Vous consultezL’éthique, le spectre de la mort et la passion du signifiant

Ethics, the Spectre of Death and the Passion of the Signifier.
At the very moment when the subject’s relation to thought, to his or her own intimate thoughts, to what makes that individual a human subject, is threatened with suppression, and, faced with the intensity of experience, how can the passion felt by that individual position itself, project and express itself ? In this article the author attempts to distil the logic in passion by analysing it in the light of language and its effects on the body. The originality of this article lies in the inspiration it finds in an extract from an unpublished letter by French philosopher Jacques Derrida written during his youth. The extract demonstrates how the essence and substance of a keen friendship are intricately linked with spoken words and the signifier. This sheds new light on what we might refer to as a ‘rhetoric of passion’ in which such questions as communion and truth, but also eternity and death are addressed.