A new translation of Derrida's groundbreaking juxtaposition of
Hegel and Genet, forcing two incompatible discourses into dialogue
with each other
Jacques Derrida's famously challenging book Glas puts the
practice of philosophy and the very acts of writing and reading to
the test. Formatted with parallel texts, its left column discusses G.
W. F. Hegel and its right column engages Jean Genet, with numerous
notes and interpolations in the margins. The resulting work,
published for the first time in French in 1974, is a collage that
practices theoretical thinking as a form of grafting.
Presented here in an entirely new translation as Clang--its
title resonating like the sound of an alarm or death knell--this book
brilliantly juxtaposes Hegel's totalizing, hierarchical system of
thought with Genet's autobiographical, carceral erotics. It
innovatively forces two incompatible discourses into dialogue with
each other: philosophical and literary, familial and perverse,
logical and sensory.
In both content and structure, Clang heightens the
significance of all encounters across ruptures of thought or
experience and vibrates with the impact of discordant languages
colliding.