The Post Card

''The Post Card: From Socrates to Freud and Beyond'' () is a 1980 book by the French philosopher Jacques Derrida. It is a "satire of epistolary literature." After '' Glas'' (1974), it is sometimes considered Derrida's most "literary" book, and continues the critical engagement with psychoanalysis first signaled in "Freud and the Scene of Writing" from Derrida's ''Writing and Difference'' (1967).

Summary

The first half of the book, titled ''Envois'' (sendings), contains a series of love letters addressed by a travelling "salesman" to an unnamed loved one. The latter remembers, for example, "the day we bought that bed (the complications with the credit and the punch card in the store, and then one of those awful scenes between us)". He writes his love letters on the back of countless copies of a postcard and continually fantasizes about the relationship between Socrates and Plato. Added to this couple are also those between Sigmund Freud and Martin Heidegger, Derrida's two grandparents, but also between Heidegger and ''Being'', "beings" and Being, the '' Subject'' and the ''Object'', the author himself and "you", his "tender love". In one of the letters, dated 6 June 1977, Derrida tells about his time spent in London with Jonathan Culler and Cynthia Chase, who had recently married. They showed Derrida an exposition of hundreds of card reproductions, among which was Matthew Paris' medieval depiction of Socrates (held by Oxford Bodleian Library) taking dictation from Plato, which seized Derrida's attention by its reversal of the historical relationship between the two figures (since Socrates himself left behind no written texts). After describing Plato's posture in the picture, and speculating about what he may have been doing behind Socrates's back (riding a skateboard, conducting a tram), Derrida says:

Usually Socrates has been represented as an ugly and humble commoner who managed to seduce the noble and beautiful Plato, "converting" him to philosophy. In this medieval image, however, the roles are reversed: Plato is ugly, badly dressed and referred to as "plato" with a small initial, while Socrates is handsome and richly dressed. Taking a cue from this image, Derrida provides, through a sort of Freudian association of ideas, all the possible ways in which philosophers have been influenced, without worrying about the "truth" of his interpretations. If there was "a single reading of the Oxford postcard, the one and only reading, it would be the end of the story. It would be the becoming prose of our love".''La carte postale: de Socrate à Freud et su-delà''. Paris: Aubier-Flammarion, 1980. p. 127.

''Envois'' is followed by:
* ''To Speculate - On Freud'', an extended commentary on ''Beyond the Pleasure Principle''
* ''Le Facteur de la Verité'' (the factor/postman of truth), a critique of Lacanian psychoanalysis focusing on an analysis of Lacan's Edgar Allan Poe commentary, the "Seminar on 'The Purloined Letter'"
* and ''Du Tout'' (on the whole), a response to questions posed by the psychoanalyst René Major concerning '' Glas'' and Derrida's general relation to psychoanalytic theory.

In 2014 a feature film based on the book was released. ''Love in the Post'' is directed by Joanna Callaghan and co-written by Martin McQuillan and produced by Heraclitus Pictures. The film features an unseen interview with Derrida and contributions from Geoffrey Bennington, J. Hillis Miller, Sam Weber, Ellen Burt and Catherine Malabou.

References

External links

Love in the Post

{{DEFAULTSORT:Post Card
1980 non-fiction books
Contemporary philosophical literature
French non-fiction books
Works by Jacques Derrida