Derrida and Telecommunications

Catalog description

Derrida famously proclaimed that writing preceded speech--rendering all communications a form of writing--but he also argued that the history of psychoanalysis would have been different if Freud had used e-instead of snail-mail. Tracing Derrida's thought re. telecommunications from Grammatology to Writing Machines, as well as engaging his interlocutors (Samuel Weber, Avital Ronell, etc.), this course examines the importance of medium-specificity to post-structuralism. Enrollment limited to 20 graduate students. Permission required for undergraduates only.