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Brill is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Research in
Phenomenology
by
CATHERINE MALABOU
Unwerdté de Paris X-Nanterre
Abstract
We try to explore here the Derridean concept of "possibility." Such a concept has no
contraries. It does not oppose effectivity or necessity, or even impossibility, but stays
what it is in any case: possible. Trying to negate it or to contradict it only leads to
denial. To Derrida, this strange status of possibility is addressed as the question of faith
as such, as it appears in "Faith and Knowledge." Every belief is always, at its founda
tion, belief in the possibility of a completely different history altogether, in what Derrida
calls the "utterly other chance." Is deconstruction the legible form of this otherness?
Research in Phenomenology, 36
© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, The Netherlands 2006
NOTES
1. Quoted by Michel Lisse, m Jacques Derrida, Ministère des Affaires Etrangères (Paris:
ADPF-Publications, 2005), 66.
2. Circonfession, in Geoffrey Bennington and Jacques Derrida, Jacques Derrida (Paris
Le Seuil, 1991).
3. Spectres de Marx (Paris: Galilée, 1993).
4. Khôra (Paris: Galilée, 1993).
5. "Foi et savoir. Les deux sources de la 'religion' aux limites de la simple raison,"
in Gianni Vattimo and Jacques Derrida, La religion (Paris: Le Seuil, 1996), 9-86.
6. "Une certaine possibilité impossible de dire l'événement," in Dire l'événement, est-c
possible?, with Gad Soussana and Alexis Nouss (Paris: L'Harmattan, 2001), 79-112.
7. (Paris: Galilée and Presses Universitaires de France, 2002).
8. First words of Circonfession, 7.
9. "Foi et savoir," 77.
10. "Comment ne pas parler," 561, in Psyché: Inventions de l'autre (Paris: Galilée, 1987)
535-95.
11. Ibid., 549.
12. "Demeure, Athènes. Nous nous devons à la mort," in Jean-François and Jacques
Derrida, Athènes à l'ombre de l'acropole, photographies de Jean-François Bonhomme
(Athens: Editions Olkos, 1996), 61.
13. Ibid.
14. Jean Laplanche and Jean-Baptiste Pontalis, Vocabulaire de la psychanalyse (Paris: Presses
Universitaires de France, 1967), 113.
15. Freud, "La négation" ("Die Verneinung"), 167, in vol. 7 of Œuvres complètes (Paris:
Presses Universitaires de France, 1992), 165-71.
16. Ibid.
17. "Violence et métaphysique," in L'écriture et la différence (Paris: Le Seuil, 1967), 196.
18. Ibid., 118.
19. "Foi et savoir," 76-77.