years work crit cult theory 2008 kamuf 1 21

8/13/2019 Years Work Crit Cult Theory 2008 Kamuf 1 21

1/21

1

DeconstructionDeconstructionpeggy kamufThis chapter deals with work published in the eld of deconstruction inthe year 2006.

Deconstruction is neither a eld nor a method. As a mode of study, apractice, and a theoretical endeavour, its object has no certain or determinedlimits. It knows many disciplinesphilosophy, literary studies, the history of art, psychoanalysis, political theory, religion, the list could be extended and does not settle rmly within any of them. For academic purposes, thenoun is taken to refer to a large number of works, many signed by Jacques

Derrida. Within these works, however, the reference of deconstructionopens onto the events of what happens, comes about, invents the future. Thesites of deconstruction, in other words, are everywhere, at least so long asthe future keeps happening to history. The inventory of a years worth of deconstruction thus sounds like a basic category mistake. And yet, to attemptthe exercise is to uncover something like deconstructive disseminationbreaking out of the various enclosures of thought, whether these be disci-plinary divisions within the academy or the enclosure of academic discoursein general. The survey that follows tracks several forms taken by this dis-seminating movement: translation, audience address, and the disjunction/conjunction of the and, as in Deconstruction (or Derrida) and X. Toconclude, we will consider several other monographs and special issues of three journals.

Two translations into English of texts by Derrida appeared in 2006.Although originally written for separate occasions ve years apart,

their proximity in Derridas oeuvre is underscored by this fortuitousco-appearance. Both H.C. for Life, That Is to Say . . . and Geneses, Genealogies,

I am grateful to Michael du Plessis for his invaluable and extensive research assistancepreparing this essay.

Years Work in Critical and Cultural Theory, 16 The English Association (2008)All rights reserved. For permissions, please email: [email protected]:10.1093/ywcct/mbn012

a t Uni v e r s i t y

Of D

a mm

a m on

J a n u a r y 3 0 ,2 0 1 4

h t t p : / / y w c c t . oxf or d j o ur n a l s . or g /

D o wnl o a d e d

f r om
http://ywcct.oxfordjournals.org/http://ywcct.oxfordjournals.org/http://ywcct.oxfordjournals.org/http://ywcct.oxfordjournals.org/http://ywcct.oxfordjournals.org/http://ywcct.oxfordjournals.org/http://ywcct.oxfordjournals.org/http://ywcct.oxfordjournals.org/http://ywcct.oxfordjournals.org/http://ywcct.oxfordjournals.org/http://ywcct.oxfordjournals.org/http://ywcct.oxfordjournals.org/http://ywcct.oxfordjournals.org/http://ywcct.oxfordjournals.org/http://ywcct.oxfordjournals.org/http://ywcct.oxfordjournals.org/http://ywcct.oxfordjournals.org/http://ywcct.oxfordjournals.org/http://ywcct.oxfordjournals.org/http://ywcct.oxfordjournals.org/http://ywcct.oxfordjournals.org/http://ywcct.oxfordjournals.org/http://ywcct.oxfordjournals.org/http://ywcct.oxfordjournals.org/http://ywcct.oxfordjournals.org/http://ywcct.oxfordjournals.org/http://ywcct.oxfordjournals.org/http://ywcct.oxfordjournals.org/http://ywcct.oxfordjournals.org/http://ywcct.oxfordjournals.org/http://ywcct.oxfordjournals.org/http://ywcct.oxfordjournals.org/http://ywcct.oxfordjournals.org/http://ywcct.oxfordjournals.org/http://ywcct.oxfordjournals.org/


2/21

Genres and Genius: The Secrets of the Archive were keynote lectures Derridadelivered at events celebrating the lifework of his long-time friend HeleneCixous. Just as Cixous has repeatedly signalled her complicity with and even

devotion to Derrida in her writings, the latters two texts lay out detailedand extraordinary readings of the formers highly idiomatic ction in view of general arguments that complement, conrm, or extend preoccupationsDerrida has shown throughout his work.

In H.C. for Life, ably translated by Laurent Milesi and Stefan Herbrechter,this preoccupation is with life as the force of an auto-affection that afrmsdifferance. One can trace the continuity of this thought back to Derridasearliest writings, for example, to Force and Signication [1963], where heclaims that it would be vain to seek a concept in phenomenology permittingone to think force or intensity. To think power or might [ puissance] and notmerely direction, tension and not merely the in of intentionality (Writingand Difference, trans. Alan Bass, UChicagoP. [1978] p. 27; trans. modied). Itis this thinking of puissance that, thirty-ve years later, Derrida nds not just permitted but called forth by Cixouss writing, a concept not onlymissing in phenomenology, but a thinking that even his own readings of

other poets (Mallarme, Jabes, Artaud, Genet, Blanchot, Kafka, Ponge, etc.)had not come upon with the same force. It is the force of a puissance that,according to some heresy of the subjunctive (p. 70), would be an underiv-able, originary modality of powerless power or rather, as one might trans-late, of might, not the noun but the subjunctive verb, not mightiness butrather something like mightness. What Derrida discovers in Cixouss lan-guage is the force to make things be, make things come, a force of prayer andafrmation that, he insists, has nothing to do with the the virtuality, thepotentiality, a dynamis that one could continue traditionally to oppose toenergeia (p. 70). This writing effectively, and not as a simulacrum, makes/lets happen the living event of anothers arrival/survival. The very categoryof ction is thereby voided in its derivation from an opposition to actual,effective, real life. No, what arrives according to this mighty power of themight, of the would that it, he, or she might, really actually arrives,in real life. It is life for life (p. 70). H.C. for Life is among Derridas most

important texts on and for life, on real life as a force of writing.Geneses, Genealogies, Genres and Genius is the text of a lecture Derridadelivered in 2003 at the inauguration of the archive of Helene Cixousspapers at the Bibliothe`que Nationale de France. Hence the subtitle: Secretsof the Archive. But the secrets are also those of the principal Cixous text thatDerrida reads here, Manhattan: Letters from Prehistory (which has just appearedin English translation by Beverley Bie Brahic, who also translated Geneses with

2 | Deconstruction


Of D

a mm

a m on

J a n u a r y 3 0 ,2 0 1 4


D o wnl o a d e d

f r om


3/21

her customary grace and her poets ear for the two languages). This ctionprovides a rich context for Derrida to explore a conjunction between twoother preoccupations, with the secret and with the idea of the archive.

