(9:10 PM) | Adam Kotsko:

UWC: Preparation

Although we should certainly feel free to continue discussing "Library of Babel," I think it's a good idea to start preparing for Derrida. In a nice coincidence, "Force of Law" is one of the assigned readings in my seminar on Derrida, and Prof. Jennings always gives us a list of supplementary readings and questions to help us better understand the reading. Here is a brief summary of the sheet he gave us this time:

Readings:

• Walter Benjamin, "Critique of Violence" in Reflections
  
• Franz Kafka, "Before the Law"
  
• Jacques Derrida, "Before the Law" in Acts of Literature
  
• Jacques Derrida, "Declarations of Independence" in Negotiations

Questions:

1. Sort out the following relationships: law/justice; law/force; force/violence/power
   
2. The question of aporia, the three examples of aporia. How is it related to the aporia of gift, hospitality, or forgiveness?
   
3. What might it mean that justice, as opposed to law, is "undeconstructible"? Or that deconstruction is justice?
   
4. Why is discourse regarding justice necessarily "oblique"? What is the opposite of "oblique"? Are there good examples of what must be and what need not be "oblique"?
   
5. Founding vs. preserving violence: instability of the distinction
   
6. The role of the death penalty
   
7. The importance of the "to come"

I might also recommend the text "Hostipitality" in Acts of Religion (the same collection in which we find "Force of Law") -- it brings together the later Derrida's themes of hospitality and forgiveness in some interesting ways.

Now I'm obviously not saying everyone has to read all the other stuff, or even that they necessarily should. I just thought that since I had some orientation materials at hand, the university without condition could benefit from them.

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