CONTRIBUTI / 17 / Monica Gorza
Oblivion/memory/becoming of the name. A reflection on autobiography in Jacques Derrida
This article attempts to interpret the concept of memory in the philosophical movement of deconstruction. Specifically, my aim is to analyze Jacques Derrida’s autobiographical writings. By taking St. Augustin’s reflections on memory and time in Confessions as starting point, the present essay focuses on the stream of consciousness used by Derrida in Circumfession. More exactly, the analysis will deal with the dialogue among Circumfession, Memoirs of the Blind: The Self-Portrait and Other Ruins and Sauf le nom (Post Scriptum). These texts were published before and afterwards Derrida’s autothanatobiography, in which the author argues that memory is clearly not separated from the concepts of trace and archive, from the problem of the name and the truth, and also from the original notion of blindness and the experience of eating.