A number of the works surveyed can provoke questions about the audi-ence of deconstruction, if there ever is one. Three of these are basicallyprimers and one even calls itself a how to book. As such, they aimexplicitly to form or reform an audience, a readership and, in one case,a congregation or gathering of the faithful. The three thus share a number of features, but more interesting for our purposes is the distinct cast each seeksto give to its subject. Barry Stockers Derrida on Deconstruction is published inthe Routledge Philosophy GuideBooks (sic) series. According to copy on thebooks back cover and reprinted on the initial page, it is a much-neededintroduction for philosophy or humanities students undertaking courses onDerrida. Note the indenite article with which this promotional languageeffectively concedes that there is no one, denitive introductory guide.Other books have already bid to ll the need, and, indeed, at least twohave likewise been published by Routledge (Nicholas Royles Jacques Derrida,in the Routledge Critical Thinkers series [2003] and Penelope Deutschers

How To Read Derrida in the Routledge How To Read series [2006; seebelow]). Similar copy on the back of Royles book is more evaluative:the volume is an outstanding introduction to perhaps the most compellingthinker of our time. If one agrees that Royles book is outstanding, and notonly in the genre of the introduction, then one will also be puzzled how amere three years later its own publisher could have forgotten it is already outthere lling or at least reducing the much-neededness of Stockers effort.A clue might be lodged in the same promotional copy for Derrida onDeconstruction, which speaks curiously of philosophy or humanities students.This phrasing signals a separation of philosophy from or within the huma-nities, and in that it accurately characterizes Stockers address to his audienceand his reading of Derrida. That audience would be principally, if notexclusively, students (or teachers) of analytic philosophy, a discursive tradi-tion that the author obviously knows very well. He thus understands fromwithin, as it were, the erce resistance that has marked the reception, when

it is not merely the refusal, of Derridas work among analytic philosophers.Stocker undertakes essentially to unseat the presumptions, and even thepresumptuousness, of this reception or refusal. He does so principally intwo ways: rst, by aligning Derridas arguments with those of prominentgures in the analytic tradition. Thus, Wittgenstein is cited as often asHeidegger, but there are frequent references as well to Frege, Russell,Quine, Putnam, Strawson, Kripke, Austin, Searle, Dummett, and others.

Deconstruction | 3


Of D

a mm

a m on

J a n u a r y 3 0 ,2 0 1 4


D o wnl o a d e d

f r om


4/21

Second, Stocker addresses head-on the dismissive criticism Derridas thoughthas encountered, including among a few of those just named. In this lattermode, Stocker can be categorical and combative, for example: A standard

criticism of Derrida is that he imitates Heidegger and does not add anythingbut style. This is simply wrong and clearly wrong (p. 31). But theserefutations remain informed by a rsthand knowledge of where the resis-tance is coming from. For example, Derrida, he asserts, is not outside thelimits of reason as dened by Analytic philosophy, even if his style andreferences look strange by Analytic standards (p. 64; the odd capitalizationhere, which also affects throughout Deconstruction, Structuralism, LogicalPositivism, etc., must be a convention among Stockers audience). On thisquestion of style, however, Stocker runs true to form and conceives allmatters of writing, style if you wish, as merely overlain on arguments,which are thus fully translatable. Whatever drops out in translation is, ipsofacto, not essentially part of the argument. But such a reduction of transla-tion is the original metaphysical gesture, as Derrida patiently explains inPlatos Pharmacy, a text that Stocker reads, once again, by stripping itdown to its argument (The claim and the argument are clear enough what-

ever the difculties created on rst reading by Derridas style [p. 48]). Onerealizes, then, that the price of translating Derridas thought into analytic-friendly discourse is rather too high if it means transforming it as Stockerdoes, however amiable and even honourable his intentions may be, into analmost spitting image of the most traditional metaphysics. In the process,deconstruction is converted into a rather banal thinking of logical contra-diction, something, in other words, that the analytic school might take up withappreciation or even glee. Finally, the hope such a book might hold out forbeginning a reconciliation (or at least an end of hostilities) between decon-structive and analytic thought is, if not dashed, then deferred. Indeed, andon the contrary, Derrida on Deconstruction tends to conrm the gulf.

With its title, How To Read Derrida, by Penelope Deutscher, at least pro-mises not to set aside, as does Stocker, the matter of reading. Not only thetitle, but the very procedure here is dictated by the series protocol asdesigned by its editor Simon Critchley: each title in the series is to present

a selection of passages from a body of work accompanied by readings thatdraw out ideas or themes of signicance for the work in general. Deutschercarries out her assignment smoothly, addressing herself to most of the otherhumanities students whom Stocker disregards (with the exception, however,of whoever might have been led to Derrida from literature; unlike evenStocker, Deutscher evidently considers literary concerns peripheral to thecore of deconstructive thought). When I say she brings off the assigned task

4 | Deconstruction


Of D

a mm

a m on

J a n u a r y 3 0 ,2 0 1 4


D o wnl o a d e d

f r om


5/21

smoothly, I am thinking also of a certain smoothing and attening out of ripples, breaks, or sinuosities that is, I realize, entirely the expectation and,indeed, the very reason for this kind of primer. But it does raise questions

not unlike those just posed to the results of Stockers forcing deconstructivethought into an analytic mould. Deutscher is performing essentially the sameoperation, albeit without the persistent reference to analyticism. Argumentsare straightened out, ambiguities of expression are largely ignored, andlayers of complexity are reduced for ease of understanding. What is left inthe hopper are a set of arguments about a variety of subjects, whichDeutscher extracts more or less ably. Allowed to drain away is everythingthat should have given one pause about precisely the operation one isengaged in. Especially since the imposed title of the exercise is How ToRead , there should have been more friction here than Deutscher allows.Instead of pouring Derridas work into the shape of the exercise, as alltoo thoroughly expected and with fairly expected results, would that ithad been the other way around. Now, that could have been interesting.

I include the third primer on our list because it illustrates most clearlythe deconstruction of any institutional or discursive limits on the audience

for deconstruction or, more broadly, what is called postmodernism. JamesK.A. Smiths title for Whos Afraid of Postmodernism? Taking Derrida, Lyotard, and Foucault to Church makes plain where he is headed in this book, which isapparently the rst in a series also edited by Smith under the title TheChurch and Postmodern Culture. Smith is a prolic author of works at theintersection of philosophy and Christian theology, in the Augustinian mold of John Caputo but recast as a Protestant evangelical. Accordingly, a recentaddition to Smiths series is Caputos What Would Jesus Deconstruct? The Good News of Postmodernism for the Church [2007]. Smith has also supplied one of those much-needed introductions, in the Continuum series Live Theory( Jacques Derrida: Live Theory [2005]). Whereas the latter book suffered, per-haps more than its competitors, from the kind of forced dumbing-downexpected of the genre, it is interesting that this newer effort, which aimsits arguments at a very specic audience, enlivens its subject in ways that theaverage introduction-to or how-to-read book does not usually achieve.

