The Derrida Dictionary is a comprehensive and accessible guide to the world of Jacques Derrida, the founder of deconstruction and one of the most important and influential European thinkers of the twentieth century. Meticulously researched and extensively cross-referenced, this unique book covers all his major works, ideas and influences and provides a firm grounding in the central themes of Derrida's thought. Students will discover a wealth of useful information, analysis and criticism. A-Z entries include clear definitions of all the key terms used in Derrida's writings and detailed synopses of his key works. The Dictionary also includes entries on Derrida's major philosophical influences and those he engaged with, such as Kant, Hegel, Husserl, Freud, Heidegger, Foucault, Lacan and Levinas. It covers everything that is essential to a sound understanding of Derrida's philosophy, offering clear and accessible explanations of often complex terminology. The Derrida Dictionary is the ideal resource for anyone reading or studying Derrida, deconstruction or modern European philosophy more generally.

The renowned postmodernist philosopher s tour-de-force contemplation of sex, technology, politics and disease in Western culture after the revolutionary orgy of the 1960s.

La pretensin ms bsica o general de este texto es la reconstruccin del contexto terico (lo cual no indica que el contexto prctico carezca de inters o importancia) que rodea y determina la conferencia "Firma, Acontecimiento, Contexto" pronunciada por Jacques Derrida en agosto de 1971 en un congreso cuyo tema era "La comunicacin." Si bien, por su misma "tesis," un contexto nunca es absolutamente determinable, s parece iluminador (e incluso tico , al decir de Derrida) un recorrido por algunos de los "textos preparatorios" de dicha conferencia. "Firma, Acontecimiento, Contexto" es seguramente el artculo derridiano que ms ros de tinta ha hecho correr en virtud de su amplia recepcin en el mbito de la filosofa de habla inglesa. Sin embargo, parece ser un texto que, tras muchos aos, sigue sin haberse ledo. Al respecto es destacable, como escribe Culler, "la egregia malinterpretacin de John Searle," que ha influido decisivamente en gran parte de la crtica, sobre todo de corte anglosajn (tambin en Europa), de la obra de Derrida. Y ello no tanto quizs por sus argumentos (que realmente "objetan" tesis inexistentes) como por su tono furioso y despectivo. Lamentablemente, hoy da no es infrecuente, en las escasas ocasiones en que "Derrida" aparece en un debate filosfico, o incluso sin que su nombre sea invocado, escuchar expresiones como "Eso es derridadasmo" o "Eso es una derridada." Por ello, aspiramos a que este trabajo aporte su grano de arena ayudando, en general, a una mayor comprensin de la filosofa derridiana y, en particular, a una lectura ms fructfera (al menos en los aspectos que acentuamos) de un texto que, en todo caso, constituye una buena "puerta de acceso" al pensamiento del profesor deorigen argelino. No obstante, a partir de esta base y con una mayor profundidad investigadora, se trata en este ensayo de explicitar en la medida de lo posible (esto es, sin falsas facilidades) cmo debera entenderse la comunicacin a la luz de la filosofa derridiana. Dicho tema revela su importancia si tenemos en cuenta que desde mediados del siglo XX existe una notoria convergencia entre los diversos planteamientos filosficos en torno a la tesis segn la cual, la estructura de aquello que llamamos "racional" o "verdadero" es de carcter comunicativo. As, por ejemplo, la hermenutica de H.G. Gadamer, fundada sobre principios fenomenolgicos que surgen a comienzos de siglo bajo una forma "monolgica" (Husserl), ha pretendido aclarar el sentido de la historia y de la comprensin humana del mundo como una forma de "dilogo interpretativo." La intersubjetividad es tambin el concepto fundamental sobre el cual se erige la autoproclamada nueva Ilustracin (Habermas, Apel), una corriente que intenta reconstruir el concepto de "Logos" desde el de "dilogo argumentativo." Asimismo, el giro lingstico en el que se amparan ambas tendencias ha generado, por su lado, lneas de pensamiento que subrayan la dimensin pragmtico-comunicativa como clave de la lingisticidad y, por tanto, del pensamiento. En esa direccin discurren las concepciones arraigadas en el "segundo Wittgenstein" y en la teora de los "actos de habla." Por todo ello, creemos que situar la comunicacin dentro del espacio del "pensamiento de la huella" derridiano puede ser una tarea inicial muy fructfera a la hora de establecer un debate entre, por un lado, aquellas concepciones de la comunicacin que, adelantamos, tienen en la "homogeneidad" su axiomay/o su ideal (en ocasiones inconfeso) y, por otro lado, un pensamiento de la "escritura" que obedece, por as decir, a un "principio de discontinuidad." Podra ser ste, quizs, un paso adelante en el establecimiento de lo que Derrida propone llamar un espacio "pragramatolgico," esto es, "el espacio de un anlisis indispensable" en la juntura de una pragmtica y de una gramatologa" (...). Una pragramatologa (por venir) a

