Event Television: Derrida's Small Screen

This article brings the archive of Derrida’s appearances on the small screen into dialogue with his theoretical writings on the medium of television. Developing the notion of medial “rhythm” outlined in Echographies of Television (1996) and elsewhere, it argues that Derrida’s reflections on broadcast television contain important resources for thinking the protean phenomenon of television in a digital age. It situates Derrida’s analysis of—and interventions on—TV critically with respect to a number of influential theories of television. Despite his suspicions of the structural distortions of the televisual frame, Derrida’s engagement with the small screen is characterized by an attempt to adapt the medium to his own ends, in gesturing towards what this article calls a “television of the event.” At a time when television’s digital mutations are throwing up fresh possibilities for—and obstacles to—thinking differently, Derrida’s involvement with small screen shows us that a new relation to television only ever begins by looking, and listening, to what is happening before our eyes.