Like Stocker, Smith draws energy from the countering movement heleverages against the prevalent opinion propagated among his audiencethat so-called postmodern thinkers, Derrida perhaps above all, representeverything that should be denounced by the religious faithful: nihilism,skepticism, godlessness, or in the preferred two-word slogan of AmericanTV evangelists, secular humanism. Smith, however, does not waste manypages in his short book exposing the ignorance belied by this amalgam;

Deconstruction | 5


Of D

a mm

a m on

J a n u a r y 3 0 ,2 0 1 4


D o wnl o a d e d

f r om


6/21

rather, his purpose is to persuade with his understanding of the value of somekey postmodern ideas for enhancing Christian faith. Each of the centralchapters takes up a watchword, from Derrida, Lyotard, and Foucault, and

then works it into the shape that provides the best mediation between thethinkers ideas and Christian doctrine. It helps to grasp what is going on hereif one imagines Smith in a pulpit before a congregation, delivering hissermon based on the reading from scripture that Sunday. The chapter orextended sermon on Derrida takes up the oft-commented line There isno outside-the-text and reads off a lesson about interpretation all the waydown (or up). He provides only minimal context for the quotation (from Of Grammatology [1967]) and leaves aside just about everything else Derrida hasever written. His ideal readers (or listeners) are not the least bit conversantwith Derrida, Lyotard, or Foucault; rather, they are the humble in spirit andlearning, at least when it comes to the postmodern canon. This ignorance hasleft them vulnerable to the dismissive interpretations of postmodern thoughtoffered by rival preachers at whom Smith also directs his lesson. (Althoughnot named directly, my colleague and the well-known Husserlian DallasWillard, who is also an evangelical preacher/teacher, seems to be one of

those at whom Smith takes aim; God knows he deserves a more vigorousreproval, if only for signing, along with fteen others, the infamous letterpublished in 1992 in the London Times warning Cambridge University off itscourse toward conferring an honorary degree on Derrida.) Smith deftlydeploys his counter-arguments, which each time take off from a crowd-pleasing exegesis of a semi-popular lm (Memento, O Brother , Where ArtThou?, One Flew Over the Cuckoos Nest). In the chapter on there is nooutside-the-text, it is fascinating to watch this exegetical talent at workmining the slogan for its pertinence to the evangelical Christians relianceon (interpretation of) holy scripture. Its as if one were watching a replay of the Reformation, with an avatar of Luther proclaiming the principle of solascriptura against traditional authorities, except that this time authority hasaccumulated in the Protestant camp. The sleight-of-hand involved in sayingessentially dont listen to authority, take it from me can, however, makeone a little queasy. Still, if the U.S. is hurtling blindly toward theocracy, then

its at least somewhat reassuring to know that there are some out there likeSmith willing to countenance a Christian deconstruction, if not yet a decon-struction of Christianity.

On quite a different note, but offering yet another proof that decon-struction knows no one audience, Alan Basss Interpretation and Difference: TheStrangeness of Care proposes a reading of Nietzsche, Heidegger, and Derridafor practitioners of Freudian psychoanalysis. Bass shows the overlaps among

6 | Deconstruction


Of D

a mm

a m on

J a n u a r y 3 0 ,2 0 1 4


D o wnl o a d e d

f r om


7/21

these four thinkers while, in the process, translating philosophy into psycho-analysis and vice versa. All the chapters proceed by means of a steady backand forth with Bass often playing the role of facilitator in a dialogue between

reluctant interlocutors, especially in the central chapter that begins byacknowledging how, with very few exceptions, psychoanalysts have prettymuch avoided Heidegger, whereas the latter invariably sets aside psychologyas an ontic science without pertinence for fundamental ontology. Bass,however, supplies his very astute version of how these two might haveresponded to each others interpretive moves, guided always by an over-riding clinical concern. For Bass writes as a psychoanalyst seeking a betterunderstanding of the interpretation that characterizes the analytic situationand, above all, the analysands resistance that takes the form of disavowal of the validity of an interpretation and thereby brings analysis to a halt. What isdisavowed and defended against, Bass argues, is the process of differentiationthat he understands as the central work of analysis. The long, nal chapter onDerrida aligns this understanding with differance: Thus one can describedifferance as differentiating relation, implying that differance is the processof opening to the Otherwhich is other than presence (p. 100). That,

unlike Heidegger, Derrida is a powerful and unremitting reader of Freudneeds no demonstration and Bass is certainly well-equipped to bring out thestakes of that reading, as he shows here. In doing so, however, he is alsodrawn into defending Freud from Derridas early claim (in Freud and theScene of Writing [1967]) that all psychoanalytic concepts. . . withoutexception, belong to the history of metaphysics, that is, to the system of logocentric repression [re pression] (qtd. in Bass, p. 101). I have includedDerridas French term here, which Bass translates as repression (for he isthe original translator of this essay, in 1982) because I nd that translationmisleading in the context. As Bass knows very well, repression in itsprincipal psychoanalytic sense (translating Freuds term Verdra ngung) is ren-dered in French by refoulement. Laplanche and Pontalis, in their Vocabulaire dela psychanalyse (Presses universitaires de France. [1967]), sort out and pre-scribe the usage of the two French terms refoulement and re pression and notethat any confusion between them has been introduced through the back door

of English. Again, Bass knows all this better than anyone, which is preciselywhy one might see something like a small symptom here of, dare I say, adisavowal of Derridas interpretation of the difference between logocentricre pression and intrapsychic refoulement. In the passage Bass is commenting(and translating), Derrida uses both terms, most notably in this sentence:logocentric re pression is not comprehensible on the basis of the Freudianconcept of refoulement. By rendering both terms as he does by repression,

Deconstruction | 7


Of D

a mm

a m on

J a n u a r y 3 0 ,2 0 1 4


D o wnl o a d e d

f r om


8/21

the translator in effect attenuates the claim being made by Derrida andnarrows the difference he is insisting on. Such micrological attenuation of the distinctions Derrida makes between deconstruction and psychoanalysis