Continuum's "Guides for the Perplexed" are clear, concise and accessible introductions to thinkers, writers and subjects that students and readers can find especially challenging. Concentrating specifically on what it is that makes the subject difficult to grasp, these books explain and explore key themes and ideas, guiding the reader towards a thorough understanding of demanding material. Jacques Derrida is one of the most important thinkers of the twentieth century. His writings, his lectures and his involvement in a number of political causes have transformed the way in which literature and cultural studies is taught yet his work has often met with incomprehension, hostility and fear. This guide provides students with a clear, unintimidating introduction to Derrida, the key concepts and ideas associated with his work and the major subjects he addresses. Without assuming any prior knowledge of Derrida's work or literary theory more widely, the guide introduces Derrida's ideas, work, reception and his wider philosophical and critical influence. Throughout, Wolfreys refers to literature and film examples, grounding discussion of theoretical concepts in close reading of specific texts.

The international feminist contributors to this book look through the lens of poststructuralism at how child sexual abuse is differently represented and understood in the populist, academic, clinical, media and legal contexts. Reworking earlier feminist analyses, they show how child sexual abuse is not just about gender and power but also about class, race and sexuality. The first, theoretical section of the book critiques normative theories of the 'effects' of abuse, explores the impact and consequences of feminist interventions and critically examines the potential usefulness of a feminist post-stucturalist approach. In the second part, these understandings are applied to specific arenas of practice with the aim of providing a framework for critical intervention and alternative and better ways of working with child sexual abuse.

Deconstructions is a user's guide to deconstruction across a range of topics and discourses. Chapter topics range from the obvious (feminism, post-colonialism, and technology) to the less so (drugs, film, weaving). Yet each of the essays has more than one focus, exploring or opening on to further and other deconstructions. The book has been put together to demonstrate the multiple and altering contexts in which deconstructive thinking and practice are at work, both within and beyond the academy, both within and beyond what is called "the West." Nicholas Royle has commissioned new essays by some of the most distinguished contemporary thinkers, including Geoffrey Bennington, Diane Elam, J. Hillis Miller, and Jacques Derrida.

Develops the notion of 'luminism' as the conceptual spine of Deleuze's work 'The plane of immanence is entirely made up of Light', Deleuze writes in Cinema 1: The Movement-Image. Engaging the whole body of Deleuze's work, including less rehearsed texts such as 'The Actual and the Virtual', 'Lucretius and the Simulacrum', and his lectures on Spinoza, Hanjo Berressem traces the 'line of light' that runs through Deleuze's thought. The focus on the philosophical luminism that suffuses Deleuze's work delivers a novel reading of Deleuzian philosophy from the perspective of the complementarity of the photon. Berressem reveals a wealth of surprising and brilliant insights for anyone with an interest in Deleuze and in the implications of Deleuze's philosophical photonics for historiography, literary studies, painting, and film.

Feminist Experiences develops and defends a distinctive understanding of feminist philosophy as social critique. Feminist philosophy is essentially a political endeavor, Johanna Oksala argues, aiming to expose, analyze, and ultimately change gendered power relations. However, such an understanding of feminist philosophy raises a host of theoretical problems and paradoxes. Oksala investigates the philosophical challenges and outlines the ontological presuppositions and methodological innovations the project requires. Drawing on conceptual tools from the thought of Michel Foucault, but also from the tradition of phenomenology, she explores the role of experience in feminist philosophy and its relationship to language and linguistic meaning. Oksala concludes by sketching a feminist ontology of the present through a critical investigation of neoliberalism and the challenges it presents to feminist theory and politics.

