Derrida, Responsibility and Politics

Derrida, Responsibility and Politics PDF Author: Morag Patrick
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 0429865287
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 240

Get Book Here

Book Description
Published in 1997, Jacques Derrida's ’deconstructive method’ or ’deconstructionism’ is renowned as a species of anarchic free play, an antifoundationalism which can only end in a ruinous irrationalism and thereby the denial of all possibility of discrimination or judgement. In this book, Morag Patrick argues that far from having abandoned critique, Derrida's questioning of Western metaphysics responds to an ethical injunction, to a duty to recall the necessary incalculability of moral and political responsibility. In the first part of the study, Patrick examines the philosophical background to and the basic features of deconstruction. Derrida is located in a tradition of thinkers for whom the question of the possibility of philosophy is fundamental. The deconstructive endeavour is then explained as an attempt to secure a question that would further and transform thinking, a question that would no longer be philosophy's question. Patrick maintains that Derrida's strategy to this end is not anarchic, but rather adheres to strict protocols of reading. Subsequently, the ethical and political implications of this manner of reading are pursued. It is shown that if Derrida undermines the certainty with which we may assume moral and political responsibilities, if he establishes the essential excessiveness of responsibility, he does so in order to effect judgement and not to annul it.

Derrida, Responsibility and Politics

Derrida, Responsibility and Politics PDF Author: Morag Patrick
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 0429865287
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 240

Get Book Here

Book Description
Published in 1997, Jacques Derrida's ’deconstructive method’ or ’deconstructionism’ is renowned as a species of anarchic free play, an antifoundationalism which can only end in a ruinous irrationalism and thereby the denial of all possibility of discrimination or judgement. In this book, Morag Patrick argues that far from having abandoned critique, Derrida's questioning of Western metaphysics responds to an ethical injunction, to a duty to recall the necessary incalculability of moral and political responsibility. In the first part of the study, Patrick examines the philosophical background to and the basic features of deconstruction. Derrida is located in a tradition of thinkers for whom the question of the possibility of philosophy is fundamental. The deconstructive endeavour is then explained as an attempt to secure a question that would further and transform thinking, a question that would no longer be philosophy's question. Patrick maintains that Derrida's strategy to this end is not anarchic, but rather adheres to strict protocols of reading. Subsequently, the ethical and political implications of this manner of reading are pursued. It is shown that if Derrida undermines the certainty with which we may assume moral and political responsibilities, if he establishes the essential excessiveness of responsibility, he does so in order to effect judgement and not to annul it.

The Politics and Pedagogy of Mourning

The Politics and Pedagogy of Mourning PDF Author: Timothy Secret
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 1472575156
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 293

Get Book Here

Book Description
Jacques Derrida famously stated in Specters of Marx that a justice worthy of the name must call us to render justice not only to the living but also to the dead. In The Politics and Pedagogy of Mourning, Timothy Secret argues that offering a persuasive account of such a duty requires establishing a discussion among the 20th century's three key thinkers on death – Heidegger, Levinas and Freud. Despite arguing that none of these three figures' discourses offers us a complete account of our duty to the dead and that it remains impossible to unify them into a single, consistent and correct approach, Secret nevertheless offers an account of how Derrida managed to produce an always singular articulation of these discourses in each of the acts of eulogy he offered for his philosophical contemporaries. This is one of the first monographs to pay particular attention to the key role any contemporary account of the ethics of eulogy must grant to the revolutionary theoretical work on the materiality of crypts and phantoms offered by the psychoanalysts Nicolas Abraham and Maria Torok. Their work is shown to supplement major limitations in traditional philosophical accounts of the ethical relation. The account of eulogy as a privileged space where different discourses act on each other under the pressure of responding responsibly to an always singular loss proves itself essential reading not only for those interested in understanding Derrida's overtly political works, but also offers an account of a performative training in negotiating aporias that arise in political society – the result of which is a pedagogy in the art of civility whose relevance today is more timely than ever.