(nowhere more categorically than in the opening pages of this, his rstpublished writing on Freud) characterizes to some degree Basss under-taking in the macrological dimension of his discourse as well. There is atendency to argue that Freud in some way already anticipated and allowedfor the deconstructive critique of psychoanalytic logocentrism. To take justone example: Although Freud certainly began to generalize disavowal at theend of his life, he had not time to think how it could change the model of interpretation built on the repression theory. Derrida implies that becausedifferance was always at the heart of Freuds theory, he could have begunto think about something like the second interpretation of interpretation(p. 101). Yes, no doubt he could have begun to do so, just as Rousseaucould have begun to think about something like the logic of the supple-ment. Despite this sort of defensive move, Basss book (which continues andcomplements his earlier Difference and Disavowal: The Trauma of Eros [2000]) iswithout question among the most probing expositions one can nd of both

the theory and practice of deconstructive psychoanalysis.Yet another marker of the dissemination of deconstruction is its pairingwith other nouns in book titles, sometimes via the conjunction and. But ahyphen can do the same work by conjoining two proper names, as in TheDerrida-Habermas Reader . Edited by Lasse Thomassen, this is a compendium of reprinted texts, many signed by Derrida or Habermas on different occasions,others by commentators on aspects of the work of one or the other or both.It opens with Habermass opening shot, the chapter from The Philosophical Discourse of Modernity [1985], in which he charged Derrida and deconstruc-tion with all manner of shortcomings, and above all with leveling the dif-ference between philosophical and literary language. It is a reading thatrelies exclusively on secondary commentary, notably Jonathan Cullers OnDeconstruction [1982], a procedure that Derrida excoriates in one of his mostdirect replies to Habermas, a long note to the Afterword included in thesecond edition of Limited Inc [1988] and titled The Ethics of Discussion

[1988]. This bracing reply to Habermass hasty (not to say sloppy) polemic isnot included in The Derrida-Habermas Reader . Instead, there is a reprintedwritten interview with Derrida, Is There a Philosophical Language?, alsofrom 1988, which makes many of the same points less acidically. Thus, withthese two initial texts, the volume sets the baseline of the public polemicbetween Habermas and Derrida that broke out in the mid-1980s. UntilHabermas started it, neither had seemed to be paying much attention to

8 | Deconstruction


Of D

a mm

a m on

J a n u a r y 3 0 ,2 0 1 4


D o wnl o a d e d

f r om


9/21

the other. This was also the signal for Habermasians to redouble their attackson deconstruction with the added assurance that the master approved.Thomassen has thankfully chosen not to include most of this production

(the exception being Seyla Benhabibs Democracy and Difference: Reec-tions on the Metapolitics of Lyotard and Derrida). Instead, and doubtlessbecause the principals in the polemic eventually came to terms and gave clearpublic signs of a growing respect and even friendship between them,Thomassen endeavours to represent a space of discussion of differences,and in this he is somewhat successful. The essays by Richard Rorty andRichard Bernstein are emblematic of this middle ground, although at theprice of leaving aside what is most distinctly characteristic of Derridasthought in its difference from that of Habermas. Simon Critchleys essayachieves better denition in this regard, especially when explaining therelation of political decision to ethics. Likewise, Martin Beck Matustkreads the two philosophers responses to 9/11 as collected by GiovannaBorradori under the title Philosophy in a Time of Terror ([2003]; when Derridasubsequently published his original French text he titled it Le Concept du 11Septembre) and seeks the common ground between them. But the larger part

of the volume is taken up with various texts by Derrida and Habermas,including the joint letter the two signed on 31 May 2003 for publicationin the newspapers Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung and Liberation, which calls forEuropean leaders to take a stand against the US incursion into Iraq, thepublished greeting on Habermass seventy-fth birthday that Derrida wroteshortly before his own death, and Habermass eulogy for his friend a fewmonths later, published in Frankfurter Rundschau. This is the last entry in thebook. The volume thus documents the quarrel, negotiation, and reconcilia-tion of these two thinkers over twenty years. This is by far the principalvalue of the collection; some of the other essays often seem like ller. (Onelast remark: the volume is marred throughout by annoyingly bad copyeditingas well as some clearly decient translations. Because the book was jointlypublished by EdinburghUP and UChicagoP, one cannot know which toblame. But if I were Thomassen, I would be a little embarrassed.)

Both Neoplatonism after Derrida: Parellolograms, by Stephen Gersh, and

Heraclitus and Derrida: Presocratic Deconstruction, by Erin OConnell, promisequite different kinds of encounters than the one recorded in Thomassenscollection, which is the encounter or missed encounter between two thin-kers who were also contemporaries. If I am tempted to speak of Gershs andOConnells books together, it is only because each title highlights a non-synchronous, even anachronistic relation between ancient or classic philoso-phy and Derridas thought. There is, of course, nothing at all surprising in

Deconstruction | 9


Of D

a mm

a m on

J a n u a r y 3 0 ,2 0 1 4


D o wnl o a d e d

f r om


10/21


11/21

books six chapters deal patiently with the Heraclitean corpus of fragmentsand with the legacies of its interpretation; a fourth chapter surveys somenotions drawn from Derridas discourse, which are then congured for the

comparison with Heraclitus. In these latter pages, OConnell appears wor-ried that she may say something unwarranted, because at almost every turnshe calls on an expertBarbara Johnson, Geoffrey Bennington, PeggyKamufto verify what it is Derrida means by what he has written. Theconsequence is a thin, second-hand version of the motifs she is locating inDerridas thought, and an arms-length encounter with the texts of hercontemporary (an epigraph to the book, which quotes Derrida in privateconversation, UC-Irvine, 1996, establishes that the author and her subjectcrossed paths at least once) that contrasts sharply with the greater intimacyshe appears to enjoy in the proximity of the long-dead Heraclitus.

Finally, in this category of works deployed around the and conjunction,Buddhisms and Deconstructions, edited by Jin Y. Park, leaves little opening forreaders not already immersed in several schools of Buddhist thought. Moreresolutely and exclusively than any of the other works so far surveyed, thiscollection of fourteen essays (including an Afterword by Robert Magliola,

whose 1984 book Derrida on the Mend was the among the rst to plot theoverlap of Buddhist with deconstructive thought) leans to one side of itstitling conjunction, leaving the other if not wholly out of the picture, thenrarely in focus. This is so despite the high frequency of paragraphs across thevolume that begin something like Both Nagarjuna and deconstruction. . . (p. 30), or Both Derrida and Madhyamika thinkers. . . (p. 52). A notableexception to this tilt is Parks introduction to the volume, Naming theUnnameable: Dependent Co-arising and Differance. But even a glancingand oblique reading of the remaining essays notices the extent to whichthese scholars have appropriated the noun deconstruction and the verbdeconstruct into their vocabulary for translating Buddhist thinking fromits rst languages. Whether or not that translation is indeed a two-way streetis not a question I am competent to answer.

