The Painter of Postmodern Life

The essay examines Derrida's hybrid avowal as a pre-political affective gesture, whose particular philosophical expression resembles a lyrical abstract. Its origin is thus neither literary nor philosophical, but rather resembles a painterly anti-mimetic gesture, echoing both Blanchot's notion of ‘the book to come’ and Michel Henri's ideas of abstract painting and of a pathetic community. The affective or pathetic dimension of the avowal is traced via Derrida's self portrait as a child who performs the partition of “a letter to the father” (following Kierkegaard and Kafka), implementing thereby a plot of betrayal and forgiveness that engages him in the question of de-socialization and parasitism implied in socialization and inheritance. Within this frame, the conditions of ‘living together’ are defined in melancholic terms of absence.