaying an aporetic structure and happening in what he calls an experience of the impossible. The event remains inappropriable as it frustrates any attempt to stabilize or crystallize it into some present being, some established identity. Happening outside of thought and subjectivity, an event can only happen as a surprise. The event is thus the coming of an alterity, of an arrivant. From a reflection on the aporetic structure of the event, I will focus on an ethics of the event, understood as an unconditional hospitality to its unpredicable arrival. I will unfold in the following pages Derrida’s thinking of the event as “im-possible,” pursue his characterization of the event as a “letting” (as opposed to doing or making and leading to a deconstruction of power in his thinking of the event), and then retrieve the ethical scope of such thinking, approached as hospitality to the event, a letting the event happen.
  Date	2025
  Language	English
  Rights	© 2025 by Aletheia - Associação Científica e Cultural
  Volume	81
  Pages	61-82
  Publication	Revista Portuguesa de Filosofia
  DOI	10.17990/RPF/2025_81_1_0061
  Issue	1-2
  Journal Abbr	RPF
  ISSN	0870-5283 ; 2183-461X
  Date Added	5/2/2025, 4:39:30 PM
  Modified	5/2/2025, 4:44:16 PM

  Tags:

  • aporia, event, hospitality, impossible, inappropriable, letting, surprise.

  Notes:

  • Arendt, Hannah. “What is Existential Philosophy,” in Essays in Understanding. 1930-1954, Formation, Exile, and Totalitarianism. Edited by Jerome Kohn. New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1994.

    Derrida, Jacques. Adieu to Emmanuel Levinas. Translated by Pascale-Anne Brault and Michael Naas. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1999.

    Derrida, Jacques. Aporias. Translated by Thomas Dutoit. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1993.

    Derrida, Jacques. “Autoimmunity: Real and Symbolic Suicides” and “Deconstructing Terrorism,” in Giovanna Borradori, Philosophy in a Time of Terror: Dialogues with Jürgen Habermas and Jacques Derrida. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2003.

    Derrida, Jacques. “A Certain Impossible Possibility of Saying the Event,” Critical Inquiry 33, no. 2 (Winter 2007): 441-461.

    Derrida, Jacques. For What Tomorrow . . . : A Dialogue. With Elisabeth Roudinesco. Translated by Jeff Fort. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2004

    Derrida, Jacques.The Gift of Death. Translated by David Wills. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2007.

    Derrida, Jacques. “Hospitality, justice and responsibility: a dialogue with Jacques Derrida.” Questioning Ethics. Contemporary Debates in Philosophy, ed. Richard Kearney and Mark Dooley, 65-83. London and New York: Routledge, 1999.

    Derrida, Jacques. Of Hospitality, with Anne Dufourmantelle. Translated by Rachel Bowlby. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2000.

    Derrida, Jacques. “Hostipitality.” Angelaki, Journal of the Theoretical Humanities 5, no. 3 (December 2000): 3-18

    Derrida, Jacques. “Jacques Derrida, penseur de l’événement,” interview with daily newspaper L’Humanité. 28 January 2004.

    Derrida, Jacques. Paper Machine. Translated by Rachel Bowlby. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2005.

    Derrida, Jacques. Politics of Friendship. Translated by George Collins. London and New York: Verso, 1997, 2005.

    Derrida, Jacques. Psyche. Inventions of the Other, vol. 1. Edited by Peggy Kamuf and Elizabeth Rottenberg. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2007.

    Derrida, Jacques. Rogues. Translated by Michael Naas and Pascale-Anne Brault. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2005.

    Derrida, Jacques. Specters of Marx. Translated by Peggy Kamuf. New York: Routledge, 1994.

    Derrida, Jacques. A Taste for the Secret, with Maurizio Ferraris. Translated by Giacomo Donis. Malden: Polity, 2001.

    Derrida, Jacques. On Touching—Jean-Luc Nancy. Translated by Christine Irizzary. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2000.

    Heidegger, Martin. GA 77. Feldweg-Gespräche (1944/45). Edited by Ingrid Schüssler. Frankfurt am Main, Germany: Vittorio Klostermann, 1995. Country Path Conversations. Translated by Bret W. Davis. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2010.

    Janicaud, Dominique. Heidegger in France. Translated by François Raffoul and David Pettigrew. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2015.

    Levinas, Emmanuel. Totality and Infinity: An Essay on Exteriority. Translated by Alphonso Lingis. The Hague/Boston/London: Martinus Nijhoff Publishers, 1979.

    Nancy, Jean-Luc. Being Singular Plural. Translated by Robert Richardson and Anne O’Byrne. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2000.