How to agree with Jean Genet. Jacques Derrida, reader of literary text

Abstract

The essay analyzes Jacques Derrida's methodological gestures of reading in Glas (1974) as he confronts the work of Jean Genet. Highlighting the repressions and resistances put forth by traditional French criticism in relation to the writer, Derrida suggests that the issues emerging in the reading of Genet shed light on deadlocks that are characteristic of Literary Theory itself. How may one deal with an object that defines itself by means of a betrayal of the idea of literature, by means of an over-belief in literature? How to give reason to Jean Genet without betraying him or betraying oneself? For Derrida, it is not a matter of subjecting literature or carrying out its mimesis, but rather of responding to it as an event, to the scene of denial springing from its out-of-jointness with its own origin. This is why the rhetorical analysis of Glas may be viewed as a necessary counterpart for the understanding of Derrida's reading of Genet, as well as of specific aspects of Literary Theory (such as those of mimesis and the body).