There were a number of other monographs published in 2006 thatdeserve mention for their singular characteristics. Each isfor better but

sometimes for worseone of a kind. Which does not mean that one cannotrecognize a continuity across someones writing. Such is the case with SeanGastons The Impossible Mourning of Jacques Derrida. Its resemblance to Derridaand Disinterest [2005], the book by Gaston surveyed in these pages last year,is not at all on the surface, but in the sinews and ligatures tying together thiswriters own body of work. About a year ago I wrote: the principal tech-nique Gaston employs across [Derrida and Disinterest] is to proliferate

Deconstruction | 11


Of D

a mm

a m on

J a n u a r y 3 0 ,2 0 1 4


D o wnl o a d e d

f r om


12/21

quotations drawn from a very lengthy list of Derridas works (111 titles areincluded in the bibliography) and to let them resonate more or less amongthemselves with often only slight commentary intervening to direct or

coerce his own readers understanding. Upon rereading it, I found thatthis already-used descriptive sentence, and indeed several that followed it,might be repeated here almost without adjustment to the new object (onlythe number of titles by Derrida included in the bibliography would have tobe revised: 105 instead of 111) and this despite the very different shape andintent of each book. The Impossible Mourning of Jacques Derrida is written in 52brief and dated bursts, as if in a journal, tracing a reading relation toDerridas oeuvre in the immediate wake of his death. The prevalent con-necting thread across the entries is the space of the gap, lecart. It is a prettyloose thread, and in places Gaston does little more than point to the occur-rence of the term in one of the many quotations he strings together. Thisprocedure can seem timorous, as if Gaston were being careful to stay alwaysone step behind Derrida, reluctant to appear to be going further or else-where. One might account for this effect as a poignant mark of the mourningthat prevents the survivor from acknowledging the sharply gapping distance

that has just opened up between himself and the loved one. Except that thesame effect could already be remarked in Gastons previous writing onDerrida. It resembles a kind of shadowing of the other, as one says of apursuer who follows or even imitates anothers movements. There is thus anirony lurking in these shadows: what would be a reection on the originarygap is working in several ways, not necessarily deliberate or even conscious,to close the gap between the one and the other writers movements. Some of Gastons typical gesturessuspended questions, the frequent use of italics seem rst of all typical of Derrida. And yet there is the impression of muchwork being done and heat being generated, even if one cannot say for certaintoward what the effort has gone. Work, heat, but also perhaps haste, a rushto see into print these pages begun on 12 October 2004. That sense of hasteimprints itself in many uncorrected slips, often affecting quoted Frenchwords and phrases, but perhaps nowhere so symptomatically as the slip onan entry written presumably a few weeks later although it dates itself with a

gap of more than a year, 25 November 2005 (p. 62), a date that leaps out of the sequence of 52 days of mourning in the year 2004 and takes one into thefuture when this book would no doubt have already gone to press.

But in a work with such reach across Derridas work and in such pro-found sympathy with it, it is petty to point out small errors. The gap to becrossed, therefore, is enormous if we must now turn to Jason Powells Jacques Derrida: A Biography . Must we? Alas yes, because if, as it seems,

12 | Deconstruction


Of D

a mm

a m on

J a n u a r y 3 0 ,2 0 1 4


D o wnl o a d e d

f r om


13/21

this disconcertingly bad book was rushed into print after Derridas death by apublisher eager to lay claim to offering for the rst time a completebiographical overview of this important philosopher (back cover copy),

then such opportunism deserves remark as well as rebuke. This publisher,Continuum (which also published Gastons book), either sought no onecompetent to vet Powells submission or perhaps they did but found thetruth they were told inconvenient. Either way, the circumstance shouldrenew ones respect for the peer-review policy of university presses.Finally, however, the responsibility is the authors for a book thatwithoutexaggerationfeatures on every page a mistake, factual error, misrepresen-tation, not to mention all manner of obtuseness throughout. To give a sampleof statements that are incontestably errors and that a minimum of fact-checking (even in Wikipedia) could have corrected: Post-baccalaureateeducation in France involves a year of study called the khagne, followed bya course called the hypokhagne, which Derrida began, at the age of nineteenin Paris, at Louis-le Grand (p. 21); Powell has here reversed the orderof hypokhagne and khagne, the latter being what Derrida underwent atLouis-le-Grand; De Gaulles Fifth Republic lasted ten years from 1959 to

1969 (p. 39); it is true that De Gaulle lasted only until 1969, but, the lasttime anyone checked, the Fifth Republic, whose constitution he wrote, isstill on the books; Although France won Algeria back in the end, the colonywas given up due to adverse reaction inside France to the ethical dimensionof colonization (ibid.); it is hard to know where to begin rectifying such astatement, whether with the countersense that France won Algeria back inthe end (meaning what exactly? that everyone shook hands and went homefriends?), or with the designation colony, which Algeria was not in theimportant sense that, at least on paper, its three departments were as Frenchas tarte aux pommes, or with the reduction of eight bloody years of in-countryinsurrection to the mild adverse reaction of an ethical distaste for coloniza-tion inside France. These examples are skimmed off the top of an immenseiceberg of obdurate ignoranceas regards the elementary social, cultural,political context of French intellectual life since 1950that Powell has tohave been the rst to countenance but that, unaccountably, he has not

hesitated to display. If it were only a matter of mere errors of fact, onemight forgive Powell his presumption. But its ravages extend into virtuallyevery aspect of this biographical overview. Overview indeed, if by thatone understands an enormous distance separating the viewer from his subject, as if he were observing it from an orbiting satellite. There is not an iotaof archival work at the basis of Powells minimal narrative of Derridas life;whatever facts he asserts about it have been lifted from several published

Deconstruction | 13


Of D

a mm

a m on

J a n u a r y 3 0 ,2 0 1 4


D o wnl o a d e d

f r om


14/21

works by Derrida and are well known to anyone else who has read these.This extreme abstraction does not prevent Powell from constantly lling inblanks with the most trite and shallow psychological inferences, which are

appallingly wide of their mark. It is really rather astonishing, even mystify-ing, how little insight Powell has gained by reading so widely throughDerridas work. But as there would never be enough space to documentthe reductiveness, confusion, and cluelessness of the readings interspersedthroughout what is nally this thoroughly ctional biography, let us leaveoff here.

