Strange institution called literature- summary derrida
518 mots
3 pages
“This Strange Institution Called Literature” an interview with Jacques Derrida. Word chosen: Transformation. The word that came up to me and which I consider to be one that has the power to guide my way through the text is “transformation”. The title of the text makes reference to the institution of literature. And as it is possible to read through the text, this is an unconventional, “rule breaking” institution. It is precisely here where I find that the word transformation is able to explain this unusual institution and therefore show me the way through the text that has literature, its meaning and its forms in its centre. It is the power that literature has to transform itself and its surroundings what makes it, in a way, a paradoxical institution. In this process it is able to change its rules, deconstruct them and re invent them. Demonstrating it is a contradiction to the idea of a traditional institution. It is an institution which allows to say everything, and this accessibility to express, describe and narrate the world in any form gives literature also the power to transform. It can be seen as a simultaneous process in which literature is constantly auto-transforming itself and at the same time transforming its surroundings. The possibility to fictionalize can be considered a mayor power, as literature has the “permission” to break, to displace and to invent new relationships. Therefore, it is able to transform and create. Writers say what is prohibited, not allowed and in this process of transgression, reality, exchange, language and conceptions are modified, enlarged and ones again transformed. The fact that the text suggests literature not to have an essence shows that is free to change, to adapt itself to new forms. Derrida says that there is nothing more ““revolutionary” than this history, but this revolution will also have to be changed” showing this movability, this