Cixous and Derrida - A faithful aimance to come through writing

Abstract

In this thesis, I explore a new form of friendship, called a 'faithful aimance to come through writing', that is grounded in faith and that lovingly recognizes the friend, or 'aimi(e)', as different. I do so by reading Jacques Derrida's "Politiques de l'Amitié" (1994), (translated as "Politics of Friendship" (PoF) in 1997), as a theoretical framework, in order to move from a 'fraternalized' form of friendship that favors similarity, superiority, proximity, and certainty to a form of friendship that lovingly recognizes difference, vulnerability, distance and undecidability. Hence, in the first chapter, I show how Derrida, in PoF, traces and denounces a genealogy of (male) philosophers and thinkers who have constructed a brotherly form of friendship, which politicizes the figure of the friend as a brother, thereby excluding, ignoring or silencing women and the category of the ‘feminine’. Through Derrida's and Cixous's conceptions of writing, I also show how they consider the text as the ultimate medium to foster a faithful and loving friendship that is always yet to arrive. In chapter two, three and four, I analyze the friendship between Jacques Derrida and Hélène Cixous as an example of a faithful aimance to come through voice, text and writing, by focusing on the texts they wrote about each other, "H.C. pour la vie, c'est à dire" (2002) and "Portrait de Jacques Derrida en jeune saint juif" (2001), as well as one work, "Voiles" (1998), in which Cixous's text "Savoir" meets Derrida's "Un Ver à Soie". In doing so, I will show that voice, text and writing allow Derrida and Cixous to lovingly recognize each other as different, as well as to connect in a different way, for example by writing about the ‘noble wounds’ brought about by their experiences with (post)colonial violence, exclusion and expropriation.