ABSTRACT
In a number of his later works, Derrida makes reference to the concept of the “event.” However, unlike for many of the other concepts developed in this phase of his writing (the gift, hospitality, and so on), we do not find one “basic” or “primary” text in which he develops the logic of the concept. We find him alluding to it in different contexts and making use of it in certain ways, but, at least with this concept, he leaves much of the philosophical “work” to readers. The aim of this article is to elucidate Derrida's concept of the event, to lay out as clearly as possible the way in which the concept functions. In the first part, I go through the logic, working out step by step what makes an “event worthy of the name” (to use Derrida's preferred idiom). In the second part, I deal with the paradoxes that arise when we ask how it is possible to say anything about an event, how one might go about constructing a “name worthy of the event.”
