Rodolphe Gasche, one of the world's foremost--and most provocative--authorities on Jacques Derrida, has news for deconstruction's devotees, whose traffic in the terms of "difference" signals privileged access to the most radically chic of intellectual circles: they do not know their Derrida. A deconstruction of the criticism that goes by deconstruction's name, this book reveals the true philosophical nature of Derrida's thought, its debt to the tradition it engages, and its misuse by some of its most fervent admirers.

Gasche's Inventions of Difference explodes the current myth...

One of the most knowledgeable and provocative explicators of Paul de Man's writings, Rodolphe GaschE, a philosopher by training, demonstrates for the first time the systematic coherence of the critic's work, insisting that de Man continues to merit close attention despite his notoriously difficult and obscure style. GaschE shows that de Man's "reading" centers on a dimension of the texts that is irreducible to any possible meaning, a dimension characterized by the "absolutely singular."

Given that de Man and Derrida are both termed deconstructionists, GaschE differentiates between...