Contemporary conversations about religion and culture are framed by two reductive definitions of secularity. In one, multiple faiths and nonfaiths coexist free from a dominant belief in God. In the other, we deny the sacred altogether and exclude religion from rational thought and behavior. But is there a third way for those who wish to rediscover the sacred in a skeptical society? What kind of faith, if any, can be proclaimed after the ravages of the Holocaust and the many religion-based terrors since? Richard Kearney explores these questions with a host of philosophers known for their inclusive, forward-thinking work on the intersection of secularism, politics, and religion. An interreligious dialogue that refuses to paper over religious difference, these conversations locate the sacred within secular society and affirm a positive role for religion in human reflection and action. Drawing on his own philosophical formulations, literary analysis, and personal interreligious experiences, Kearney develops through these engagements a basic gesture of hospitality for approaching the question of God. His work facilitates a fresh encounter with our best-known voices in continental philosophy and their views on issues of importance to all spiritually minded individuals and skeptics: how to reconcile God's goodness with human evil, how to believe in both God and natural science, how to talk about God without indulging in fundamentalist rhetoric, and how to balance God's sovereignty with God's love.

In Becoming Marxist Ted Stolze offers a series of studies that take up the importance of philosophy for the development of an open and critical Marxism. He argues that an adequate 'philosophy for Marxism' must be open to engagement with a diverse range of traditions, texts, and authors-from Paul of Tarsus, via Averroes, Spinoza, and Hobbes, to Althusser, Deleuze, Negri, Habermas, and Zizek. Stolze also explores such practical contemporary issues as the politics of self-emancipation, the nature of Islamophobia, and climate change.

Hanjo Berressem establishes the notion of a schizoanalytic ecology as the most consistent conceptual spine of Felix Guattari's work. He covers the whole range of Guattari's solo work, as well as the books co-authored with Gilles Deleuze. The core of his argument is developed through a rigorous explication and analysis of Guattari's 'Schizoanalytic Cartographies'. This reveals an ecological ontology developed from key concepts such as the informal diagram, the abstract machine and transversality, which is based on the conceptual complementarity of the world (the given) and its creatures (the giving).

These 20 essays by Ronald Bogue on Gille Deleuze's though touch on cinema, music, theatre, painting, fiction, education, ecology, ethology, politics, technology and philosophy. He creates paradigmatic occasions of thinking with Deleuze - thinking with him and through him, following diverse lines of his thought and engaging concepts to extend his thought into areas Deleuze did not explore. Every one of these frequently cited, classic essays has been reworked to bring them up-to-date with the latest research in Deleuze Studies. Each offers a separate entry into Deleuze's thought; together they illuminate the pivotal role the arts play in the political project of inventing a people to come and the broader project of promoting an ecologically viable new earth.

The Technological Introject explores the futures opened up across the humanities and social sciences by the influential media theorist Friedrich Kittler. Joining the German tradition of media studies and systems theory to the Franco-American theoretical tradition marked by poststructuralism, Kittler's work has redrawn the boundaries of disciplines and of scholarly traditions. The contributors position Kittler in relation to Marshall McLuhan, Jacques Derrida, discourse analysis, film theory, and psychoanalysis. Ultimately, the book shows the continuing relevance of the often uncomfortable questions Kittler opened up about the cultural production and its technological entanglements.

Bringing together all of Jacques Derrida s writings on James Joyce, this volume includes the first complete translation of his book "Ulysses Gramophone: Two Words for Joyce" as well as the first translation of the essay The Night Watch. In "Ulysses Gramophone," Derrida provides some of his most thorough reflections on affirmation and the yes, the signature, and the role of technological mediation in all of these areas. In The Night Watch, Derrida pursues his ruminations on writing in an explicitly feminist direction, offering profound observations on the connection between writing and matricide. Accompanying these texts are nine essays by leading scholars from across the humanities addressing Derrida s treatments of Joyce throughout his work, and two remembrances of lectures devoted to Joyce that Derrida gave in 1982 and 1984. The volume concludes with photographs of Derrida from these two events."

Alienation After Derrida rearticulates the Hegelian-Marxist theory of alienation in the light of Derrida's deconstruction of the metaphysics of presence. Simon Skempton aims to demonstrate in what way Derridian deconstruction can itself be said to be a critique of alienation. In so doing, he argues that the acceptance of Derrida's deconstructive concepts does not necessarily entail the acceptance of his interpretations of Hegel and Marx. In this way the book proposes radical reinterpretations, not only of Hegel and Marx, but of Derridian deconstruction itself. The critique of the notions of alienation and de-alienation is a key component of Derridian deconstruction that has been largely neglected by scholars to date. This important new study puts forward a unique and original argument that Derridian deconstruction can itself provide the basis for a rethinking of the concept of alienation, a concept that has received little serious philosophically engaged attention for several decades.

