However widely--and differently--Jacques Derrida may be viewed as a "foundational" French thinker, the most basic questions concerning his work still remain unanswered: Is Derrida a friend of reason, or philosophy, or rather the most radical of skeptics? Are language-related themes--writing, semiosis--his central concern, or does he really write about something else? And does his thought form a system of its own, or does it primarily consist of commentaries on individual texts? This book seeks to address these questions by returning to (...) what it claims is essential history: the development of Derrida's core thought through his engagement with Husserlian phenomenology. Joshua Kates recasts what has come to be known as the Derrida/Husserl debate, by approaching Derrida's thought historically, through its development. Based on this developmental work, Essential History culminates by offering discrete interpretations of Derrida's two book-length 1967 texts, interpretations that elucidate the until now largely opaque relation of Derrida's interest in language to his focus on philosophical concerns. A fundamental reinterpretation of Derrida's project and the works for which he is best known, Kates's study fashions a new manner of working with the French thinker that respects the radical singularity of his thought as well as the often different aims of those he reads. Such a view is in fact "essential" if Derrida studies are to remain a vital field of scholarly inquiry, and if the humanities, more generally, are to have access to a replenishing source of living theoretical concerns. (shrink)

Introduction: Fielding Derrida -- Jacques Derrida's early writings : alongside skepticism, phenomenology -- Analytic philosophy, and literary criticism -- Deconstruction as skepticism -- Derrida, Husserl, and the commentators : a developmental approach -- A transcendental sense of death : Derrida and the philosophy of language -- Literary theory's languages : the deconstruction of sense vs. the deconstruction of reference -- Jacques Derrida and the problem of philosophical and political modernity -- Jacob Klein and Jacques Derrida : the problem of modernity (...) -- Jacob Klein and Jacques Derrida : historicism and history in two interpretations of Husserl's late writings -- Derrida's contribution to phenomenology : a problem of no species -- Foretellese : futures of Derrida and Marx. (shrink)

This article explores what it calls the “documentarist” hypothesis: the belief that the subject matter of history, the past, is structurally absent and thus can be reached only by way of documents, testamentary traces of various sorts . The first part of the article works out the documentarist position through interpretations of creative works that embody it and of a variety of reflections on historiography—those of Michel de Certeau and Paul Ricoeur, as well as some “postmodern historiography.” It argues that (...) documentarism ultimately faces an insoluble problem: it presupposes the pastness of the past, yet it cannot give itself the latter by way of the documents to which it believes itself confined. Documentarism assumes as already at hand a historical-temporal horizon of past, present, and future, for which it itself cannot account. In the second part of the article, accordingly, I turn to the historiographical portion of Faulkner's The Bear to expose the operativity of this always already given temporality. Faulkner's tale gives us access to a more radical historicity than any upon which documentarists reckon; yet this historicity turns out to sit askew from the usual frameworks of history as we know them, especially those of periods and epochs. The tension in Faulkner's own work between periodizing and event-laden explanations, I conclude, points to questions that fall beyond history as currently conceived. (shrink)

There is a lot to like in Neal DeRoo’s Futurityin Phenomenology. In it, he canvases his three titular authors’ treatments of time , and his scholarship on all three is impressive. He shows himself familiar with their most decisive texts on this subject, as well as with much of the relevant secondary literature. His treatment of Husserl is especially noteworthy. DeRoo’s treatment of this subject, which in part draws on his previous publications, equals, if not surpasses, especially in its scope (...) and detail, all others in English that bring Husserl’s work on time together with French “post-Husserlians,” such as Emmanuel Levinas and Jacques Derrida.Along with generally sound presentations of difficult texts, DeRoo also often wrestles admirably with the things themselves. On a number of occasions, having seemingly completed an argument or arrived at a conclusion, he turns around and calls it into question. (Thus, having associated futurity with ethicality, he repeated .. (shrink)

_ Source: _Page Count 25 This article concerns a moment in French intellectual history when the self-evidences of structuralism become doubtful under the pressure exerted by _discourse_; it thus treats a _second turn_ within the linguistic turn as it occurred in France. The work of Emile Benveniste, and texts by Jean-Francois Lyotard and Paul Ricoeur, flesh out this development. I use them, as well as John Searle’s response, to approach anew Derrida’s essay “Signature Event Context.” Derrida’s distance from this second (...) linguistic turn thereby becomes visible, and the distinct status of _discourse_ in Derrida’s own thought emerges. Finally, critiquing Derrida’s folding of discourse into a notion of “signifying form” in SEC, while drawing on his account there of “citationality,” I sketch new directions for conceiving of context and discourse themselves, ones arguably able to withstand Derrida’s express concerns. (shrink)

This article argues that only a developmental approach-one that views Derrida's 1967 work on Husserl, La Voix et la phénomène, in light of Derrida's three earlier encounters with Husserl's work and recognizes significant differences among them-is able to resolve the bitter controversy that has lately surrounded Derrida's Husserl interpretation. After first reviewing the impasse reached in these debates, the need for "a new hermeneutics of deconstruction" is set out, and, then, the reasons why strong development has been rejected internal to (...) Derrida's corpus are discussed. After this, in a discussion of interest with respect to Husserl's own late teachings, as well as Derrida's standpoint, this article focuses on Derrida's 1962 "Introduction to Husserl's Origin." Against the prevailing interpretation, an argument is made showing that Derrida is much closer to Husserl's own positions than has been suspected, most importantly, in section VII of the "Introduction" where the theme of writing is first introduced. Thanks to this, that significant development in Derrida's thought does take place between 1962 and 1967 is demonstrated-and the present piece concludes by providing a brief sketch of the development of deconstruction overall as it came about through Derrida's repeated encounters with Husserlian phenomenology in the years 1954–67. (shrink)

This piece undertakes to sketch the contemporary approaches toward meaning known as pragmatics and semantics. Today, this pairing is associated with a controversy or question that concerns the proposition. Yet, while the pragmatics/semantics debate attests to the proposition's precise status being in doubt, the underlying belief remains that the work of the proposition or something like it – e.g., utterances, a portion of which function propositionally – eventually can be established. Jacques Derrida in his writings on Husserl questions even this (...) assumption. He argues that there is an internal limit to propositionality, thanks to a writing that ultimately exceeds it. Moreover, Derrida focuses on themes that are central for the discussions of semantics and pragmatics, while a good deal of common ground exists between Derrida's interlocutor, Husserl, and the analytic tradition. Accordingly, after here reviewing pragmatics and semantics, and some of the complexity of their relation, I turn to Husserl and to Derrida ultimately for a perspective that calls into doubt these projects as such. (shrink)