Geoffrey Bennington

Hélène Cixous

Jaques Derrida

This book combines loosely "autobiographical" texts by two of the most influential French intellectuals of our time. "Savoir," by Hélène Cixous is an account of her experience of recovered sight after a lifetime of severe myopia; Jacques Derrida's "A Silkworm of One's Own" muses on a host of motifs, including his varied responses to "Savoir."

Veils

Geoffrey Bennington sets out here to write a systematic account of the thought of Jacques Derrida. Responding to Bennington's text at every turn is Derrida's own excerpts from his life and thought that, appearing at the bottom of each page, resist circumscription. Together these texts, as a dialogue and a contest, constitute a remarkably in-depth, critical introduction to one of the leading philosophers of the twentieth century and, at the same time, demonstrate the illusions inherent in such a project. Bennington's account of Derrida, broader in scope than any previously done, leads the reader through the philosopher's familiar yet still widely misunderstood work on language and writing to the less familiar and altogether more mysterious themes of signature, sexual difference, law, and affirmation. Seeking to escape this systematic rendering - in fact, to prove it impossible - Derrida interweaves Bennington's text with surprising and disruptive "periphrases": reflections on his mother's death agony, commentaries on St. Augustine's Confessions, memories of childhood, remarks on Judaism, and references to his collaborator's efforts. This extraordinary book offers, on the one hand, a clear and compelling account of one of the most difficult and important contemporary thinkers and, on the other, one of that thinker's strangest and most unexpected texts. Far from putting an end to the need to discuss Derrida, Bennington's text might have originally intended or pretended, this dual text opens new dimensions in the philosopher's thought and work and extends its challenge.

Jacques Derrida

Politics in Deconstruction

Scatter 2

A collection of essays by one of Jacques Derrida's friends and foremost commentators. Newly available in paperback.

Not Half No End

Written by Jacques Derrida's leading English-language translator and collaborator, this invigorating and intelligent volume displays the continuing power and versatility of deconstruction, presenting it as the most important intellectual movement of our time. Geoffrey Bennington develops a devastating critique of many attempts to clarify or criticize deconstructive thought, and elaborates its potential through original readings of, amongst others, Rousseau, Kant, Hegel, Freud, De Man and Lyotard. While he is principally concerned with a defence of deconstruction in fields where it has long since demonstrated its critical prowess, Bennington also emphasizes its political dimension. Deconstruction is a political thinking, he argues, because it entails an irreducible opening to alterity (if only in the form of reading); and this opening, where the other always might arrive as an event on the frontier of my experience, is a place for legislation.

The Politics of Deconstruction

Legislations

Danielle Cohen-Levinas

Félix Duque

Valerio Rocco Lozano

Francesco Valagussa

Serge Margel

Carmelo Meazza

Fortunato M. Cacciatore

Gianfranco Dalmasso

Silvano Facioni

Francesco Mora

Gérald Sfez

Juan Manuel Garrido

Sommaire Éditorial – Destinerrance Danielle Cohen-Levinas, Gianfranco Dalmasso Serge Margel Séculariser la langue. Derrida, Scholem et Rosenzweig Francesco Valagussa Che cosa significa tradurre? Geoffrey Bennington Ecrire, écrit-il Silvano Facioni Limitrofie. Pirati alle frontiere del pensiero. Danielle Cohen-Levinas Derrida, le dernier des écrivains. «Pourquoi les larmes sont douces aux affligés?» Francesco Mora L’Altro e il suo doppio Carmelo Meazza Il terzo dell’Altro o l’altro come Terzo Valerio Rocco Lozano La tra(d)ición europea: identidad política y lingüística como auto-negación y contaminación Fortunato M. Cacciatore Cittadini, stranieri, (e)immigrati. Antinomie Félix Duque Dell’altro tra noi. (L’immigrazione, il male preteso) Autres essais Gérald Sfez Leo Strauss et le judaïsme philosophique. À la lecture de Maïmonide Juan Manuel Garrido Derrida avec Cavaillès

Langues et altérité

Phàsis n. 4, 2016 – Frontières de l’identité

What if political rhetoric is unavoidable, an irreducible part of politics itself? In contrast to the familiar denunciations of political horse-trading, grandstanding, and corporate manipulation from those lamenting the crisis in liberal democracy, this book argues that the “politics of politics,” usually associated with rhetoric and sophistry, is, like it or not, part of politics from the start. Denunciations of the sorry state of current politics draw on a dogmatism and moralism that share an essentially metaphysical and Platonic ground. Failure to deconstruct that ground generates a philosophically and politically debilitating selfrighteousness that this book attempts to understand and undermine. After a detailed analysis of Foucault’s influential late concept of parrhesia, which is shown to be both philosophically and politically insufficient, close readings of Heidegger, Kierkegaard, and Derrida trace complex relations between sophistry, rhetoric, and philosophy; truth and untruth; decision; madness and stupidity in an exploration of the possibility of developing an affirmative thinking of politics that is not mortgaged to the metaphysics of presence. It is suggested that Heidegger’s complex accounts of truth and decision must indeed be read in close conjunction with his notorious Nazi commitments but nevertheless contain essential insights that many strident responses to those commitments ignore or repress. Those insights are here developed—via an ambitious account of Derrida’s often misunderstood interruption of teleology—into a deconstructive retrieval of the concept of dignity. This lucid and often witty account of a crucial set of developments in twentieth-century thought prepares the way for a more general re-reading of the possibilities of political philosophy that will be undertaken in Volume 2 of this work, under the sign of an essential scatter that defines the political as such.

The Politics of Politics in Foucault, Heidegger, and Derrida

Scatter 1

Open Book/Livre Ouvert

Gathers Bennington's essays since the death of his friend Jacques Derrida in 2004. These 16 continue the work of elucidating Derrida's difficult and complex thought, often with reference to his persistent interrogation of the concepts of life and death, mourning and melancholia, and what he sometimes calls 'half-mourning'. Bennington relates these to the core concepts in Derrida's work: deconstruction and differance. Derrida's suspension of the end - in differance, in death - has wide-ranging consequences for our thinking and how we attempt to categorise that thinking, whether as epistemological, ethical, political, aesthetic.Not Half No End moves through Derrida's rich and varied corpus in a weave of styles, from the expository and analytical to the autobiographical and confessional, in the ongoing process of deconstruction.

Militantly Melancholic Essays in Memory of Jacques Derrida

Not Half No End: Militantly Melancholic Essays in Memory of Jacques Derrida

Lisa Appignanesi

"This double issue in the ICA Documents series brings together material which grew out of a major conference held in 1985 on the philosophical dimensions of the postmodernist debate, and three autumn seminars from our French Thinkers series ..."--Ed. note.

Postmodernism

One of the most significant contemporary thinkers in continental philosophy, Jacques Derrida’s work continues to attract heated commentary among philosophers, literary critics, social and cultural theorists, architects and artists. This major new work by world renowned Derrida scholar and translator, Geoffrey Bennington, presents incisive new readings of both Derrida and interpretations of his work. Part one sets out Derrida’s work as a whole and examines its relevance to, and ‘interruption’ of, the traditional domains of ethics, politics and literature. The second part of the book presents compelling insights into some important motifs in Derrida’s work, such as death, friendship, psychoanalysis, time and endings. The final section introduces trenchant appraisals of other influential accounts of Derrida’s work. This influential and original contribution to the literature on Derrida is marked by a commitment to clarity and accuracy, but also by a refusal to simplify Derrida’s often difficult thought.

Geoffrey Bennington

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