Jacques Derrida has had a huge influence on contemporary political theory and political philosophy. Derrida's thinking has inspired Slavoj Zizek, Richard Rorty, Ernesto Laclau, Judith Butler and many more contemporary theorists. This book brings together a first class line up of Derrida scholars to develop a deconstructive approach to politics. Deconstruction examines the internal logic of any given text or discourse. It helps us analyze the contradictions inherent in all schools of thought,and as such it has proved revolutionaty in political (...) analysis,particularly ideology critique. This book is ideal for all students of political theory,and anyone looking for an accessible guide to Derrida's thinking and how it can be used as a radical tool for political analysis. (shrink)

An entirely original approach to deconstruction from a leading academic in the field.

Through an account of Derrida's late text on Paul de Man, ‘“Le Parjure”, Perhaps’, as a deliberately indiscrete confession, this essay considers the wider question of secrecy. It examines an unsuspected institutional history of deconstruction while suggesting a role for secrecy as the necessary condition of any critical reading. Along with De Man, the essay finally revisits the claim for ‘the radical secrecy of fiction’ as a basic structure of phenomena.

This text begins by considering the phrase ‘digital haptology’ as suggested by the closing pages of Derrida's Le Toucher. It suggests that this moment in telecommunications presents a model of ‘tele-haptology’. The text goes on to consider Jean-Luc Nancy's ‘Noli me tangere’ as a response to Le Toucher. In particular it is concerned with Nancy's hypothesis on Modern literature and art as having an essential link to the gospel parables. Through a reading of Nancy's text and the gospels, this hypothesis (...) is placed in doubt. Notably, the argument is made that once again Nancy's discourse on touching leads him to make a too hasty fore-closure of otherness within his intended deconstruction of reading and his account of Mary Magdalene. In response to Nancy's formulation of literature as parable, an alternative consideration of literature as tele-haptology is proposed. (shrink)

This essay takes the Genet column of Derrida's Glas as its point of departure for a wider discussion of Derrida's contribution to thinking on the question of Israel–Palestine. What would it mean for Genet to be at war, encircled or outcast? What of the polemos in Genet, in Derrida, in Glas? How are we to show that what always interests Derrida takes place among the Palestinians? What is the space of literature here? How does Genet explode as Western thought takes (...) a bow? Through a reading of Genet's Prisoner of Love and a number of Derrida's writings on Israel–Palestine, this essay unpacks an important configuration of the biographical, the literary and the philosophical in Glas, which still has profound significance for us 40 years after its original publication. (shrink)

In this book Martin McQuillan brings Derrida's writing into the immediate vicinity of geo-politics today, from the Kosovan conflict to the war in Iraq. The chapters in this book follow both Derrida's writing since Specters of Marx and the present political scene through the former Yogoslavia and Afghanistan to Palestine and Baghdad. His 'textual activism' is as impatient with the universal gestures of philosophy as it is with the complacency and reductionism of policy-makers and activists alike. This work records a (...) response to the war on thinking that has marked western discourse since 9/11. (shrink)

How might we begin to think about deconstruction in relation to the formulation of political policy? Once we begin to ask this question the whole idea of policy as such is put in question and conversely the limitations of philosophy as the basis for political decision making quickly become apparent. Through a consideration of this problem and by reference to a number of key tropes in Derrida's later writings, this essay begins the task of thinking about the deconstruction of policy (...) and of asking what the future role of deconstructive thought might be. (shrink)

First published in 2001. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

This paper attends to the curious affair of Jacques Derrida in Prague when he was arrested by the Czechoslovakian police on charges of drug smuggling. It reads two images by Valerio Adami and Nicolas Poussin, entitled, ‘The Massacre of the Innocents’, Tom Stoppard's play, Professional Foul about dissident philosophers in Prague, and a section from Ken McMullen's film Ghost Dance on Kafka. It turns around the question of what ‘innocence’ might mean in politics and reading.

Drawing together an assemblage of historical and textual reference, this article examines the curious connections between Paul de Man and Leo Strauss. It does not suggest an intellectual affinity between the two men (on the contrary). However, it notes the proximity of both around the question of dialogism in relation to de Man's reading of Rousseau.

