"In this densely imbricated volume Derrida pursues his devoted, relentless dismantling of the philosophical tradition, the tradition of Plato, Kant, Hegel, Nietzsche, Husserl, Heidegger--each dealt with in one or more of the essays. There are essays too on linguistics (Saussure, Benveniste, Austin) and on the nature of metaphor ("White Mythology"), the latter with important implications for literary theory. Derrida is fully in control of a dazzling stylistic register in this book--a source of true illumination for those prepared to follow his arduous path. Bass is a superb translator and...

Prodigiously influential, Jacques Derrida gave rise to a comprehensive rethinking of the basic concepts and categories of Western philosophy in the latter part of the twentieth century, with writings central to our understanding of language, meaning, identity, ethics and values.

In 1993, a conference was organized around the question, 'Whither Marxism?', and Derrida was invited to open the proceedings. His plenary address, 'Specters of Marx', delivered in two parts, forms the basis of this book. Hotly debated when it was first published, a rapidly changing world and world politics...

-My death--is it possible?- That is the question asked, explored, and analyzed in Jacques Derrida's new book. -Is my death possible?- How is this question to be understood? How and by whom can it be asked, can it be quoted, can it be an appropriate question, and can it be asked in the appropriate moment, the moment of -my death-? One of the aporetic experiences touched upon in this seminal essay is the impossible, yet unavoidable experience that -my death- can never subject to an experience that would be properly mine, that I can have, and account for, yet that there is,...

"I have but one language--yet that language is not mine." This book intertwines theoretical reflection with historical and cultural particularity to enunciate, then analyze this conundrum in terms of the author's own relationship to the French language. The book operates on three levels. At the first level, a theoretical inquiry investigates the relation between individuals and their "own" language. It also explores the structural limits, desires, and interdictions inherent in such "possession," as well as the corporeal aspect of language (its accents, tones, and rhythms) and the question of...

Something of a historical event, this book combines loosely "autobiographical" texts by two of the most influential French intellectuals of our time. "Savoir," by Helene Cixous, is a brief but densely layered account of her experience of recovered sight after a lifetime of severe myopia, an experience that ends with the unexpected turn of grieving for what is lost. Her literary inventiveness mines the coincidence in French between the two verbs savoir (to know) and voir (to see). Jacques Derrida's "A Silkworm of One's Own" complexly muses on a host of autobiographical,...

Using the philosophy of Jean-Luc Nancy as an anchoring point, Jacques Derrida in this book conducts a profound review of the philosophy of the sense of touch, from Plato and Aristotle to Jean-Luc Nancy, whose ground-breaking book Corpus he discusses in detail. Emmanuel Levinas, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Edmund Husserl, Didier Franck, Martin Heidegger, Francoise Dastur, and Jean-Louis Chretien are discussed, as are Rene Descartes, Diderot, Maine de Biran, Felix Ravaisson, Immanuel Kant, Sigmund Freud, and others. The scope of Derrida's deliberations makes this book a virtual encyclopedia...

Responding to questions put to him at a Roundtable held at Villanova University in 1994, Jacques Derrida leads the reader through an illuminating discussion of the central themes of deconstruction. Speaking in English and extemporaneously, Derrida takes up with unusual clarity and great eloquence such topics as the task of philosophy, the Greeks, justice, responsibility, the gift, the community, the distinction between the messianic and the concrete messianisms, and his interpretation of James Joyce. Derrida convincingly refutes the charges of relativism and nihilism that are often leveled at...

The Animal That Therefore I Am is the long-awaited translation of the complete text of Jacques Derrida's ten-hour address to the 1997 Crisy conference entitled The Autobiographical Animal, the third of four such colloquia on his work. The book was assembled posthumously on the basis of two published sections, one written and recorded session, and one informal recorded session. The book is at once an affectionate look back over the multiple roles played by animals in Derrida's work and a profound philosophical investigation and critique of the relegation of animal life that takes place as a...

Athens, Still Remains is an extended commentary on a series of photographs of contemporary Athens by the French photographer Jean-Francois Bonhomme. But in Derrida's hands commentary always has a way of unfolding or, better, developing in several unexpected and mutually illuminating directions. First published in French and Greek in 1996, Athens, Still Remains is Derrida's most sustained analysis of the photographic medium in relationship to the history of philosophy and his most personal reflection on that medium. At once photographic analysis, philosophical essay, and autobiographical...

One of the world's most famous philosophers, Jacques Derrida, explores difficult questions in this important and engaging book. Is it still possible to uphold international hospitality and justice in the face of increasing nationalism and civil strife in so many countries? Drawing on examples of treatment of minority groups in Europe, he skilfully and accessibly probes the thinking that underlies much of the practice, and rhetoric, that informs cosmopolitanism. What have duties and rights to do with hospitality? Should hospitality be grounded on a private or public ethic, or even a religious...