Derrida and the Time of the Political

Derrida and the Time of the Political PDF Author: Suzanne Guerlac
Publisher: Duke University Press
ISBN: 0822390094
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 354

Get Book Here

Book Description
An intellectual event, Derrida and the Time of the Political marks the first time since Jacques Derrida’s death in 2004 that leading scholars have come together to critically assess the philosopher’s political and ethical writings. Skepticism about the import of deconstruction for political thought has been widespread among American critics since Derrida’s work became widely available in English in the late 1970s. While Derrida expounded political and ethical themes from the late 1980s on, there has been relatively little Anglo-American analysis of that later work or its relation to the philosopher’s entire corpus. Filling a critical gap, this volume provides multiple perspectives on the political turn in Derrida’s work, showing how deconstruction bears on political theory and real-world politics. The contributors include distinguished scholars of deconstruction whose thinking developed in close proximity to Derrida’s, as well as leading political theorists and philosophers who engage Derrida’s thought from further afield. The volume opens with a substantial introduction in which Pheng Cheah and Suzanne Guerlac survey Derrida’s entire corpus and position his later work in relation to it. The remaining essays address the concerns that arise out of Derrida’s analysis of politics and the conditions of the political, such as the meaning and scope of democracy, the limits of sovereignty, the relationship between the ethical and the political, the nature of responsibility, the possibility for committed political action, the implications of deconstructive thought for non-Western politics, and the future of nationalism in an era of globalization and declining state sovereignty. The collection is framed by original contributions from Hélène Cixous and Judith Butler. Contributors. Étienne Balibar, Geoffrey Bennington, Wendy Brown, Judith Butler, Pheng Cheah, Hélène Cixous, Rodolphe Gasché, Suzanne Guerlac, Marcel Hénaff, Martin Jay, Anne Norton, Jacques Rancière, Soraya Tlatli, Satoshi Ukai

Deconstruction and Democracy

Deconstruction and Democracy PDF Author: Alex Thomson
Publisher: A&C Black
ISBN: 1847141439
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 237

Get Book Here

Book Description
'No democracy without deconstruction': Deconstruction and Democracy evaluates and substantiates Derrida's provocative claim, assessing the importance of this influential and controversial contemporary philosopher's work for political thought. Derrida addressed political questions more and more explicitly in his writing, yet there is still confusion over the politics of deconstruction. Alex Thomson argues for a fresh understanding of Derrida's work, which acknowledges both the political dimension of deconstruction and its potential contribution to our thinking about politics. The book provides cogent analysis and exegesis of Derrida's political writings; explores the implications for political theory and practice of Derrida's work; and brings Derrida's work into dialogue with other major strands of contemporary political thought. Deconstruction and Democracy is the clearest and most detailed engagement available with the politics of deconstruction, and is a major contribution to scholarship on the later works of Jacques Derrida, most notably his Politics of Friendship.

Politics of Deconstruction

Politics of Deconstruction PDF Author: Susanne Lüdemann
Publisher: Stanford University Press
ISBN: 9780804784139
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 0

Get Book Here

Book Description
The book offers a new introduction to Jacques Derrida and to Deconstruction as an important strand of Continental Philosophy. From his early writings on phenomenology and linguistics to his later meditations on war, terrorism, and justice, Jacques Derrida (1930–2004) achieved prominence on an international scale by addressing as many different audiences as he did topics. Yet despite widespread acclamation, his work has never been considered easy. Rendering accessible debates that marked more than four decades of engagement and inquiry, Susanne Lüdemann traces connections between the philosopher's own texts and those of his many interlocutors, past and present. Unlike conventional introductions, Politics of Deconstruction offers a number of personal approaches to reading Derrida and invites readers to find their own. Emphasizing the relationship between philosophy and politics, it shows that, with Deconstruction, there is much more at stake than an "academic" discussion, for Derrida's work deals with all the burning political and intellectual challenges of our time. The author's own professional experience in both the United States and in Europe, which particularly inform her chapter on Derrida's reception in the United States, opens a unique perspective on a unique thinker, one that rewards specialists and newcomers alike.

