Jacques Derrida's Glas will be 25 years old in 1999. It is our contention that this event calls not for celebration but for reading; and it is by no means clear that anyone yet knows how to read Glas. As the millennium approaches, so the drive towards apocalypse grows stronger - the urge to a Hegelian unveiling of the truth in the form of totalisation. By reading against the millennium, we mean the encouragement of a practice of patient resistance to such totalisation. Glas deserves nothing less. This most carnivalesque, rigorous, exhilarating and baffling of texts poses a particular problem to the production of academic discourse. If we are not merely to repeat "the technique of the funeral rite taught today in institutes" (86b), then the form of the conference needs to be reinvented, if not abandoned. We propose not a series of conference papers but a seminar: a collective endeavour. There are readers of Derrida, and of Glas in particular, whom we aim to gather together, but there is no such thing as a privileged reader whom we can expect to unveil its truth. Participants will be urged simply to read and to eschew ex cathedra pronouncements, contextualisations, thematisations or other evasions as far as may be possible.

There will be a brief introduction at the beginning to explain why we are gathered together, but no plenary lectures in the conventional sense at all. Firstly we will invite a group of seminar leaders to submit brief outlines of what passages they would like to choose for discussion and how a discussion might be oriented. There will be 2-3 seminar leaders for each seminar of 3 hours, and 3-5 seminars in all (depending on the level of response). Each seminar leader will be given 20 minutes to introduce a discussion in the seminar, with a pause for questions in between each leader's presentation.

Once we have a sufficient number of outlines, we can organise the specific form of each seminar. Then a general call to register will be issued. Registration, which will be free, will entitle participants to receive the seminar programme in advance together with a secondary bibliography, a concordance facilitating references between the English and the two French editions, and a packet of readings. These materials will be sent by electronic mail.

Lastly, the seminar will be publicly advertised so that anyone can attend any of the meetings with no formalities; photocopies of the passages for debate will be made available at the door, and a room will be chosen that is flexible enough to accommodate a small or a large group. Microphones will be freely available to all. While the focus of the seminar will be on detailed textual discussion and glossing, which obviously implies a close reading, it will nevertheless be open to anyone tempted by the event in general. The Center for Theater Arts might be a good venue. After the Glas seminar there will be a special issue of Diacritics as an incentive for seminar leaders and others to turn their readings into essays for review.

Prof. Richard Klein
Society for the Humanities
Cornell University
Ithaca, NY 14853-3201, USA

Fax 607.255.1454
Email rjk11@cornell.edu