And change the subject, for the better if possible. Certainly The Receptionof Derrida: Translation and Transformation by Michael Thomas, despite its manyfaults, offers relief from the harrowing treatment Powell inicts on hissubject. But, given how low the bar of comparison is set, that is notsaying much. And in a sense not saying much is what Thomas manages todo for most of these 178 pages. The book takes its departure from a para-phrase of Derridas essay Signature Event Context, from there it moves toparaphrase of Des Tours de Babel, from there to paraphrase of Structure,Sign and Play in the Human Sciences, from there to some paraphrase of de

Mans Semiology and Rhetoric, and so it goes, more or less. When Thomascomes up for air and breaks this monotonous surface, he is capable of grabbing our attention, for example: The point of my reading of this textwas to identify how Derridas understanding of translation can be used todescribe the cross-cultural translation of deconstruction (p. 21). That is athoroughly sensible and worthwhile project. But right away Thomas seems tolose track of his own point for on the next page he is talking about translationsimpliciter without the bothersome complication of either Derridas under-standing of translation (as just laboriously paraphrased from Des Tours deBabel) or its cross-cultural and not merely interlinguistic form. Thus onearrives at the assumption that Derridas work began to be read cross-culturally only once it was available in an English version. This confusioncohabits with an initial review of early deconstructionists like Samuel Weberor of the so-called Yale School, none of whom relied on translation to beginreading Derrida. This kind of distraction from its own argument soon has

one wondering what in fact this book is about: reception of Derrida, it says,but, rst of all, what is meant by reception? This rather complex concept isnever questioned or examined and, after the books title, it occurs onlyincidentally (it is, for instance, absent from the index); and is it the receptionof Derrida or of deconstruction? But perhaps the point of the argument isthat through this reception in America (which is, incidentally, the onlycross-cultural locus Thomas acknowledges, as if no other one mattered)

14 | Deconstruction


Of D

a mm

a m on

J a n u a r y 3 0 ,2 0 1 4


D o wnl o a d e d

f r om


15/21

Derrida becomes deconstruction? As if reception of Derrida was a kindof cross-cultural translation of the phrase deconstruction in America, unlessit is the other way around? Thomas notices none of these potential tangles

and settles for a retelling, via lots of Christopher Norris, of what has becomeby now the familiar narrative of how-Derrida-went-to-America-and-got-misread-as-apolitical-or-nothingoutsidethetext-or-pure-play, etc. If Thomasbrings something novel to this threadbare narrative, it would be an analysisof Paul de Mans political transformation as read off from an allegeddevelopment in his thought between his two major works, Blindness and Insight [1971] and Allegories of Reading [1979]. Theres just one problemwith this analysis: Thomas reverses the order in which these two worksappeared, and thus takes Allegories of Reading to be the earlier work, whichde Man would have left behind as he progressed to his insights in Blindnessand Insight. It would seem that Thomas has mistaken the 1981 revised editionof Blindness and Insight for the rst edition, a rather sloppy mistake whichonly becomes damning when it suggests how little the one who madeit really understands about the work whose political transformation he isclaiming to explicate.

I have just written two very harsh paragraphs and I feel bad about that.I let them stand merely to register some small protest against a situation inwhich academic or para-academic presses publish unneeded or, worse, toxicbooks even as they turn away so many others, especially by rst-timeauthors, that deserve to see print.

Leonard Lawlors The Implications of Immanence: Toward a New Concept of Life, by contrast, has many virtues. Lawlor is a philosopher who has writtenextensively on Husserl and phenomenology. In this book, his principalcorpus is FrenchDerrida, Foucault, Merleau-Pontyand his focus is athinking of life beyond biologism or mere life. It is a life unopposed todeath: what denes the living is the possibility of forgetting and dying: thediscontinuity of repetition (p. 145). The trajectory plotted across the tenshort chapters is rather circuitous and repetitive (at one point Lawlor evenreprints word for word the same page-long passage of his own prose [pp. 13and 55]). For the most part, Lawlor likes to think in big terms, to get at big

questions; to do so he often sums up, puts in a nutshell, boils down to theessence. His summary writing brings to mind the action of someone clearingaway the undergrowth to get to the bottom of things. In the chapters onDerrida, principally on Memoirs of the Blind [1993] and On Touching Jean-LucNancy [2005], Lawlor charges ahead in this fashion, not too concerned tomake fast the analyses he is citing, perhaps on the assumption that, Derridahaving already done so, one need only point out highlights and pronounce on

Deconstruction | 15


Of D

a mm

a m on

J a n u a r y 3 0 ,2 0 1 4


D o wnl o a d e d

f r om


16/21

the signicance of what has been established. This briskness and sense of coming to the heart of thingsand it is the heart that, Lawlor claims,names life for Derridacan sweep along and induce the reader to overlook

what is rushing by on the thrilling ride toward a new concept of life. So itmight seem small to point out little pieces that dont hang together and how,if tugged on, could begin to unravel Lawlors big picture. One such piece ishis gloss on the sentence Derrida rst deployed, I believe, in The Gift of Death[1996]: tout autre est tout autre. After offering every other is every otheras a translation (p. 6), Lawlor breezes by this formula labelling it a tautology,comparable to the Heideggerian Language is language. Howeverand if the point is hard to grasp for non-readers of French that is because it residesin the idiomatic folds of the languagewhat is key in this formula and whatrenders it untranslatable is precisely its non-tautological sense as vehicled bythe apparent repetition of subject and predicate. But the point is that bothtout and autre can switch parts of speech, from adjective noun (toutautre, i.e. every other) to adverb adjective (tout autre, i.e. altogetheror completely other). Every other is altogether other/Altogether other isevery other. Tautology is exactly what the phrase outs even as it seems to

aunt it. The sentence in fact sets up a little trap for whoever would hear init only a statement of identity. Lawlor runs headlong into that trap when hereads off a lesson about tautology and then goes on to make an argumentbased on that reading (which I cannot summarize). Im tempted to seestumbles like this as residual symptoms of the philosophers deep-rootedsuspicion of language difference and specicity, which on the surface of histhinking Lawlor, to his credit, renounces (he writes: At the center of thenew conception of life, we must place the question of language [p. 145]).There are many other such frayings in the fabric, places where pieces arebeing forced out of shape in order to t some design of the argument. It isdifcult to say they are all just details or small things.

