2017 - 2018 Critical Witness Sessions

Below are the descriptions for the Critical Witness sessions that took place during the 2016-2017 academic year. These include the title, author, and a brief description of the book selected along with the specific sections that were read.

October 19, 2016

Book: Cultural Graphology: Writing After Derrida

Author: Juliet Fleming

Sections Read: Introduction and Chapter Two

Brief Description: In this book, Juliet Fleming examines the print culture of early modern England, drastically unsettling some key assumptions of book history. Fleming shows that the single most important lesson to survive from Derrida’s early work is that we do not know what writing is. Channeling Derrida’s thought into places it has not been seen before, she examines printed errors, spaces, and ornaments (topics that have hitherto been marginal to our accounts of print culture) and excavates the long-forgotten reading practice of cutting printed books. Proposing radical deformations to the meanings of fundamental and apparently simple terms such as “error,” “letter,” “surface,” and “cut,” Fleming opens up exciting new pathways into our understanding of writing.