THE TURBULENCE OF DERRIDA'S EVENT

Abstract

This paper develops a practice of reading Derrida in which the turbulent movements of his work are undergone or repeated. After introducing the figure of turbulence, the paper faces Derrida's writing with a sequence of three questions and displays how they are broken down by the movements of that writing. A final section asks what this means for the figure of turbulence itself.

Keywords:

•  Derrida
• event
• deconstruction
• ethics
• turbulence

Notes

1 Derrida himself has used this and related concepts and imagery at certain points in his work. In discussing the way he imagines readers of his writing, Derrida said

Perhaps, but in an always ambiguous manner, you hope to pull others into it, or rather to discover or invent others who do not yet exist, but who nevertheless know something about it already, know more about it than you do. (“‘Madness’” 350)

Though the phrase “or rather” suggests a qualification or better option, this sentence employs, even if provisionally, an image of the drawing movement associated with turbulence. And in talking about the deconstruction of the subject, Derrida said that

In order to recast, if not rigorously re-found a discourse on the “subject,” on that which will hold the place (or replace the place) of the subject (of law, of morality, of politics – so many categories caught up in the same turbulence), one has to go through the experience of a deconstruction. (“‘Eating’” 272)

The questioning of the concept “subject” also throws into question other associated concepts – those like law or morality which are founded on or linked to an understanding of subjectivity. Such brief references indicate that the notion of turbulence is not foreign to Derrida's work. In both cases, the French turbulence is used in the original.

2 Here, Derrida is actually quoting at length a passage from pages 80–81 of his own The Other Heading.