Badiou and Derrida

Badiou and Derrida PDF Author: Antonio Calcagno
Publisher: A&C Black
ISBN: 1441158952
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 147

Get Book Here

Book Description
This exciting new book makes a major contribution to Continental philosophy, bringing together for the first time the crucial work on politics by two giants of contemporary French philosophy, Jacques Derrida and Alain Badiou. Derrida has long been recognised as one of the most influential and indeed controversial thinkers in contemporary philosophy and Badiou is fast emerging as a central figure in French thought, as well as in Anglo-American philosophy - his magnum opus, Being and Event, and its long-awaited sequel, Logics of Worlds, have confirmed his position as one of the most significant thinkers working in philosophy today. Both philosophers have devoted a substantial amount of their oeuvre to politics and the question of the nature of the political. Here Antonio Calcagno shows how the political views of these two major thinkers diverge and converge, thus providing a comprehensive exposition of their respective political systems. Both Badiou and Derrida give the event a central role in structuring politics and political thinking and Calcagno advances a theory about the relationship between political events and time that can account for both political undecidability and decidability. This book navigates some very intriguing developments in Continental thought and offers a clear and fascinating account of the political theories of two major contemporary thinkers.

Adieu to Emmanuel Levinas

Adieu to Emmanuel Levinas PDF Author: Jacques Derrida
Publisher: Stanford University Press
ISBN: 9780804732758
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 172

Get Book Here

Book Description
This volume contains the speech given by Derrida at Emmanuel Levinas’s funeral on December 27, 1995, and his contribution to a colloquium organized to mark the first anniversary of Levinas’s death. In this book, Derrida extends his work on Levinas in previously unexplored directions via a radical rereading of Totality and Infinity and the lesser-known Talmudic writings.

The Politics of Friendship

The Politics of Friendship PDF Author: Jacques Derrida
Publisher: Verso Books
ISBN: 1788738594
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 321

Get Book Here

Book Description
The most influential of contemporary philosophers, Jacques Derrida, explores the idea of friendship—and its political consequences, past and future—through writings by Aristotle, Nietzsche, Cicero, and more. Until relatively recently, Jacques Derrida was seen by many as nothing more than the high priest of Deconstruction, by turns stimulating and fascinating, yet always somewhat disengaged from the central political questions of our time. Or so it seemed. Derrida’s “political turn,” marked especially by the appearance of Specters of Marx, has surprised some and delighted others. In The Politics of Friendship Derrida renews and enriches this orientation through an examination of the political history of the idea of friendship pursued down the ages. Derrida’s thoughts are haunted throughout the book by the strange and provocative address attributed to Aristotle, “my friends, there is no friend” and its inversions by later philosophers such as Montaigne, Kant, Nietzsche, Schmitt and Blanchot. The exploration allows Derrida to recall and restage the ways in which all the oppositional couples of Western philosophy and political thought—friendship and enmity, private and public life—have become madly and dangerously unstable. At the same time he dissects genealogy itself, the familiar and male-centered notion of fraternity and the virile virtue whose authority has gone unquestioned in our culture of friendship and our models of democracy The future of the political, for Derrida, becomes the future of friends, the invention of a radically new friendship, of a deeper and more inclusive democracy. This remarkable book, his most profoundly important for many years, offers a challenging and inspiring vision of that future.

Derrida After the End of Writing

Derrida After the End of Writing PDF Author: Clayton Crockett
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780823277841
Category : Political science
Languages : en
Pages : 183

Get Book Here

Book Description
This book offers a new materialist interpretation of Derrida's later work, including his engagements with religion and politics. It argues that there is a shift from a context or background motor scheme of writing to what Derrida calls the machinic, and Catherine Malabou calls plasticity.

Ethics, Politics, Subjectivity

Ethics, Politics, Subjectivity PDF Author: Simon Critchley
Publisher: Verso
ISBN: 9781859842461
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 326

Get Book Here

Book Description
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? These questions are approached by way of a critical confrontation with a number of major thinkers, including Lacan, Genet, Blanchot, Nancy, Rorty and, in particular, Levinas and Derrida. Critchley offers a critical reconstruction of Levinas's notion of ethical experience and, questioning the religious pietism and political conservatism of the dominant interpretation of Levinas's work, develops an ethics of finitude which, far from being tragic, opens on to an experience of humour and the comic. Using this reading of Levinas as a way of unlocking the rich ethical potential of Derrida's work, Critchley outlines and defends the political possibilities of deconstruction. On the basis of Derrida's recent work, Critchley attempts to rethink notions of friendship, democracy, economics and technology.