Taking Derrida's essay “Psychoanalysis Searches the States of Its Soul: the Impossible Beyond of a Sovereign Cruelty” as my point of departure I would like to discuss three exemplary moments in the performative history of psychoanalysis in America: Freud's 1909 “Introductory Lectures to Psychoanalysis” at Clark University, Lacan's visit to the Yale School in 1975, and Derrida's fictionalization of his travel to America in the “Envois” section of The Post Card. Throughout, I would like to keep at the forefront of (...) our minds the question of cruelty and the unique and unusual place that cruelty plays in both American culture and the history of psychoanalysis in America. (shrink)

In light of recent writing on politics and violence within contemporary continental philosophy, this text revisits Derrida's frequently articulated philosophical opposition to the death penalty. This essay expresses dismay at a certain theoretical discourse today that finds within itself the resources to mount a defence from within the humanities of political violence and by extension an overt justification of the death penalty. Slavoj Žižek's essay on Robespierre is unpicked as one such representative text. It is contrasted to Derrida's scrupulous reading (...) of Kant as an advocate of the death penalty. This essay seeks to name and question a new Maoist, thanato-theological current in contemporary theoretical writing and should be considered as an opening salvo in a sustained future challenge to such thought. (shrink)

Love in the Post: From Plato to Derrida: The Screenplay and Commentary is an original screenplay inspired by Derrida’s The Post Card, together with new critical commentary by the filmmakers and interviews with leading Derrida scholars.

Originally published in French in 1964, Le Parjure represents in fiction the life of celebrated literary theorist Paul de Man. Thomas's novel was the subject of Derrida’s essay ‘Le Parjure, Perhaps’, which is reprinted in this critical edition of the novel. The volume includes essays by J. Hillis Miller, Ellen Burt and Tom Cohen.

The first part of this work addresses the current state of critical theory, and questions the post-ness of the epistemological space after the event of theory as an institutional practice. The second part contains examples of the type of work theory has made possible, demonstrating the new directions opening up both within theory itself and in cross-disciplinary study as a result of theory. In this sense, post can be understood to be in dialogue with issues relating to postmodernism, post-Marxism and (...) post-feminism. (shrink)

Étienne Balibar has provided a sustained commentary on the politics of Greece and its relation to the European Union. This writing is a practical mobiliza­tion of Balibar’s theoretical work on universalism and European identities. This essay questions some of the assumptions that provide a seeming confidence in Balibar’s decision-making with respect to Greece that are not found elsewhere in his work. It goes on to explore the questions of balance and calculation in Balibar and in writing on politics more generally.

The text by Derrida entitled, in English, Touching On – Jean-Luc Nancy is a text about neither ‘touching’ nor Jean-Luc Nancy, in any easy sense. Derrida never really gets started with touch and goes out of his way to correct Nancy's use of the term ‘deconstruction’. Following some exemplary cases of this in the book, this article demonstrates the technical differences between Derrida and Nancy that the former is keen to impress upon his readers.

In these essays, a range of leading scholars seek both to investigate the historical, institutional and philosophical origins of deconstruction and to think through the problem of the idea of origin itself"--Provided by publisher.

This article begins from a consideration of this issue’s contention that ‘central to politicized academic projects … is a critique of the cultural power of institutions’ and in particular pedagogical institutions. It argues that is clear enough what the Editor is thinking of here: he names ‘cultural studies’ as his prime suspect and from here it is not too far a leap to imagine that the pedagogical institution at which his ‘politicized academic projects’ take aim is the university. The article (...) concedes that this might all appear to be superficially true, and that much of what is argued in it will up hold this hypothesis. However, the article does not wish to rush too quickly towards an unproblematic equation of cultural studies, or the ‘politicized academic project’ of a critical study of culture with something like a pedagogy of the popular. Equally, it proposes, we must distinguish rigorously between ‘a pedagogy of the popular’, pedagogy able to treat the popular, popular pedagogy, and popular culture as such. In this respect it argues that we would not wish to foreclose the impertinent question of ‘what is cultural studies?’ too early in an understanding of what it might mean to offer an institutional critique that takes the form of pedagogy. Much will depend upon what we mean by these vaguest of terms ‘culture’, ‘education’, ‘power’ and ‘pedagogy’ itself, none of which is at all straightforward even though a certain normative discourse renders such terms the cornerstone of national policy debates through which billions of human and financial capital are routed. The stakes in fact could not be higher in a ‘critique of the cultural power of [pedagogical] institutions’. Therefore, it is crucial that we make the effort to understand, or at least begin to unpack, a conjunction such as the one Bowman offers here that amalgamates ‘politicized academic projects such as cultural studies and politicized work in cultural theory and philosophy’. It argues that we will not be able to progress to a wider schema until we have some leverage on this relation. And this is what this article seeks to provide. (shrink)