Agrégations (original) (raw)

Fordham University Press eBooks, 2021

Abstract

This chapter begins by looking at the crucial role played by the agrégation exam in the French academy and, in particular, in the teaching of philosophy in France. The chapter goes on to show how Derrida himself criticized the agrégation—and particularly the notion of the agrégation program—in the very seminars of the mid-1970s at the Ecole Normale Superieure (Life Death in 1975–1976 and Theory and Practice in 1976–1977) in which he was training students for that very exam. The chapter then follows the notion of “program” as it is developed by Derrida throughout the seminar, in particular through his reading of the biologist François Jacob. It ultimately shows the way in which the notion of “program”—both in pedagogy and in genetics—must always try to account for a “chance” or “accident,” a moment of unpredictability, that exceeds every program and yet is essential to the functioning of every program.

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