The Instant of My Death /Demeure: Fiction and Testimony

How are we to testify to our own death? Our act of testimony seems to foreclose the possibility that we are actually dead. Yet even in our desire to speak, we find the words nearly impossible to speak. Blanchot's short story, "The Instant of My Death," explores the idea of facing one's death, of feeling death overcome you, only to somehow escape. How can you speak after such an event, after the disaster of this encounter? Derrida seeks to answer or at least probe these questions that Blanchot raises and leaves unanswered. Using Blanchot's other theoretical work, "The Writing of the Disaster," Derrida probes the idea of the impossible encounter with one's own death, and ideas of testimony. A classic Derrida piece.

The first part of the book is a short story by Blanchot and the seond part is Derrida's analysis. Derrida's critique is amazing stuff. He performs a close-reading, line by line. Derrida is one of the greatest thinkers, if not the most thought provoking theorist/critic, of our time.