SaeRom Sung
COLI 211Z – Summer
Professor Tepper
3rd June 2011
Response Paper on The Instant of My Death/Demeure
This book represents Blanchot’s ‘Instant of My Death’. The book starts with a small amount of text by Blanchot followed by about 100 pages of lecture on it by Derrida’s Demeure. At first, it was very interesting to see a narrator talking about a young man who got shot the last day of the World War II.
In the beginning of the text, I had a hard time reading ‘Demeure’ by Derrida’s randomness. He starts his lecture with the explanations of differences between fiction and testimony. Derrida goes over every single details and significances of literature that the most people use without considering. When Derrida explained the writing plays with the plural and the singular, Passions of Literature, I was amazed how detail he explains about it. Then, he goes on explaining Latin word, literature, with the roots. It was interesting to see how the word, literature, can be described in such a hard manner. I did take a few English classes in Binghamton, but it is the first time I had a ‘right on’ definition of the word, literature.
Another good impression on Derrida’s text is the part where he explains about ‘The Instant’. It was not easy to comprehend what the author was trying to say because the author throws out the big words just to explain the word, ‘instant’. Once again, he goes over with many different languages and other perspectives to explain.
The book introduced how me into a new world where everything in a literature has some kind of significant meanings behind it. It was amazing to see how Derrida integrates a small piece of literature.
Hey SaeRom, I have very similar feelings regarding this book as a whole. The bit where he discusses the importance of the "instant" was a little over my head. There seemed to be a lot of different languages at use that was a little overly complicated.
ReplyDeleteI also agree, the discussion of literature and how it relates to reality was very interesting. I have been taking English classes all my life, yet I have never sat down and thought about what literature really means.
Now my question to you is, do you think the way the "instant" and "literature" are described is a good example of professional writing?
Hey Nate,
ReplyDeleteTo be honest with you, I don't think they are the 'perfect' examples. It is just because I had hard time following what author was trying to say. In professional writing or some sort of writings, I think it is important for the authors to interact with the readers. I feel like the author could've gone easier explaining? But, I think they are the good examples, just not there where I am satisfied.