Michael Marder (St. Thomas More College, University of Saskatchewan, Canadá)
"Textual Things: Literary and Poetic Intentionalities in Derrida" 

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When Jacques Derrida considers texts as “things”, he does not, thereby, deny to them the existential attributes characteristic of persons, such an intentional relation to the world. In the first part of this talk, I will elaborate on the peculiar intentionality of the textual thing that aims at the reader, haunting and escaping from her conscious grasp. The second part of the talk will be concerned with the difference between literary and poetic intentionalities in Derrida’s designation of literature as “a name without the thing” and of poetry as dealing with “things without a name”. Hermeneutical theories will, thus, have to take into account the thingly and intentional character of texts that remain doubly foreign to their readers.