Jacques Derrida’s (art)work of mourning

Abstract

Derrida’s highly personal mourning texts are collected and published in a unique book under the title The Work of Mourning edited by Pascale-Anne Brault and Michael Naas, two outstanding translators of Derrida’s works. The English collection is published in 2001, while the French edition came out later in 2003 titled Chaque fois unique, la fin du monde (Each Time Unique, the End of the World). In his deconstructed eulogies, Derrida, being in accordance with ‘the mission impossible’ of deconstruction, namely, ‘to allow the coming of the entirely other’ in its otherness, seems to find his own voice. In my paper, I will focus on this special segment of Derrida’s death-work (cf. life-work); namely, on his mourning texts written for his dead friends, paying special attention to the rhetoric ‘circling around’ fidelity, friendship, and the other in his textual mourning.