This book, newly available in paperback, gathers essays written by Geoffrey Bennington since the death of his friend Jacques Derrida in 2004. All continue the ongoing work of elucidating difficult and complex thought, often enough with reference to Derrida's persistent interrogation of the concepts of life and death, mourning and melancholia, and what he sometimes calls 'half-mourning'. Not Half No End relates this 'ethical' interruption of mourning to the persistent but still ill-understood motif of interrupted teleology, which, it is argued here, is definitive of deconstruction in general. This suspension or interruption of the end (which is none other than differance 'itself') has all manner of consequences for our thinking, and for how we attempt to categorize that thinking (as epistemological, ethical, political or aesthetic, for example). Not Half No End moves through all these domains, and the whole of Derrida's rich and varied corpus, in a weave of styles - from the expository and analytic to the autobiographical and confessional - in the ongoing process of deconstruction. Key Features * New collection of essays by major theorist * Expanded readings of late texts by Derrida * Research monograph on mourning and melancholy * First consideration of the legacy of Derrida by a co-author

This title explores Derrida's major work through readings of key passages by such leading scholars as Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, J. Hillis Miller and Avital Ronnell. With new readings from twenty-one internationally renowned scholars, "Reading Derrida's 'Of Grammatology'" is a comprehensive introduction to and exploration 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. This book includes new readings by such commentators as: Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak; J. Hillis Miller; Jean-Luc Nancy; Derek Attridge; and, Avital Ronnell. "Reading Derrida's 'Of Grammatology'" is an essential book for anyone interested in Derrida's work, from readers new to this book to experienced researchers in philosophy, literature and the many other disciplines that Of Grammatology has transformed over the last forty years.

Derrida and Lacan: Another Writing argues that Jacques Derrida's philosophical understanding of language should be supplemented by Jacques Lacan's psychoanalytic approach to the symbolic order. Lacan adopts a non-philosophical, genetic or developmental approach to the question of language and in doing so isolates a dimension that Derrida cannot properly envisage: the imaginary. Michael Lewis argues that the real must be understood not just in relation to the symbolic but also in relation to the imaginary. The existence of an alternative approach to the real that is other than language allows us to identify the idiosyncrasies of Derrida's purely transcendental approach, an approach that addresses language in terms of its conditions of possibility. Lacan shows us that an attention to the genesis of the symbolic order of language and culture should lead us to understand this real other in a different way.This book relates transcendental thought to the insights of non-philosophical thought, and, more specifically, it proposes a way in which philosophy might relate to the insights of the human and natural sciences. By critically juxtaposing Derrida and Lacan, Derrida and Lacan: Another Writing attempts to systematise Slavoj Zizek's presentation of a Lacanian alternative to Derridean deconstruction.
This work should be of interest to all readers in continental thought and transcendental philosophy, deconstruction, psychoanalysis, and literary studies.

In this book, Shlomo Biderman examines the views, outlooks, and attitudes of two distinct cultures: the West and classical India. He turns to a rich and varied collection of primary sources: the "Rg Veda," the Upanishads, and texts by the Buddhist philosophers N?g?rjuna and Vasubandhu, among others. In studying the West, Biderman considers the Bible and its commentaries, the writings of such philosophers as Plato, Descartes, Berkeley, Kant, and Derrida, and the literature of Kafka, Melville, and Orwell. Additional sources are Mozart's "Don Giovanni" and seminal films like Ingmar Bergman's "Persona."

Biderman uses concrete examples from religion and literature to illustrate the formal aspects of the philosophical problems of transcendence, language, selfhood, and the external world and then demonstrates their plausibility in actual situations. Though his method of analysis is comparative, Biderman does not adopt the disinterested stance of an "ideal" spectator. Rather, Biderman approaches ancient Indian thought and culture from a Western philosophical standpoint to uncover cultural presuppositions that can be difficult to expose from within the culture in question.

The result is a fascinating landmark in the study of Indian and Western thought. Through his comparative prism, Biderman explores the most basic ideas underlying human culture, and his investigation not only sheds light on India's philosophical traditions but also facilitates a deeper understanding of our own.

