Reading Derrida Reading Kofman

Abstract

This article examines the relationship that Jacques Derrida and Sarah Kofman developed throughout their lifetimes, both as close friends and as philosophers who shared many common research interests. In his tribute to Sarah Kofman, published in Les Cahiers du Grif in 1997, Derrida stated that ‘These interests and exercises go far beyond the limits of a short narrative, indeed of a terminable analysis’, thus challenging the reader to delve into these ‘elliptical greetings’. The numerous interactions present in Kofman's and Derrida's respective bodies of work are not without conflicts nor dissymmetry, and their often oblique modes of acknowledgement are far from any ‘balance’ on either side. Revisiting some of the différends among two great thinkers of différance, this article highlights the Derridean logic of gift and debt at work between them. Focusing on the posthumous tribute Derrida pays to his friend (left untitled, which is itself a revealing gesture), one can sense that there is much at stake in that piece that touches on the major question of forgiveness and the affirmation of survie or living on, thus setting a scene of reading where Derrida's debt towards Kofman turns out to be more telling than one may have expected.