The last monograph I will mention is Simon Morgan Worthams Counter-Institutions: Jacques Derrida and the Question of the University . As one of fourendorsers cited on this books back cover, I can only add to this brief recommendation (An important contribution to thinking about the univer-

sity, teaching, the humanities, and cultural studies) that Wortham is pursu-ing here, in four more or less stand-alone essays (in a fth chapterhe interviews Christopher Fynsk), a reection on institution that hasalways been central to deconstructive thought and practice. The bookworks predominantly at very close range, zooming in on morsels of languageand wresting as much as possible from their shape, sense, etymology, usage,and so forth. Each chapter follows this pattern in order to gain some ground

16 | Deconstruction


Of D

a mm

a m on

J a n u a r y 3 0 ,2 0 1 4


D o wnl o a d e d

f r om


17/21

of argument. The rst, Counter-Institution, Counter-Deconstruction, isexemplary in this regard: it accumulates occurrences in Derridas writing of the prex counter (countersignature, countertime, counterpart, and so on)

and works these into a general conguration of counter-thinking thatWortham seeks to apply to or extend in the notion of counter-institutionswithin or against the university. It is a provocative opening to the volume.The next chapter works through ways of thinking about teaching deconstruc-tion. It does not follow all the most obvious routes into this subject, althoughit engages with a few of Derridas own writings on teaching, notably textson Kant, Hegel, and Nietzsche. For some readers, perhaps, the approachmay seem rather too indirect, but it has the signal merit of highlightinglargely obscured angles on the question of teaching. The third chapter, TheFidelity of a Guardian, argues for lowering the barrier between deconstruc-tive thought and cultural studies, which it does in part by reviewingDerridas analysis of the gift. Finally, Auditing Derrida, is concerned todisplace the audit-mentality installed by the state-mandated quality controlmechanisms in the British university. Wortham seeks leverage on this, inpart, through an adaptation of Derridas analysis of the difference between

evidence and testimony, to a different kind of hearing implied in the auditory.Wortham is himself a very keen listener to deconstructive discourse, parti-cularly about the university, and not only as voiced by Derrida but also bySamuel Weber, Hillis Miller, Greg Ulmer, and Bill Readings. As for theclosing chapter, the interview with Christopher Fynsk, there are manyhighly engaging moments in this semi-conversational exchange. Fynsksvoice contrasts nicely with Worthams. It is nonetheless somewhat awkward(or overly deferential) that Wortham has chosen to conclude by foreground-ing more the argument of someone elses book (the occasion of the interviewis Fynsks 2004 book The Claims of Language: A Case for the Humanities) ratherthan wrapping up loose threads in the one his readers have just nished. Thismay be a case when the original context and occasion do not translatealtogether smoothly into the new context of a book collecting previouslypublished work.

We will conclude this years survey with three memorial issues of jour-

nals. The rst, Research in Phenomenologys special issue Memorials for Jacques Derrida is a very ne collection of essays. Among the most compel-ling are: Michael Naass One Nation. . . Indivisible: Jacques Derrida onthe Autoimmunity of Democracy and the Sovereignty of God, which is asubtle, thorough, and lucid consideration of the troubling concept of auto-immunity and the place it assumes in Derridas thought beginning in 1993 inSpecters of Marx; John Llewelyns Oversights, a moving meditation on prayer

Deconstruction | 17


Of D

a mm

a m on

J a n u a r y 3 0 ,2 0 1 4


D o wnl o a d e d

f r om


18/21

and the question of whether and how one can offer a petitionary prayer forthe others well-being without believing in (a) God; Catherine MalabousAnother Possibility, which explores the link to denegation and faith in

the persistent reference in Derridas later writings to an other possibilityand thus forms an interesting pendant to the essay by Llewelyn, as doesOwen Wares Universality and Historicity: On the Sources of Religion,which probes Derridas reection on the distinction (or indistinguishability)between revelation and revealability, Offenbarung and Offenbarkeit inHeideggers terms.

Considerably less engaging are the essays collected in the special issueof Social Semiotics under the title The Political Futures of Jacques Derrida.The issue was edited by four colleagues at Macquarie University in Sydneyand draws on a colloquium held there in 2005. With only one exception,the authors of the seven essays all teach at this university, the majority inits Department of Critical and Cultural Studies. It is this rather unusualfeature that might lead one to recognize here the collective publication bya school or at least a department of Derrida studies and to isolate some of its characteristic features. Going through the issue sequentially, one is struck

rst by the presentation of the contents in an Introduction that is jointlysigned by the four editors, three of whom, also contribute essays to theissue. Rather surprisingly, this circumstance does not lead them to changethe formula for the standard editors introduction, in which abstracts of thefeatured essays are strung together on a running thread of usually hyperbolicpraise. Instead, Nicole Anderson, Joan Kirkby, and Nick Manseld endorselanguage like this about their own contributions: Nicole Andersonsessay. . . stages a profound and eloquent meditation. . . Anderson stages arigorous unpacking. . . ; Kirkby clearly and feelingly shows, in an insightfuland important analysis of Derridas work. . . ; Nick Manselds [essay]stages a moving meditation. . . (p. 413). The sheer repetition here hintsat the mechanical in these invocations, not to mention the staginess.Something indeed seems to be staged here, put on display in a circle of auto-evaluation that closes back up on itself, as if to protect from an outsidecritical gaze. I confess that this opening gambit left me less than well-

disposed to appreciate the touted qualities of the issue, which is doubtlessunfair. But it seemed unlikely that this degree of rhetorical obtuseness couldbe followed by insightful and important analysis of Derridas work, that is,of a work that is always alert to the ruses and failures of narcissism.Can a school of Derrida studies be founded on the neglect of such vigi-lance? In order to promote itself to the front of some imagined stage, willit not also be ready to countenance a general laxness in critical habits?

18 | Deconstruction


Of D

a mm

a m on

J a n u a r y 3 0 ,2 0 1 4


D o wnl o a d e d

f r om


19/21

This question began to insist from the rst pages of the rst essay, by NicoleAnderson. It arose, for example as I tried to make sense of this passagein which the author seems to be attempting to paraphrase arguments

from Psyche: Invention of the Other: [Derrida] argues that the termpossibility is synonymous with the word invention. The latter wordmeans to make [sic] something new and different; to foresee and ima-gine [sic] a future that can be achieved through calculation. He links thisdenition of invention to possibility by suggesting [sic] that what weforesee and imagine is what is possible. After reading these sentences,I had to check that my compass was still pointing north. For how can onemaintain, on the subject of an essay subtitled The Invention of the Other,that Derrida argues there, simply, that invention is, simply, synonymouswith known, foreseeable possibility? Etc.