Paul Virilio puts art back where it matters - at the centre of politics. Art used to be an engagement between artist and materials. But in our new media world art has changed, its very materials have changed and have become technologized. This change reflects a broader social shift. Speed and politics - what Virilio defined as the key characteristics of the twentieth century - have been transformed in the twenty-first century to speed and mass culture. And the defining characteristic of mass culture today is panic. This induced panic relies on a new, all-seeing technology. And the first casualty of this is the human response. What we are losing is the very human 'art of seeing', one individual's engagement with another or with an event, be that political or artistic. What we are losing is our sense of the aesthetic. Where art used to talk of the aesthetics of disappearance, it must now confront the disappearance of the aesthetic.

A philosophical examination of the treatment of logic and God in Lacan's later psychoanalytic theory. In The Not-Two, Lorenzo Chiesa examines the treatment of logic and God in Lacan's later work. Chiesa draws for the most part from Lacan's Seminars of the early 1970s, as they revolve around the axiom "There is no sexual relationship." Chiesa provides both a close reading of Lacan's effort to formalize sexual difference as incompleteness and an assessment of its broader implications for philosophical realism and materialism. Chiesa argues that "There is no sexual relationship" is for Lacan empirically and historically circumscribed by psychoanalysis, yet self-evident in our everyday lives. Lacan believed that we have sex because we love, and that love is a desire to be One in face of the absence of the sexual relationship. Love presupposes a real "not-two." The not-two condenses the idea that our love and sex lives are dictated by the impossibility of fusing man's contradictory being with the heteros of woman as a fundamentally uncountable Other. Sexual liaisons are sustained by a transcendental logic, the so-called phallic function that attempts to overcome this impossibility. Chiesa also focuses on Lacan's critical dialogue with modern science and formal logic, as well as his dismantling of sexuality as considered by mainstream biological discourse. Developing a new logic of sexuation based on incompleteness requires the relinquishing of any alleged logos of life and any teleological evolution. For Lacan, the truth of incompleteness as approached psychoanalytically through sexuality would allow us to go further in debunking traditional onto-theology and replace it with a "para-ontology" yet to be developed. Given the truth of incompleteness, Chiesa asks, can we think such a truth in itself without turning incompleteness into another truth about truth, that is, into yet another figure of God as absolute being?

Philosophy in the middle of the 20th Century, between 1920 and 1968, responded to the cataclysmic events of the time. Thinkers on the Right turned to authoritarian forms of nationalism in search of stable forms of collective identity, will, and purpose. Thinkers on the Left promoted egalitarian forms of humanism under the banner of international communism. Others saw these opposed tendencies as converging in the extinction of the individual and sought to retrieve the ideals of the Enlightenment in ways that critically acknowledged the contradictions of a liberal democracy racked by class, cultural, and racial conflict. Key figures and movements discussed in this volume include Schmitt, Adorno and the Frankfurt School, Arendt, Benjamin, Bataille, French Marxism, Black Existentialism, Saussure and Structuralism, Levi Strauss, Lacan and Late Pragmatism. These individuals and schools of thought responded to this 'modernity crisis' in different ways, but largely focused on what they perceived to be liberal democracy's betrayal of its own rationalist ideals of freedom, equality, and fraternity.

In "Ethics-Politics-Subjectivity," Simon Critchley takes up three questions at the centre of contemporary theoretical debate: What is ethical experience? What can be said of the subject who has this experience? What, if any, is the relation of ethical experience to politics? Through spirited confrontations with major thinkers, such as Lacan, Nancy, Rorty, and, in particular, Levinas and Derrida, Critchley finds answers in a nuanced "ethics of finitude" and defends the political possibilities of deconstruction. Democracy, economics, friendship, and technology are all considered anew in Critchley's bold excursions on the meaning and value of recent French philosophy.

Can the Marxist tradition still provide new resources for understanding the specificity of historical time? This volume proposes to transform our understanding of Marxism by reconnecting with the 'subterranean currents' of plural temporalities that have traversed its development. From Rousseau and Sieyes to Marx, from Bloch to Althusser, from Gramsci to Pasolini and postcolonialism, the chapters in this volume seek both to valorise neglected resources from Marxism's contradictory history, and also to read against the grain its orthodox and heterodox currents.