Derrida And The Writing Of The Body

Michel Foucault refers to 1965-1970 as, in philosophical terms, 'the five brief, impassioned, jubilant, enigmatic years'. This book reinterprets Jacques Derrida's work from this period, most especially in L'Écriture et la Différence (Writing and Difference), and argues that a transformation takes place here which has been marginalized in readings of his work to date. Irwin follows with a look at how the 'grammatological opening' becomes crucial for Derrida's work in the 1970s and beyond, incorporating one of his last readings of embodiment from 2000. By drawing our attention to the politics of desire and sexuality, this groundbreaking book engages with the work of key continental theorists, including Artaud, Bataille, Nietzsche, Heidegger, Habermas and Cixous, whilst also examining Derrida's relationship with Plato and feminist theory. It will appeal to a wide range of readers within the social sciences and philosophy, particularly those with interests in gender and sexuality, social theory, continental thought, queer studies and literary theory.

Michel Foucault refers to 1965-1970 as, in philosophical terms, 'the five brief, impassioned, jubilant, enigmatic years'. This book reinterprets Jacques Derrida's work from this period, most especially in L'Écriture et la Différence (Writing and Difference), and argues that a transformation takes place here which has been marginalized in readings of his work to date. Irwin follows with a look at how the 'grammatological opening' becomes crucial for Derrida's work in the 1970s and beyond, incorporating one of his last readings of embodiment from 2000. By drawing our attention to the politics of desire and sexuality, this groundbreaking book engages with the work of key continental theorists, including Artaud, Bataille, Nietzsche, Heidegger, Habermas and Cixous, whilst also examining Derrida's relationship with Plato and feminist theory. It will appeal to a wide range of readers within the social sciences and philosophy, particularly those with interests in gender and sexuality, social theory, continental thought, queer studies and literary theory.

What are we to make of Jacques Derrida’s famous claim that “every other is every other,” if the other could also be an object, a stone or an elementary particle? Derrida’s philosophy is relevant not just for human ethical language and animality, but to profound developments in the physical and natural sciences, as well as ecology. Derrida After the End of Writing argues for the importance of reading Derrida’s later work from a new materialist perspective. In conversation with Heidegger, Lacan, and Deleuze, and critically engaging newer philosophies of speculative realism and object-oriented ontology, Crockett claims that Derrida was never a linguistic idealist. Furthermore, something changes in his later philosophy something that cannot be simply described as a “turn.” In Catherine Malabou’s terms, there is a shift from a motor scheme of writing to a motor scheme of plasticity. Crockett explores some of the implications of interpreting Derrida through the new materialist lens of technicity or plasticity, attending to the significance of ethics, religion, and politics in his later work. By reading Derrida from a new materialist perspective, Crockett provides fresh readings of his ideas of sovereignty, religion, responsibility, and mourning. These new readings produce fruitful engagements with the thinkers who have followed Derrida, including Malabou, Timothy Morton, John D. Caputo, and Karen Barad. Here is a new reading of Derrida that moves beyond conventional understandings of poststructuralism and deconstruction, a reading that is responsive to and critical of some of the crucial developments shaping the humanities today.

First published in 1967, Writing and Difference, a collection of Jacques Derrida's essays written between 1959 and 1966, has become a landmark of contemporary French thought. In it we find Derrida at work on his systematic deconstruction of Western metaphysics. The book's first half, which includes the celebrated essay on Descartes and Foucault, shows the development of Derrida's method of deconstruction. In these essays, Derrida demonstrates the traditional nature of some purportedly nontraditional currents of modern thought—one of his main targets being the way in which "structuralism" unwittingly repeats metaphysical concepts in its use of linguistic models. The second half of the book contains some of Derrida's most compelling analyses of why and how metaphysical thinking must exclude writing from its conception of language, finally showing metaphysics to be constituted by this exclusion. These essays on Artaud, Freud, Bataille, Hegel, and Lévi-Strauss have served as introductions to Derrida's notions of writing and différence—the untranslatable formulation of a nonmetaphysical "concept" that does not exclude writing—for almost a generation of students of literature, philosophy, and psychoanalysis. Writing and Difference reveals the unacknowledged program that makes thought itself possible. In analyzing the contradictions inherent in this program, Derrida foes on to develop new ways of thinking, reading, and writing,—new ways based on the most complete and rigorous understanding of the old ways. Scholars and students from all disciplines will find Writing and Difference an excellent introduction to perhaps the most challenging of contemporary French thinkers—challenging because Derrida questions thought as we know it.

Writing and Difference is widely perceived to be an excellent starting place for those new to Derrida and this Reader's Guide is the perfect accompaniment to the study of one of the most important philosophical works of the 20th Century.

Ecritures digitales aims to demonstrate how digital writing contributes to the emergence of “a new relationship between the human body and the machine” as Jacques Derrida proposed when he considered the effects of new technologies. This reconfigured relationship, not surprisingly, is also influencing the digital future of the Jewish-Christian textual corpus referred to as “the Scriptures”. The French title brings together this duality in one expression: Ecritures digitales. The English subtitle makes explicit the double meaning of the unique French word Ecritures: Digital writing, digital Scriptures. With a full French version and an abbreviated English version, this monograph analyzes the main challenges and opportunities for both writing and the Scriptures in the transition to digital culture. Ecritures digitales souhaite démontrer de quelle manière l’écriture digitale contribue à l’émergence d’une « nouvelle relation du corps humain aux machines », selon le diagnostique posé par Jacques Derrida à propos des effets des nouvelles technologies. Cette relation innovante influence également l’avenir numérique du corpus textuel judéo-chrétien désigné comme «les Ecritures». Le titre français rassemble en une seule expression ces deux thématiques: Ecritures digitales. Le sous-titre anglais rend sa double signification explicite: Digital writing, digital Scriptures. Avec une version française complète et une version anglaise brève, cette monographie analyse les principaux défis des métamorphoses digitales de l’écriture et des Ecritures.

Derrida wrote a vast number of texts for particular events across the world, as well as a series of works that portray him as a voyager. As an Algerian émigré, a postcolonial outsider, and an idiomatic writer who felt tied to a language that was not his own, and as a figure obsessed by the singularity of the literary or philosophical event, Derrida emerges as one whose thought always arrives on occasion. But how are we to understand the event in Derrida? Is there a risk that such stories of Derrida's work tend to misunderstand the essential unpredictability at work in the conditions of his thought? And how are we to reconcile the importance in Derrida of the unknowable event, the pull of the singular, with deconstruction's critical and philosophical rigour and its claims to rethink more systematically the ethico-political field. This book argues that this negotiation in fact allows deconstruction to reformulate the very questions that we associate with ethical and political responsibility and shows this to be the central interest in Derrida's work.

The philosophies of French thinkers Derrida, Lyotard, and Foucault form the basis for postmodern thought and are seemingly at odds with the Christian faith. However, James K. A. Smith claims that their ideas have been misinterpreted and actually have a deep affinity with central Christian claims. Each chapter opens with an illustration from a recent movie and concludes with a case study considering recent developments in the church that have attempted to respond to the postmodern condition, such as the "emerging church" movement. These case studies provide a concrete picture of how postmodern ideas can influence the way Christians think and worship. This significant book, winner of a Christianity Today 2007 Book Award, avoids philosophical jargon and offers fuller explanation where needed. It is the first book in the Church and Postmodern Culture series, which provides practical applications for Christians engaged in ministry in a postmodern world.