How do you say…?

In November I’ll be heading to the United States for a whirlwind research and conference trip.  (Assuming the funding gets approved!)  It will be my first trip overseas.  (And no, Tasmania doesn’t count.)  My itinerary is a couple of days in New York, a couple of days in Middletown, Connecticut, and then a week in Los Angeles.

The week in Los Angeles, I will visiting the Derrida archives.  I’m very excited about this.  I’ll get to see Derrida’s seminar papers, his drafts for publications and other bits and pieces.  To this end, I’m doing an intensive French reading class at the moment.  Obviously, a few months cannot possibly be enough to prepare you for translating complex French philosophy, but it will be enough to get me going, and help me to identify what I need.

I’m really enjoying learning French.  I grew up in a country town where nobody spoke anything but English.  Other languages and cultures have a fascination for me… something I feel that I missed out on, and Australians generally, don’t take enough interest in.  Living on another continent, where to travel a few hundred kilometres might take you into a different language, a different culture, would mark your thinking, education, upbringing in a way we simply don’t have here.

Yes, there are different communities within a few minutes of my home that speak different languages – Italian, Mandarin, various Indian languages, but these aren’t open in the way another country with borders would be.  One cannot be a traveller within these communities, you only pass through.

Of course, American’s speak a different language, too…

Filed under: archives, work , Derrida archives, different languages, multiculturalism, multilingualism, PhD

Archive Angst

Derrida is in the news, again (or is that still?). The University of California has sued the Derrida family over the location (and ownership?) of an archive of Derrida’s papers. It would seem a battle between an American location, and a French one. Derrida had made a gift of some of his papers to the uni in California where he taught, but later withdrew support, it would seem, and died before things were finalised.

An american paper has reported on it here, and UCI’s Peter Krapp blogged about it on his own blog here.

Begs the question of how do we remember Derrida? What are we remembering when we do?

Filed under: Derrida, Philosophy, archives, death, memory