Elizabeth Rottenberg
Biographic Data
| ID | 449986 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Elizabeth Rottenberg |
| GIVEN NAMES | Elizabeth |
| FAMILY NAME | Rottenberg |
| SIGNATURE | ROTTENBERG E |
| AFFILIATIONS | This paper begins with a rather straightforward observation: Freud's last word on the theory of jokes and the comic is his 1927 essay on ‘Humour’. That is, when it comes to jokes and the comic, ‘humour’ has the last word, both textually and chronologically. What this also means, as this paper tries to show, is that the humour of last words is not far behind. Which is not to suggest that Freud's theory of humour is all fun and games. For, if there is one thing that Freud's examples of humour in both Jokes... |
| ORCID | 0000-0001-6585-4638 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 19 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 8 |
| WORKS AS AUTHOR | 18 |
| WORKS AS EDITOR | 1 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1991 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2023 |
| H-INDEX | 2 |
Joking Around, Seriously
This essay sets out to explore the unexpected but amusing entanglement of three Jewish writers—Harry (“Heinrich”) Heine, Sigismund (“Sigmund”) Freud, and Jackie (“Jacques”) Derrida. You will not often find a reference to Heine in the work of Jacques Derrida, but you will find a Heine joke in Derrida’s discussion of forgiveness in Le parjure et le pardon (1998–1999), where the name Heine is invoked precisely in order to recall the scandalous autom…
At Witz end
Freud's Jewish Jokes
What is at play in play? What does it mean to take play seriously? Or, in the case of Sigmund Freud, what does it means to take jokes seriously? This article argues that Sarah Kofman's reading of Jokes and Their Relation to the Unconscious, in her 1986 book Pourquoi rit-on? Freud et le mot d'esprit, provides us with one of the most serious and playful responses to these questions. It claims that a kind of Oedipal play leads Kofman to analyse Freu…
At Witz End
When Humour Has the Last Word
This paper begins with a rather straightforward observation: Freud's last word on the theory of jokes and the comic is his 1927 essay on ‘Humour’. That is, when it comes to jokes and the comic, ‘humour’ has the last word, both textually and chronologically. What this also means, as this paper tries to show, is that the humour of last words is not far behind. Which is not to suggest that Freud's theory of humour is all fun and games. For, if there…
Behind the Scenes of the Derrida Seminars Translation Project
This essay takes the reader behind the scenes of the Derrida Seminars Translation Project (DSTP). It offers two examples of DSTP's dust-ups over English and suggests that these scenes of serious play not only bring out the stylistic and technical difficulties of translating Derrida, they also echo two earlier scenes of intra -linguistic translation within Derrida's own texts. That is, this movement back and forth, fort and da , between English an…
What Are the Chances? Psychoanalysis, Telepathy, and the Accident
This article argues that Freud introduces the question of occultism in order to exclude the accident from the internal, psychical domain. The accident must be evacuated, for it is only by isolating a domain into which external randomness no longer penetrates that psychoanalysis gives itself a chance to be a science. And yet, as this article shows, the difference that makes all the difference when it comes to distinguishing science from superstiti…
The Death Penalty, Volume II
A New Primal Scene
This paper focuses on the scene of execution, on the essentially theatrical and spectacular nature of the death penalty. Reading Derrida but also Foucault, it argues that the scene in question involves not a literal seeing but a virtual or phantasmatic seeing, i.e. a specific kind of visibility that has important consequences for thinking the death penalty (and its future)
The Laughter of Jacques Derrida
In the beginning was the joke, and the joke was in Franglais, and the joke brought everyone who heard it an unmistakable yield of pleasure. It was as if a treasure chest of mirth buried deep within him had suddenly disgorged its contents. I would not venture to say that laughter is what is proper to man, but it was definitely proper to this man: Jacques Derrida was possessed of that rare and precious gift that Freud calls die humoristische Einste…
The ‘Question’ of the Death Penalty
This essay addresses the ‘question’ of the death penalty in Derrida's Death Penalty Seminars: the question of the death penalty, if there is one, that is, if there is ‘la’ question de la peine de mort. For nothing is less certain. Not only must we speak of a proliferation of questions in the seminars, but we must also speak of Derrida's question about the question. How do the possibility and the reality of the death penalty, how does the question…
Psyche
The Juridical Unconscious
Reviewed by: The Juridical Unconscious: Trials and Traumas in the Twentieth Century Elizabeth Rottenberg Shoshana Felman, The Juridical Unconscious: Trials and Traumas in the Twentieth Century. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2002. 253 pages. Shoshana Felman's The Juridical Unconscious: Trials and Traumas in the Twentieth Century is an exceptionally daring contribution to the interdisciplinary fields of critical legal theory, literary theory…
The Instant of My Death
A Testament to Disaster
MLN - Volume 115, Number 5, December 2000 (Comparative Literature Issue)
Aesthetic Ideology (review)
Reviewed by: Aesthetic Ideology Elizabeth Rottenberg Paul de Man, Aesthetic Ideology. Edited and with an introduction by Andrzej Warminski. Minneapolis and London: University of Minnesota Press, 1996. 196 pp. “What we want from critics in the arts is the enhancement of our experience, not a disquisition on the transcendental conditions of its possibility. . . . Or to put it somewhat differently, any rational person would rather go the theater wit…
Lessons on the Analytic of the Sublime
The Reasons for Writing a Book
Reflections on the Executioner and the Victim
The Death Penalty, Volume II
Reflections on the Executioner and the Victim
What Are the Chances? Psychoanalysis, Telepathy, and the Accident
