Ear Of The Other

Texts and Discussions with JACQUES DERRIDA OTOBIOGRAPHIES The Teaching of Nietzsche and the Politics of the Proper Name JACQUES DERRIDA Translated by Avital Rouen THE EAR OF THE OTHER Otobiography, Transference, Translation Ett,flish edition edited by Christie V. McDonald (Based on the French edition edited by Claude Levesque and Christie V. McDonald) Translated by Pe,o Kann if , SCHOCKEN BOOKS • NEW YORK To the memory of Eugenio Donato a 8602331 :z,t3 0 033 ( First published by Schocken Books 1985 85 86 87 88 10 9 8 7 5 5 4 3 2 1 Copyright 1985 by Schocken Books Inc. Originally published in French as L'oreille de r autre by Vlh Editeur: V1b Editeur, Montreal, 1982 All rights reserved Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Derrida, Jacques. The ear of the other. Translation of: L'oreille de l'autre. Bibliography: p. 1. Autobiography—Congresses. 2.Translating and interpreting—Congresses. I. Levesque. Claude. H. McDonald. Christie V. III. Title. 84-16053 809 CT25.D4713. 1985 Designed by Nancy Dale Muldoon Manufactured in the United States ISBN 0-8052-3953-7 Contents Preface vu Translator's Note xi Otobiographies 1 Roundtable on Autobiography Roundtable on Translation Works Cited 39 91 163 Preface THIS BOOK started on its way to Schocken Books when its president, Julius Glaser, happened onto several pages from the manuscript of an article (dealing with the translation of Jacques Derrida's Of Grammatology into English) in a post office on a small island off the coast of Maine where he summers. Sleuthing the origins of the piece, from which the name of the author was mysteriously missing (having been accidentally scattered across an open field, retrieved, and exposed for the author to reclaim), Glaser soon identified the writer and became fascinated with the impact that Derrida's thought was to have on American readers. In the curious entanglement of chance and necessity, it now seems no accident that Schocken Books should publish a book in which Derrida, as one of the leading interpreters of Friedrich Nietzsche, sets the stage for new and important readings of this enigmatic and controversial philosopher, and engages with a number of interlocutors in a forn. if active interpretation. This book is the result of a series of meetings held at the University of Montreal from October 22 to 24, 1979. My colleague Claude Levesque and I invited Jacques Derrida to come to Montreal to meet across the table with several academic professionals in philosophy, psychoanalysis, and literature and to discuss their questions about aspects of philosophy. vii viii Preface From the conversations, which were taped and transcribed, we shaped the book in its present form, making only minor modifications of what had taken place. The book has three parts, which follow the chronology of the sessions. The first is a lecture by Jacques Derrida entitled "Otobiographies." In it. Derrida deals with two important but rarely juxtaposed texts: Nietzsche's autobiography, Ecce Homo, and On the Future of Our Educational Institutions. Through them, he discusses the structure of the ear (as a perceiving organ), attiobiergrErpetitiiM:"how Nietzsche defers the'Tneaning of his texts so that h signature (as that which validates a check or document—here a book) can come to be understood, honored as it were, only when a reader allies himself with him and, as a receiving ear, signs the text—posthumously. "In other words ... it is the ear of the other that signs. The ear of the other says me to me.... When, much later, the other will have perceived with a keen-enough ear what I will have addressed or destined to him, or her. then my signature will have t