This Dictionary offers points of entry into Derrida’s complexand extensive works. This Dictionary offers points of entry into Derrida’scomplex and extensive works. From ‘aporia’ to ‘yes’, the Dictionarysuggests ways into Derrida that show what is at stake in hiswork. Demonstrates that Derrida is not just about philosophy, butalso about politics and pop music. Explains why deconstruction matters, and how Derrida can changethe way you think. The A-Z entries are framed by essays on the inherentinterdisciplinarity of Derrida’s work and on Derrida’srelationship to a range of other thinkers.

In the English-speaking world, Jacques Derrida’s writings have most influenced the discipline of literary studies. Yet what has emerged since the initial phase of Derrida’s influence on the study of English literature, classed under the rubric of deconstruction, has often been disowned by Derrida. What, then, can Derrida teach us about literary language, about the rhetoric of literature, and about questions concerning style, form, and structure? The Derrida Reader draws together a number of Derrida’s most interesting and idiosyncratic essays that treat literary language, the idea of the literary, and questions of poetics and poetry. The essays discuss single tropes or concepts, a figure such as metaphor, the ideas of titles and signatures, proper names, and Derrida’s thinking on such subjects as undecidability or aporia. The editor’s introduction is a demonstration in practice of how Derrida reads and how he adapts the act of reading to the text or figure in question. The introduction also outlines each essay’s main points, its usefulness for reading literary texts, and its particular area of interest. The Derrida Reader thus provides students of literature with a focused, contextualized, and readily understandable volume.

This introduction to practicing literary theory is a reader consisting of extracts from critical analyses, largely by 20th century Anglo-American literary critics, set around major literary texts that undergraduate students are known to be familiar with. It is specifically targeted to present literary criticism through practical examples of essays by literary theorists themselves, on texts both within and outside the literary canon. Four example essays are included for each author/text presented.

Michel Foucault refers to 1965-1970 as, in philosophical terms, 'the five brief, impassioned, jubilant, enigmatic years'. This book reinterprets Jacques Derrida's work from this period, most especially in L'Écriture et la Différence (Writing and Difference), and argues that a transformation takes place here which has been marginalized in readings of his work to date. Irwin follows with a look at how the 'grammatological opening' becomes crucial for Derrida's work in the 1970s and beyond, incorporating one of his last readings of embodiment from 2000. By drawing our attention to the politics of desire and sexuality, this groundbreaking book engages with the work of key continental theorists, including Artaud, Bataille, Nietzsche, Heidegger, Habermas and Cixous, whilst also examining Derrida's relationship with Plato and feminist theory. It will appeal to a wide range of readers within the social sciences and philosophy, particularly those with interests in gender and sexuality, social theory, continental thought, queer studies and literary theory.

This collection of essays introduces the ideas of philosopher Jacques Derrida who exerts a huge influence on literary criticism.

Writing and Difference is widely perceived to be an excellent starting place for those new to Derrida and this Reader's Guide is the perfect accompaniment to the study of one of the most important philosophical works of the 20th Century.

A glossary of words associated with Jacques Derrida accommodating the far-reaching implications of his work This cornucopia of words and definitions intervenes at crucial points of tension across the entire range of Derrida's publications, including those published posthumously. It offers sustained expository engagement with a series of 67 key words - from Aporia to Yes - having significance throughout Derrida's thought and writing. Touching on the literary, as well as on political, aesthetic, phenomenological and psychoanalytic discourses, and tracing how Derrida's own practice of close reading shadows faithfully the texts he reads before producing a breaking point in the logical limits of a given text, each word, the essays illustrate, is not a final word. Instead, each shows itself, through close reading that places the terms, figures, tropes, and motifs in their broader contexts, to be a gateway, opening on to innumerable, interconnected concerns that inform the work of Jacques Derrida.

Jacques Derrida: Law as Absolute Hospitality presents a comprehensive account and understanding of Derrida’s approach to law and justice. Through a detailed reading of Derrida’s texts, Jacques de Ville contends that it is only by way of Derrida's deconstruction of the metaphysics of presence, and specifically in relation to the texts of Husserl, Levinas, Freud and Heidegger - that the reasoning behind his elusive works on law and justice can be grasped. Through detailed readings of texts such as To speculate – on Freud, Adieu, Declarations of Independence, Before the Law, Cogito and the history of madness, Given Time, Force of Law and Specters of Marx, De Ville contends that there is a continuity in Derrida’s thinking, and rejects the idea of an ‘ethical turn’. Derrida is shown to be neither a postmodernist nor a political liberal, but a radical revolutionary. De Ville also controversially contends that justice in Derrida’s thinking must be radically distinguished from Levinas’s reflections on ‘the other’. It is the notion of absolute hospitality - which Derrida derives from Levinas, but radically transforms - that provides the basis of this argument. Justice must on De Ville’s reading be understood in terms of a demand of absolute hospitality which is imposed on both the individual and the collective subject. A much needed account of Derrida's influential approach to law, Jacques Derrida: Law as Absolute Hospitality will be an invaluable resource for those with an interest in legal theory, and for those with an interest in the ethics and politics of deconstruction.

Building on recent investigations into affinities between early German Romanticism and French post-structuralism, this study brings together the work of Jacques Derrida with the writings of one of early Romanticisms most important theorists, Friedrich von Hardenberg (1772-1801), better known as Novalis. In contrast to recent criticism, which traces the historical path from Romanticism to modern theory in broad strokes, this book undertakes comparative readings of Novaliss and Derridas texts on literature and philosophy. The book focuses on the significance both writers accord to paradox and argues that readings which are attuned to paradox can better appreciate the proximity of Romanticism and post- structuralism. As well as their affirmation of paradox, the texts of Novalis and Derrida testify to a profound respect for the Other, and the close readings of selected texts reveal remarkable similarities in their thinking on literature, philosophy and representation, and on the intricate interrelation between language, identity and desire.