Artaud the Moma by Jacques Derrida

Artaud the Moma by Jacques Derrida

In 1996 Jacques Derrida gave a lecture at the Museum of Modern Art in New York on the occasion of Antonin Artaud: Works on Paper, one of the first major international exhibitions to present the avant-garde dramatist and poet's paintings and drawings. Derrida's original title, "Artaud the Moma," is a characteristic play on words. It alludes to Artaud's calling himself Momo, Marseilles slang for "fool," upon his return to Paris in 1946 after nine years in various asylums while playing off of the museum's nickname, MoMA. But the title was not deemed "presentable or decent," in Derrida's words, by the very institution that chose to exhibit Artaud's work. Instead, the lecture was advertised as "Jacques Derrida ...will present a lecture about Artaud's drawings." For Derrida, what was at stake was what it meant for the museum to exhibit Artaud's drawings and for him to lecture on Artaud in that institutional context. Thinking over the performative force of Artaud's work and the relation between writing and drawing, Derrida addresses the multiplicity of Artaud's identities to confront the modernist museum's valorizing of originality. He channels Artaud's specter, speech, and struggle against representation to attempt to hold the museum accountable for trying to confine Artaud within its categories. Artaud the Moma, as lecture and text, reveals the challenge that Artaud posed to Derrida-and to art and its institutional history. A powerful interjection into the museum halls, this work is a crucial moment in Derrida's thought and an insightful, unsparing reading of a challenging writer and artist.

One of Derrida's most extraordinarily deep and and virtuosic texts and one of the best ever written about Artaud-- Denis Hollier, New York University

Jacques Derrida (1930-2004) was one of the twentieth century's most prolific and influential philosophers. He was director at the Ecole des hautes etudes en sciences sociales in Paris and professor of humanities at the University of California, Irvine. Kaira M. Cabanas is associate professor of global modern and contemporary art history at the University of Florida, Gainesville. Peggy Kamuf is Marion Frances Chevalier Professor of French and Comparative Literature at the University of Southern California.

SKU	Unavailable
ISBN 13	9780231181679
ISBN 10	0231181671
Title	Artaud the Moma
Author	Jacques Derrida
Series	Columbia Themes In Philosophy Social Criticism And The Arts
Condition	Unavailable
Binding Type	Paperback
Publisher	Columbia University Press
Year published	2017-09-19
Number of pages	112
Cover note	Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary.