Abstract

If there is no such thing as literature -- i.e., self-identity of the literary thing -- if what is announced or promised as literature never gives itself as such, that means, among other things, that a literature that talked only about literature or a work that was purely self-referential would immediately be annulled. [...]But here now is Asja Szafraniec, a philosopher at the University of Amsterdam, with a work of speculative criticism in which she proposes to stage an encounter between Derrida and Beckett -- not, to be sure, a ludic or parodic riff in Derrida's style but rather a philosophical "dialogue" composed of three thematic "points of transaction": (1) the subject, (2) the authority of literature, and (3) negativity.