To close on an upswing and with a strong antidote to the confusions justsampled, the issue of the journal Mosaic titled After Derrida presents anoutstanding collection of essays by a number of the most inventive andthoughtful writers on Derrida and deconstruction. The issue is edited byDawne McCance, who is also Mosaics general editor. Her introduction to the

issue foregoes the standard format of abstracts strung together like gaudybeads, which is fortunate because it leaves room for the stunning threads shedraws through Derridas thinking on the paper of the archive, the writingsurface, and the technical apparatus of inscription in her own brief essay,Beyond the Paper Principle. This is a large volume, comprising fourteenessays (as well as an original photo montage), virtually all of which rewardthe time of reading. There is little vacuous staging here; rather, the writersare actively counter-signing Derridas work, sometimes by pursuing an argu-ment with it, as in John Salliss Last Words: Generosity and Reserve, whichretraces and continues a dialogue the author has sustained with Derridaover many years concerning their divergent readings of Platos Timaeus andthe interpretation of khora. Like Salliss, several other essays are writtenin the absence of the friend, an aching lack that draws them to synthesizehis voice out of pieces of the published texts. In Derrida at the Wheel,Michael Naas tracks the gure of the potter at the wheel, a gure that

Derrida professes to love early in the rst essay in his text Rogues, whileNicholas Royle sketches a similar gesture at one point in Jacques DerridasLanguage (Bin Laden on the Telephone), but this time the gure is thatof Derrida the footballer running linguistic feints and contre-pieds aroundadversaries who, like John Searle, remain planted in place, not noticingtheyve been anticipated and overtaken. Both of these essays trace intricatepatterns that are not apparent on the rst surface of the text; these patterns

Deconstruction | 19


Of D

a mm

a m on

J a n u a r y 3 0 ,2 0 1 4


D o wnl o a d e d

f r om


20/21

are brought out only through the kind of reading that acts like the developerof invisible ink. They are texts that conduct one naturally through a poetic,musical, dancing experience, nowhere more disarmingly than David Willss

Notes1

Towards a Requiem: On the Music of Memory, woven aroundDerridas improvisation with Ornette Coleman, or Sarah Woods Edit,which performs variations at the keyboard on Meditango, a word rstset spinning on the turntable of Derridas Post Card . Such reading acts con-stitute counter-signatures and such writings sustain deconstruction beyondthe limits of any one signed work. They are already the plural futures of Jacques Derrida and of deconstruction, giving more than enough proof that what is to come will have to be at the antipodes of the self-regardingself-promotion of any school.

Books Reviewed

Anderson, Nicole, Joan Krikby, Nick Manseld and Joseph Pugliesi, eds. The PoliticalFutures of Jacques Derrida , special issue of Social Semiotics 16:iii[2006] pp. 115.ISSN 1035 0330.

Bass, Alan. Interpretation and Difference: The Strangeness of Care. StanfordUP.[2006] pp. 194. pb $25.95 ISBN 9 7808 0475 3388 5.

Derrida, Jacques. Geneses, Genealogies, Genres and Genius , trans. Beverley Bie Brahic.EdinburghUP. [2006] pp. 96. hb 17.99 ISBN 9 7807 7486 2129 3.

Derrida, Jacques. H.C. for Life, That Is to Say , trans. Laurent Milesi and StefanHerbrechter. StanfordUP. [2006] pp. 192. pb $21.95 ISBN 9 7808 0475 4026.

Deutscher, Penelope. How to Read Derrida. Routledge. [2006] pp. 128. pb $11.95ISBN 9 7803 9332 8790.

Gaston, Sean. The Impossible Mourning of Derrida. Continuum. [2006] pp. 152. hb$29.95 ISBN 0 8264 9035 2.

Gersh, Stephen. Neoplatonism after Derrida: Parellolograms. Brill. [2006] pp. 223. hb$153 ISBN 9 0041 5155 9.

Lawlor, Leonard. The Implications of Immanence: Toward a New Concept of Life.

FordhamUP. [2006] pp. 199. pb $20 ISBN 9 7808 2322 6542.McCance, Dawne, ed. After Derrida , special issue of Mosaic: A Journal for the

Interdisciplinary Study of Literature. 39:iii[2006] pp. 240. pb $22.95 CADISSN 0027 1276.

OConnell, Erin. Heraclitus and Derrida: Presocratic Deconstruction. Peter Lang.[2006] pp. 186. hb $61.95 ISBN 0 8204 7492 4.

20 | Deconstruction


Of D

a mm

a m on

J a n u a r y 3 0 ,2 0 1 4


D o wnl o a d e d

f r om


21/21

Park, Jin Y., ed. Buddhisms and Deconstructions. Rowman & Littleeld. [2006]pp. 290. pb $29.95 ISBN 9 7807 4253 4186.

Powell, Jason. Jacques Derrida: A Biography. Continuum. [2006] pp. 250. pb $19.95

ISBN 0 8264 9002 6.Sallis, John and James Risser, eds. Memorials for Jacques Derrida , special issue of

Research in Phenomenology. 36:i[2006] pp. 358. pb. Online ISSN 1569 1640.Smith, James K. A. Whos Afraid of Postmodernism? Taking Derrida, Lyotard,

and Foucault to Church. Baker Academic. [2006] pp. 156. pb $17.99 ISBN 9 78080102 9189.

Stocker, Barry. Routledge Philosophy Guide Book to Derrida on Deconstruction.Routledge. [2006] pp. 212. pb $27.95 ISBN 9 7804 1532 5028.

Thomas, Michael. The Reception of Derrida: Translation and Transformation.Palgrave. Macmillan. [2006] pp. 190. hb $65 ISBN 9 7814 0398 9925.

Thomassen, Lasse, ed. The Derrida-Habermas Reader . UChicagoP. [2006] pp. 321.pb $29 ISBN 0 2267 9684 1.

Wortham, Simon Morgan. Counter-Institutions: Jacques Derrida and the Question of the University. FordhamUP. [2006] pp. 164. pb $22 ISBN 9 7808 2322 6665.

Deconstruction | 21


Of D

a mm

a m on

J a n u a r y 3 0 ,2 0 1 4


D o wnl o a d e d

f r om

years work crit cult theory 2008 kamuf 1 21

Documents