Document Type
Review
Abstract
[First paragraph]
It is evident that Jacques Derrida and Hélène Cixous love one another, and these two books provide clues not only as to the singular nature of that friendship, but may serve as testimonies, in their very singularities, for new inventions of friendship in a more general sense. Derrida’s book, published in English posthumously, has a title that a childhood sweetheart might utter, but in fact comes to us from the side of death. Nevertheless, it is Derrida’s proclamation while alive, and the reason he loves Cixous for life is, on the one hand, because they should have been childhood friends—both “Algerian Jews from Algiers”—although they did not meet until they had both arrived in Paris as “two young professors and writers” (xiii). On the other hand, Derrida finds the basis of friendship not in similarity, but in difference: “I, who always feel turned toward death, I am not on her side, while she would like to turn everything and to make it come round to the side of life” (36). Thus, it is Cixous who is “for life,” while Derrida is on the side of death. To begin this differential friendship, Cixous actually saw Derrida seven years before he saw her. She was standing behind the podium while Derrida gave a lecture on death. These coincidences, whether of the “magic circumstantial” kind just related, or the inexhaustible wealth of the unexpected punceptual connection, always surprise Derrida, come from behind to bewitch him. Derrida wants to be bewitched, and in H. C. For Life he is claiming that Cixous is bewitching because they are on different sides. He does not understand her side, which is for life even as it moves across and yet refuses or turns from death, even as he desires it, wishes he could be on the side of life. And yet, if they were on the same side, there would be no spacing to produce the abyss constituting the magic of friendship.
Repository Citation
Clinton, Alan. "Review of H. C. For Life, That Is To Say . . ., by Jacques Derrida and Insister of Jacques Derrida, by Hélène Cixous." Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture vol. 9, no. 2, 2009, pp. 1–5. https://digitalcommons.odu.edu/reconstruction/vol9/iss2/19