“The Truth That Hurts, or the Corps à Corps of Tongues: An interview with Jacques Derrida” – new translation in Parallax (requires subscription), No abstract, so first note below:
1 Translator’s note [TN]: What follows is a translation of an interview with Jacques Derrida conducted by Évelyne Grossman in December 2003. The interview, entitled ‘La vérité blessante, ou le corps à corps des langues’, was published in the French journal Europe in May 2004, five months before Derrida’s death. A portion of the interview was translated into English by Thomas Dutoit and published in 2005 in the collection Sovereignties in Question: The Poetics of Paul Celan. I would like to thank the editor-in-chief of Europe, Jean-Baptiste Para, as well as Évelyne Grossman, Thomas Dutoit, and Pierre Alferi for allowing us to translate and publish the interview in this special issue of parallax. I would also like to express my gratitude to Donald Cross and Eric Prenowitz, who helped me revise this translation. A few words about the title: the phrase ‘La vérité blessante’ is a play on the French expression il n’y a que la vérité qui blesse – a rough equivalent of ‘only truth hurts’. The French verb blesser can refer to a physical wounding but also to a moral offence, to the hurting of someone’s feelings. The homophony with the English ‘blessing’ might be a deliberate choice by Derrida and Grossman – a hypothesis that the themes addressed in the interview could certainly back up. I have decided to leave the French expression corps à corps as such, both in the title and in the interview. The French phrase literally means ‘body(ies)-to-body(ies)’. It usually refers to a close encounter, a duel, a hand-to-hand combat or attack that involves bodily contact. It can be a form of wrestling, generally without mediation, at least without long-distance weaponry: ‘body-to-body’. But the expression is also used to refer to sexual embrace, intercourse or lovemaking. Both dimensions are present in the interview; in the title, the erotic, corporeal connotation is highlighted by the proximity of langues, ‘languages’ or ‘tongues’.
You are teasing us readers. Not nice.
Surely it would be worse not to say it requires subscription? If you email me I’ll send a copy.