This extraordinary book offers a clear and compelling biography of Jacques Derrida along with one of Derrida's strangest and most unexpected texts. Geoffrey Bennington's account of Derrida leads the reader through the philosopher's familiar yet widely misunderstood work on language and writing to the less familiar themes of signature, sexual difference, law, and affirmation. In an unusual and unprecedented "dialogue," Derrida responds to Bennington's text by interweaving Bennington's text with surprising and disruptive "periphrases." Truly original, this dual and dueling text opens new dimensions in Derrida's thought and work. "Bennington is a shrewd and well-informed commentator whose book should do something to convince the skeptics . . . that Jacques Derrida's work merits serious attention."—Christopher Norris, New Statesman &amp; Society "Geoffrey Bennington and Jacques Derrida have presented a fascinating example of what might be called post-structuralist autobiography."—Laurie Volpe, French Review "Bennington's account of what Derrida is up to is better in almost all respects—more intelligent, more plausible, more readable, and less pretentious—than any other I have read."—Richard Rorty, Contemporary Literature

Jacques Derrida (Religion and Postmodernism)

Biographies & Memoirs

DERRIDA, JACQUES

Bennington, Geoffrey

Arts & Literature

University of Chicago Press

This extraordinary book offers a clear and compelling biography of Jacques Derrida along with one of Derrida's strangest and most unexpected texts. Geoffrey Bennington's account of Derrida leads the reader through the philosopher's familiar yet widely misunderstood work on language and writing to the less familiar themes of signature, sexual difference, law, and affirmation. In an unusual and unprecedented "dialogue," Derrida responds to Bennington's text by interweaving Bennington's text with surprising and disruptive "periphrases." Truly original, this dual and dueling text opens new dimensions in Derrida's thought and work. "Bennington is a shrewd and well-informed commentator whose book should do something to convince the skeptics . . . that Jacques Derrida's work merits serious attention."—Christopher Norris, New Statesman &amp; Society "Geoffrey Bennington and Jacques Derrida have presented a fascinating example of what might be called post-structuralist autobiography."—Laurie Volpe, French Review "Bennington's account of what Derrida is up to is better in almost all respects—more intelligent, more plausible, more readable, and less pretentious—than any other I have read."—Richard Rorty, Contemporary Literature

Professionals & Academics

One of the most significant contemporary thinkers in continental philosophy, Jacques Derrida’s work continues to attract heated commentary among philosophers, literary critics, social and cultural theorists, architects and artists. This major new work by world renowned Derrida scholar and translator, Geoffrey Bennington, presents incisive new readings of both Derrida and interpretations of his work. Part one sets out Derrida’s work as a whole and examines its relevance to, and ‘interruption’ of, the traditional domains of ethics, politics and literature. The second part of the book presents compelling insights into some important motifs in Derrida’s work, such as death, friendship, psychoanalysis, time and endings. The final section introduces trenchant appraisals of other influential accounts of Derrida’s work.  This influential and original contribution to the literature on Derrida is marked by a commitment to clarity and accuracy, but also by a refusal to simplify Derrida’s often difficult thought.

Interrupting Derrida (Warwick Studies in European Philosophy)

Politics & Social Sciences

Philosophy

Routledge

Lyotard: Writing the Event

Literature & Fiction

Columbia Univ

Not Half No End: Militantly Melancholic Essays in Memory of Jacques Derrida (The Frontiers of Theory)

Gathers Bennington's essays since the death of his friend Jacques Derrida in 2004. These 16 continue the work of elucidating Derrida's difficult and complex thought, often with reference to his persistent interrogation of the concepts of life and death, mourning and melancholia, and what he sometimes calls 'half-mourning'. Bennington relates these to the core concepts in Derrida's work: deconstruction and différance. Derrida's suspension of the end - in différance, in death - has wide-ranging consequences for our thinking and how we attempt to categorise that thinking, whether as epistemological, ethical, political, aesthetic.Not Half No End moves through Derrida's rich and varied corpus in a weave of styles, from the expository and analytical to the autobiographical and confessional, in the ongoing process of deconstruction.

Arts & Photography

History & Criticism

Edinburgh University Press

Gathers Bennington's essays since the death of his friend Jacques Derrida in 2004. These 16 continue the work of elucidating Derrida's difficult and complex thought, often with reference to his persistent interrogation of the concepts of life and death, mourning and melancholia, and what he sometimes calls 'half-mourning'. Bennington relates these to the core concepts in Derrida's work: deconstruction and différance. Derrida's suspension of the end - in différance, in death - has wide-ranging consequences for our thinking and how we attempt to categorise that thinking, whether as epistemological, ethical, political, aesthetic.Not Half No End moves through Derrida's rich and varied corpus in a weave of styles, from the expository and analytical to the autobiographical and confessional, in the ongoing process of deconstruction.

