La Carte Postale (The Post Card): Screenplay and Treatment

The 'Envois' section of Jacques Derrida's La carte Postale ['The Post Card'] consists of a series of fragmentary letters to an un-named lover. They are at once a philosophical reflection on writing and communication and an autobiographically­ charged love story. It is an example of the new writing beyond classification and genre which Derrida sought to pioneer in his work. This research project seeks to adapt this 'Envois' section of 'The Post Card' in the form of a screenplay in preparation for a future practice-lead research grant application aimed at realising a visual presentation of this philosophical and autobiographical text. It asks, through the exercise of practice-lead research what a philosophically-lead film might look like. This project is significant because it intervenes in debates around representation (how to represent something which provides us with critical leverage on representation itself) and the relationship between contemporary artistic practices and critical theory (how one reciprocally informs the other and leaves its mark on the other). It will be of interest to a broad range of scholars across the arts and humanities who are concerned with the interdisciplinary practice of critical theory and those practitioners and theorists occupied by what shape textual production informed by theory and philosophy might take.