Schibboleth

Jacques Derrida follows the word Schibboleth in the poems of Paul Celan to find a new answer to an old philosophical question: What does it mean to date? What is a date? Can it capture the unrepeatable moment, the here and the now? Dating means repeating the unrepeatable and thus simultaneously erasing its non-reducible individuality. But does this insight inevitably lead to the primacy of the general in our culture - at the expense of the individual? With his book for Paul Celan, Derrida continues his excursions into philosophy. Not literature in general, but certain literary texts resist the philosophical assumptions that shape our culture. Working with them allows for the re-examination of fundamental philosophical questions and perhaps answers them differently than would be possible within the confines of philosophical discourse.