Right of Inspection
1999
First Published
4.05
Average Rating
144
Number of Pages
The product of a collaboration between French philosopher Jacques Derrida and Belgian photographer Marie-Françoise Plissart, Right of Inspectionis a visually alluring and engaging tour de force. Beginning with Plissart's hundred-page photo-novel, both the images and Derrida's text meditate on a variety of issues including gender, photographic genre, spectrality, and the interpretive act of seeing. Having seen Plissart's haunting black-and-white imagery, Derrida himself confesses that one cannot resist the compulsion to "make up stories." Recalling his recent preoccupation with ghosts, Derrida spectrally engages two of the most influential visual arts theorists—Walter Benjamin and Roland Barthes. Within the framework of Plissart's project, Derrida engages a discussion of the relation of the photographic image to memory, authenticity, and reality. Responding to the impression of Plissart's world of artifice, reversibility, and seduction, Derrida's text illuminates what is at stake in "the right to look."
Avg Rating
4.05
Number of Ratings
19
5 STARS
37%
4 STARS
42%
3 STARS
16%
2 STARS
0%
1 STARS
5%
goodreads
Author
Jacques Derrida
Author · 84 books
Jacques Derrida was the founder of “deconstruction,” a way of criticizing not only both literary and philosophical texts but also political institutions. Although Derrida at times expressed regret concerning the fate of the word “deconstruction,” its popularity indicates the wide-ranging influence of his thought, in philosophy, in literary criticism and theory, in art and, in particular, architectural theory, and in political theory. Indeed, Derrida's fame nearly reached the status of a media star, with hundreds of people filling auditoriums to hear him speak, with films and televisions programs devoted to him, with countless books and articles devoted to his thinking. Beside critique, Derridean deconstruction consists in an attempt to re-conceive the difference that divides self-reflection (or self-consciousness). But even more than the re-conception of difference, and perhaps more importantly, deconstruction works towards preventing the worst violence. It attempts to render justice. Indeed, deconstruction is relentless in this pursuit since justice is impossible to achieve.