Scatter 1: The Politics of Politics in Foucault, Heidegger, and Derrida

What if political rhetoric is unavoidable, an irreducible part of politics itself? In contrast to the familiar denunciations of political horse-trading, grandstanding, and corporate manipulation from those lamenting the crisis in liberal democracy, this book argues that the “politics of politics,” usually associated with rhetoric and sophistry, is, like it or not, part of politics from the start.Denunciations of the sorry state of current politics draw on a dogmatism and moralism that share an essentially metaphysical and Platonic ground. Failure to deconstruct that ground generates a philosophically and politically debilitating selfrighteousness that this book attempts to understand and undermine.After a detailed analysis of Foucault’s influential late concept of parrhesia, which is shown to be both philosophically and politically insufficient, close readings of Heidegger, Kierkegaard, and Derrida trace complex relations between sophistry, rhetoric, and philosophy; truth and untruth; decision; madness and stupidity in an exploration of the possibility of developing an affirmative thinking of politics that is not mortgaged to the metaphysics of presence.It is suggested that Heidegger’s complex accounts of truth and decision must indeed be read in close conjunction with his notorious Nazi commitments but nevertheless contain essential insights that many strident responses to those commitments ignore or repress. Those insights are here developed―via an ambitious account of Derrida’s often misunderstood interruption of teleology―into a deconstructive retrieval of the concept of dignity.This lucid and often witty account of a crucial set of developments in twentieth-century thought prepares the way for a more general re-reading of the possibilities of political philosophy that will be undertaken in Volume 2 of this work, under the sign of an essential scatter that defines the political as such.

Fordham University Press

Kant on the Frontier: Philosophy, Politics, and the Ends of the Earth (Lit Z)

Frontier: the border between two countries; the limits of civilization; the bounds of established knowledge; a new field of activity. At a time when all borders, boundaries, margins, and limits are being―often violently―challenged, erased, or reinforced, we must rethink the concept of frontier itself. But is there even such a concept? Through an original and imaginative reading of Kant, Geoffrey Bennington casts doubt upon the conceptual coherence of borders.
The frontier is the very element of Kant’s thought yet the permanent frustration of his conceptuality. Bennington brings out the frontier’s complex, abyssal, fractal structure that leaves a residue of violence in every frontier and complicates Kant’s most rational arguments in the direction of cosmopolitanism and perpetual peace.
Neither a critique of Kant nor a return to Kant, this book proposes a new reflection on philosophical reading, for which thinking the frontier is both essential and a recurrent, fruitful, interruption.

Frontier: the border between two countries; the limits of civilization; the bounds of established knowledge; a new field of activity. At a time when all borders, boundaries, margins, and limits are being―often violently―challenged, erased, or reinforced, we must rethink the concept of frontier itself. But is there even such a concept? Through an original and imaginative reading of Kant, Geoffrey Bennington casts doubt upon the conceptual coherence of borders. The frontier is the very element of Kant’s thought yet the permanent frustration of his conceptuality. Bennington brings out the frontier’s complex, abyssal, fractal structure that leaves a residue of violence in every frontier and complicates Kant’s most rational arguments in the direction of cosmopolitanism and perpetual peace. Neither a critique of Kant nor a return to Kant, this book proposes a new reflection on philosophical reading, for which thinking the frontier is both essential and a recurrent, fruitful, interruption.

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Bennington, Geoffrey. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by Bennington, Geoffrey

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Bennington, Geoffrey. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Jacques Derrida (Religion and Postmodernism)

Jacques Derrida (Religion and Postmodernism)

Interrupting Derrida (Warwick Studies in European Philosophy)

Lyotard: Writing the Event

Not Half No End: Militantly Melancholic Essays in Memory of Jacques Derrida (The Frontiers of Theory)

Not Half No End: Militantly Melancholic Essays in Memory of Jacques Derrida (The Frontiers of Theory)

Scatter 1: The Politics of Politics in Foucault, Heidegger, and Derrida

Scatter 1: The Politics of Politics in Foucault, Heidegger, and Derrida

Kant on the Frontier: Philosophy, Politics, and the Ends of the Earth (Lit Z)

Kant on the Frontier: Philosophy, Politics, and the Ends of the Earth (Lit Z)