This article argues that Freud introduces the question of occultism in order to exclude the accident from the internal, psychical domain. The accident must be evacuated, for it is only by isolating a domain into which external randomness no longer penetrates that psychoanalysis gives itself a chance to be a science. And yet, as this article shows, the difference that makes all the difference when it comes to distinguishing science from superstiti…
A New Primal Scene
This paper focuses on the scene of execution, on the essentially theatrical and spectacular nature of the death penalty. Reading Derrida but also Foucault, it argues that the scene in question involves not a literal seeing but a virtual or phantasmatic seeing, i.e. a specific kind of visibility that has important consequences for thinking the death penalty (and its future)
The ‘Question’ of the Death Penalty
This essay addresses the ‘question’ of the death penalty in Derrida's Death Penalty Seminars: the question of the death penalty, if there is one, that is, if there is ‘la’ question de la peine de mort. For nothing is less certain. Not only must we speak of a proliferation of questions in the seminars, but we must also speak of Derrida's question about the question. How do the possibility and the reality of the death penalty, how does the question…
The Reasons for Writing a Book
Reflections on the Executioner and the Victim
Lessons on the Analytic of the Sublime
Aesthetic Ideology (review)
Reviewed by: Aesthetic Ideology Elizabeth Rottenberg Paul de Man, Aesthetic Ideology. Edited and with an introduction by Andrzej Warminski. Minneapolis and London: University of Minnesota Press, 1996. 196 pp. “What we want from critics in the arts is the enhancement of our experience, not a disquisition on the transcendental conditions of its possibility. . . . Or to put it somewhat differently, any rational person would rather go the theater wit…
A Testament to Disaster
MLN - Volume 115, Number 5, December 2000 (Comparative Literature Issue)
The Instant of My Death
The Juridical Unconscious
Reviewed by: The Juridical Unconscious: Trials and Traumas in the Twentieth Century Elizabeth Rottenberg Shoshana Felman, The Juridical Unconscious: Trials and Traumas in the Twentieth Century. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2002. 253 pages. Shoshana Felman's The Juridical Unconscious: Trials and Traumas in the Twentieth Century is an exceptionally daring contribution to the interdisciplinary fields of critical legal theory, literary theory…
Psyche
The ‘Question’ of the Death Penalty
This essay addresses the ‘question’ of the death penalty in Derrida's Death Penalty Seminars: the question of the death penalty, if there is one, that is, if there is ‘la’ question de la peine de mort. For nothing is less certain. Not only must we speak of a proliferation of questions in the seminars, but we must also speak of Derrida's question about the question. How do the possibility and the reality of the death penalty, how does the question…
The Laughter of Jacques Derrida
In the beginning was the joke, and the joke was in Franglais, and the joke brought everyone who heard it an unmistakable yield of pleasure. It was as if a treasure chest of mirth buried deep within him had suddenly disgorged its contents. I would not venture to say that laughter is what is proper to man, but it was definitely proper to this man: Jacques Derrida was possessed of that rare and precious gift that Freud calls die humoristische Einste…
A New Primal Scene
This paper focuses on the scene of execution, on the essentially theatrical and spectacular nature of the death penalty. Reading Derrida but also Foucault, it argues that the scene in question involves not a literal seeing but a virtual or phantasmatic seeing, i.e. a specific kind of visibility that has important consequences for thinking the death penalty (and its future)
What Are the Chances? Psychoanalysis, Telepathy, and the Accident
This article argues that Freud introduces the question of occultism in order to exclude the accident from the internal, psychical domain. The accident must be evacuated, for it is only by isolating a domain into which external randomness no longer penetrates that psychoanalysis gives itself a chance to be a science. And yet, as this article shows, the difference that makes all the difference when it comes to distinguishing science from superstiti…
The Death Penalty, Volume II
Behind the Scenes of the Derrida Seminars Translation Project
This essay takes the reader behind the scenes of the Derrida Seminars Translation Project (DSTP). It offers two examples of DSTP's dust-ups over English and suggests that these scenes of serious play not only bring out the stylistic and technical difficulties of translating Derrida, they also echo two earlier scenes of intra -linguistic translation within Derrida's own texts. That is, this movement back and forth, fort and da , between English an…
At Witz End
When Humour Has the Last Word
This paper begins with a rather straightforward observation: Freud's last word on the theory of jokes and the comic is his 1927 essay on ‘Humour’. That is, when it comes to jokes and the comic, ‘humour’ has the last word, both textually and chronologically. What this also means, as this paper tries to show, is that the humour of last words is not far behind. Which is not to suggest that Freud's theory of humour is all fun and games. For, if there…
At Witz end
Freud's Jewish Jokes
What is at play in play? What does it mean to take play seriously? Or, in the case of Sigmund Freud, what does it means to take jokes seriously? This article argues that Sarah Kofman's reading of Jokes and Their Relation to the Unconscious, in her 1986 book Pourquoi rit-on? Freud et le mot d'esprit, provides us with one of the most serious and playful responses to these questions. It claims that a kind of Oedipal play leads Kofman to analyse Freu…
Joking Around, Seriously
This essay sets out to explore the unexpected but amusing entanglement of three Jewish writers—Harry (“Heinrich”) Heine, Sigismund (“Sigmund”) Freud, and Jackie (“Jacques”) Derrida. You will not often find a reference to Heine in the work of Jacques Derrida, but you will find a Heine joke in Derrida’s discussion of forgiveness in Le parjure et le pardon (1998–1999), where the name Heine is invoked precisely in order to recall the scandalous autom…
Philosophy (13 works) · Psychology (12 works) · Psychoanalysis (9 works) · Art (8 works) · History (7 works) · Philosophy (7 works) · Aesthetics (6 works) · Linguistics (6 works) · Epistemology (5 works) · Computer Science (4 works)