Derrida's Secret: Perjury, Testimony, Oath

ISBN-13: 9781474425001 / Angielski / Miękka / 2017 / 304 str.

Charles Barbour

Opis

The Snowden Affair, Wikileaks, the 'lone wolf' terrorist, Clinton's private email account - the secret is arguably the central element of our contemporary political experience. Now, Charles Barbour looks at the basic ontological question 'what is a secret?'

Organised as a reflection on Jacques Derrida's later writings on secrecy, four chapters each look at a separate problematic: society and the oath, literature and testimony, philosophy and deception, and time and death.

Barbour shows that secrecy is not a negation of our relations with others, but a necessary condition of those relations. We can only reveal ourselves to one another (and, indeed, to anything other) insofar as we conceal as well.

Spis treści

Dedication; Table of Contents; Acknowledgments; List of Abbreviations; Introduction: Cauernosis Anfractibus; Under Oath: Secrecy, Perjury, and the Social Bond; Open Secrets: Literature, Politics, and Testimonial Truth; Between Two Solitudes: Self-Deception, Consciousness, and the Other Mind; Being Alone: Death, Solitude, and the End of the World; Conclusion: Secretions; Bibliography; Notes.