Derrida's Critical Theory of Memoir Free Essay Sample

Autobiography studies arose in part as a reaction to New Criticism and Deconstruction. One side of the dispute claims that language is incapable of truly representing reality. On the other hand, some argue that autobiographies can reveal the truth about persons. The critical theory aims to challenge and complicate ideas such as truth and self, which memoir studies have supported without reservation. Memoir experts argue that to fight this, they must "recover particular ways of reading a particular genre."

Memoir studies, which cover autobiographical studies and creative nonfiction, have had a tumultuous relationship with critical theory for a long time. In the last thirty years or so, one of the critical theory's key objectives has been to examine and complicate ideas of truth and self.

Memoir experts believe that autobiographical literature focuses on articulating an authentic, individual self. Critical theory tends to "neglect the very texts that need to be interpreted" (Arch viii). Memoir experts argue that they need to "recover unique aspects of reading a specific genre."

According to Bromman, individuals influenced by Derrida and Deleuze, as well as modern linguistics, deceive critics. Some critical theorists' memoirs are precisely the type of tales that memoir researchers have attempted to describe. Memoir theories, more than anything else, promote ambiguity because they glorify modes of resistance rather than conforming to a standard. A theorist’s memoir's ego is referential or even missing, and its truths are mystical rather than equitable, as such researchers may discover.

“Jacques Derrida” is a critical theory experiment, to be sure, but it also identifies itself as a product of and witness to a lineage of Western narrative and memoir study. It exemplifies auto diegetic autobiographical testimony that goes far beyond the scope of a single author describing his independent self's motions.

JD is a two-part autobiographical work by Jacques Derrida. Derrida refers to himself as a confessional memoirist in the autobiographical part "Circumfession." Augustine and Rousseau appear in his work as frequently as memoir scholar's articles. Derrida references Augustine and comments on personal aspects of his own life in "Circumfession." Readers will notice that his book takes a careful approach to his life. The book, however, is dominated by his mother's approaching death, as it pertains to his Jewish genealogy and his own mortality.

"Derridabase" and "Acts/The Laws of Genre" create a personal and theoretical biography/Database of Derrida. The sentences are jumbled in a way that amounts to rumination more than an easy-to-follow, step-by-step telling. This "presupposed contract" is an allusion to the "father" of autobiographical studies, Philippe Lejeune.

Derrida uses the term "contract" to allude to Rousseau's renowned social contract in The Social Contract. According to Lejeune, a writer's work is "assured to be faithful, correct, and taken literally" by the reader. According to the writers, a memoir begins with a reference and departure, i.e., the lack of a "literal" author who can be identified in the text. To Bennington's "systemization," Derrida responds by "writing something escaping the suggested systemization, startling it."

As scholarship on memoir is truly by the people and for the people, Derrida's memoir implies that contemporary readers' experiences of memoir are inextricably linked with criticism of it. This suggestion runs counter to current practice, which places conclusions about memoir ahead of a reading of the text.

Memoir, according to Derrida, must "surprise" rather than "fit" into a canon. For Bennington's memoir to react to the current quo and become an "event" that astounds even the author, it must acknowledge how it is perceived. According to JD, memoirs do not reveal the author's true objectives. Instead, the goal of memoir writing is to experiment and revise during the writing process. The writing is not a deliberate composition, but rather proof of a surprise incident, as both authors claim.

Derrida's critical theory of memoir falls into some phenomenological traps. Memoir academics regard the self as an immutable metaphysical reality that they strive to "recover" in academic debate. Hagiography demonstrates that an individual's story, and indeed, life, is never self-contained. Multiple authors are necessary to produce a story about one person in Derrida and Bennington's memoirs. The author Kempe writes in the third person from God's first-person accounts to her in The Book. Her narrative self is never truly independent since it is always in conversation with other voices.

In JD, the sincerity of memoir is uncertain and challenging, and it lacks the assurance of a moral contract. Derrida, Augustine, and Rousseau are all looking for systems to understand the power of mothers in their lives. Love, loss, and reverence are all that each man has left. Derrida argues in Of Grammatology that God is simultaneously regarded as one concept in the world's connective tissue and as another in the world. The conclusion for readers is that there are layers to ideas, society, religion, and language, rather than a single point of view from which to examine them.

The privileged origin of memoir is considered to be Augustine's Confessions, and this origin becomes an intellectual centre of memoir studies. Augustine and Rousseau are not separate entities working in separate traditions, nor is one a lesser version of the other. The secular and spiritual are experiences that provide context for each other. Scholars have to re-organize what they privilege in regards to origin and genealogy.

Memoir studies conflate origin and spiritual morality via Augustine, God is conflated with morality in the field's scholarship. Both Augustine and Rousseau have secular and spiritual threads in their work. For Derrida, the origin is in genealogy, then autobiography. The origin of memoirs is passion because it receives its determination from something else. A memoir's engagement with the status quo should also be the first step of a departure to the not-yet instituted. The memoir does not provide an account of the author's or the genre's history in total.

Jacques Derrida's "Circumfession" is an ode to a lost loved one that brings the reader into a group mourning made of memoirs, dead loved ones, and a god knowable only through faith, never evidence. The self of memoir here is conceptualized as what Lauren Slater calls the "narrative self ". Autodiegetic narratives fold into other narratives, drawing attention away from the author-text connection. When one voice goes, like Derrida's mother, the other voices rise. Autographical testimonial is not to lose autonomy as a discipline, but to understand the agency of an academic community.

Every memoir is haunted by the ghosts of prior texts, and scholarship could learn a lesson from this. Arguments, like autobiographical testimonials, are never merely autodiegetic. The style and content of Derrida's "Circumfession" owes much to Augustine's Confessions.

Augustine and Rousseau's Confessions are both acknowledged in Derrida's "Circumfession." When speaking about each of these parties in the third person, Derrida uses a direct address to each of them, as well as to the readers. The text as an event is one in which the autodiegetic narrator is revealed through a group debate. Derrida’s "Circumfession" functions as both a confession laudis and a confession peccavi at the same time. Readers are familiar with it because of its ties to historical subjects and forms, like hagiography.

The most popular memoirs are also included in this relational interpersonal identity. Memoir is both an attempt to codify and our chance to heal from the codes, according to Derrida.