The Reception Of Derrida

This book explores the cross-cultural reception of Derrida's work, specifically how that work in all its diversity, has come to be identified with word deconstruction. It is the first book to consider the cultural reception of Derrida's works, its accessible language and structure help to make this a benchmark amongst introductory Derrida studies.

The controversy over Jacques Derrida's legacy is one of the most effective engines driving the contemporary debate, far beyond the bounds of philosophy. By now, the variety of contesting positions is so wide that it calls for a critical assessment to achieve a unified theoretical scheme. The dyad of deconstruction and reconstruction, to which the title of the volume refers, aims at composing a kind of map of this debate. The three sections of the book include essays that investigate specific aspects of Derrida's reception, from the view of 1. philosophy, 2. literary studies and 3. politics and law. These contributions study the implications of deconstruction beyond its original scope and intervene by taking stock of its most relevant aporias.

Derrida's work is controversial, its interpretation hotly contested. Derrida: Ethics Under Erasure offers a new way of thinking about ethics from a Derridean perspective, linking the most abstract theoretical implications of his writing on deconstruction and on justice and responsibility to representations of the practice of ethical paradoxes in everyday life. The book presents the development of Derrida's thinking on ethics by demonstrating that the ethical was a focus of Derrida's work at every stage of his career. In connecting Derrida's earlier work on language with the ethics implicated in his later work on justice and responsibility, Nicole Anderson traverses literary, linguistic, philosophical and ethical interpretative movements, thus recontextualising Derrida's entire oeuvre for a contemporary readership. She explores the positive ethical implications of Derrida's work for representation and practice and asks the reader to consider how this new ethical reading of Derrida's work might be applied to concrete instances of his or her own ethical experience.

For more than 30 years and until his death in 2004, Jacques Derrida remained one of the most influential contemporary philosophers. It may be difficult to evaluate what forms his legacy will take in the future but Derrida Now provides some provocative suggestions. Derridas often-controversial early reception was based on readings of his complex works, published in journals and collected in books. More recently attention has tended to focus on his later work, which grew out of the seminars that he presented each year in France and the US. The full texts of these seminars are now the subject of a major publication project, to be produced over the next ten years. Derrida Now presents contemporary articles based on or around the study of Derrida. It provides a critical introduction to Derridas complex and controversial thought, offers careful analysis of some of his most important concepts, and includes essays that address the major strands of his thought. Derridas influence reached not only into philosophy but also into other fields concerned with literature, politics, visual art, law, ecology, psychoanalysis, gender and sexuality and this book will appeal to readers in all these disciplines. Contributors include Peggy Kamuf, Geoff Bennington, Nicholas Royle, Roy Sellars, Graham Allen and Irving Goh.

American Cultural Sociology presents a serious challenge to British Cultural Studies and European grand theory alike. This exciting volume brings together sixteen seminal papers by leading figures in what is emerging as an important intellectual tradition. It places them in the context of related work in Sociology and other disciplines, exploring the connections between cultural sociology and different approaches, such as comparative and historical research, postmodernism, and symbolic interactionism. The book is divided into three sections: Culture as Text and Code, The Production and Reception of Culture, and Culture in Action. Each section contains edited contributions, both theoretical and empirical, addressing the key debates in cultural sociology, including the autonomy of culture, power and culture, structure and agency and how to conceptualise meaning.

The book offers a new introduction to Jacques Derrida and to Deconstruction as an important strand of Continental Philosophy. From his early writings on phenomenology and linguistics to his later meditations on war, terrorism, and justice, Jacques Derrida (1930–2004) achieved prominence on an international scale by addressing as many different audiences as he did topics. Yet despite widespread acclamation, his work has never been considered easy. Rendering accessible debates that marked more than four decades of engagement and inquiry, Susanne Lüdemann traces connections between the philosopher's own texts and those of his many interlocutors, past and present. Unlike conventional introductions, Politics of Deconstruction offers a number of personal approaches to reading Derrida and invites readers to find their own. Emphasizing the relationship between philosophy and politics, it shows that, with Deconstruction, there is much more at stake than an "academic" discussion, for Derrida's work deals with all the burning political and intellectual challenges of our time. The author's own professional experience in both the United States and in Europe, which particularly inform her chapter on Derrida's reception in the United States, opens a unique perspective on a unique thinker, one that rewards specialists and newcomers alike.

Jacques Derrida, one of the most influential, controversial and complex thinkers of our time, has come to be at the centre of many political debates. This is the first book to consider the political implications of Derrida's deconstruction. It is a timely response both to Derrida's own recent shift towards thinking about the political, and to the political focus of contemparary Continental philosophy. Richard Beardsworth's study, Derrida and the Political, locates a way of thinking about deconstruction using the tools of political philosophy. Richard Beardsworth has provided students of philosophy, politics and critical theory with a thought-provoking, upper level introduction to Derrida'a work as a political theorist.

With new readings from nineteen internationally renowned scholars, Reading Derrida's Of Grammatology is a significant reassessment and informed discussion of Jacques Derrida's landmark 1967 text. Since its original publication, Of Grammatology has had a profound impact on philosophy, literary theory and the Humanities in general. Through a series of close readings of selected passages by writers from a wide range of disciplines, this collection aims to discover anew this important work and its continuing influence. The book includes new readings by: - Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak - J. Hillis Miller - Jean-Luc Nancy - Derek Attridge - Geoffrey Bennington - Nicholas Royle Reading Derrida's Of Grammatology is an essential book for anyone interested in Derrida's work, from readers new to the book to experienced researchers in philosophy, literature and the many other disciplines that Of Grammatology has transformed over the last forty years.