Class Acts looks at two often neglected aspects of Derrida’s work as a philosopher, his public lectures and his teaching, along with the question of the “speech act” that links them, that is, the question of what one is doing when one speaks in public in these ways.
Abbreviations of Works Cited | xi
Introduction: The Program | 1
Part I: Derrida in Montreal (A Play in Three Speech Acts ) Argument and Dramatis Personae | 13 Act 1. The Context (1971) | 15 Intermission 1: Glyph 1 | 41 Act 2. The Signature (1979) | 45 Intermission 2: Glyph 2 | 55 Act 3. The Event (1997) | 59 Encore: Cocoon | 69
Part II: The Open Seminar The Counter-Program (Syllabus) | 75 Class 1. Agrégations: The Chance of Life Death (1975–76) | 93 Class 2. Education in Theory and Practice (1976–77) | 111 Class 3. Grace and the Machine: Perjury and Pardon (1997–98) | 127
Conclusion: Actes de naissance | 149
Acknowledgments | 157 Notes | 159 Index | 183
Class Acts looks at two often neglected aspects of Derrida’s work as a philosopher, his public lectures and his teaching, along with the question of the “speech act” that links them, that is, the question of what one is doing when one speaks in public in these ways.
Class Acts examines two often neglected aspects of Jacques Derrida’s work as a philosopher, his public presentations at lectures and conferences and his teaching, along with the question of the “speech act” that links them. What, Michael Naas asks, is one doing when one speaks in public in these ways?
The book follows Derrida’s itinerary with regard to speech act theory across three public lectures, from 1971 to 1997, all given, for reasons the book seeks to explain, in Montreal. In these lectures, Derrida elaborated his critique of J. L. Austin and his own subsequent redefinition of speech act theory. The book then gives an overview of Derrida’s teaching career and his famous “seminar” presentations, along with his own explicit reflections on pedagogy and educational institutions beginning in the mid-1970s. Naas then shows through a reading of three recently published seminars—on life death, theory and practice, and forgiveness—just how Derrida the teacher interrogated and deployed speech act theory in his seminars. Whether in a conference hall or a classroom, Naas demonstrates, Derrida was always interested in the way spoken or written words might do more than simply communicate some meaning or intent but might give rise to something like an event. Class Acts bears witness to the possibility of such events in Derrida’s work as a pedagogue and a public intellectual.
Michael Naas is Professor of Philosophy at DePaul University in Chicago. His research covers the fields of philosophy and comparative literature, with a particular focus on ancient Greek thought and contemporary French philosophy and with a strong interest in the thinkers Nietzsche, Heidegger, Derrida, Lyotard, and Levinas. He has edited and co-translated into English a number of Jacques Derrida’s texts: The Work of Mourning (2011), Learning to Live Finally (2007), Rogues (2005), and Adieu: To Emmanuel Levinas (1999). His most recent publications are The End of the World and Other Teachable Moments: Jacques Derrida’s Final Seminar (2015), Miracle and Machine: Jacques Derrida and the Two Sources of Religion, Science, and the Media (2012), and Plato and the Invention of Life (2018).
