Table Of ContentINTERRUPTING DERRIDA
Whether he is elucidating tricky passages in Derrida’s texts,
confronting large issues such as the relation of deconstruction to
politics and ethics, or gently correcting the misreadings of other
commentators, Geoffrey Bennington is always a highly reliable and
often an extremely entertaining guide. There are few readers of
Derrida who achieve such fidelity to the windings of his thought.
Derek Attridge, University of York
Jacques Derrida’s work continues to attract heated commentary and debate
among philosophers, literary critics, social and cultural theorists, architects and
artists. Interrupting Derrida, a major new book by Geoffrey Bennington, renowned
Derrida scholar and translator of Derrida’s work, presents incisive new readings
of both Derrida and interpretations of Derrida’s work.
Part I lays 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 provides compelling insights into some important motifs
in Derrida’s work, such as death, friendship, psychoanalysis, time and endings.
The final section presents some trenchant appraisals of other influential accounts
of Derrida’s work.
Throughout, Interrupting Derrida is marked by a commitment to clarity and
accuracy, but also by a refusal to simplify Derrida’s often difficult thought.
Interrupting Derrida will be of great interest to all readers of Derrida, conti
nental philosophy, and literary and cultural theory.
Geoffrey Bennington is Professor of French at the University of Sussex. His
previous publications include Legislations: The Politics of Deconstruction and Jacques
Derrida.
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INTERRUPTING
DERRIDA
Geoffrej Bennington
s' Routledge
o Taylor Si Francis Group
LONDON AND NEW YORK
First published 2000
by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon 0X14 4RN
Simultancously published in the USA and Canada
by Routledge
711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business
© 2000 Geoffrey Bennington
Typeset in Perpetua by Taylor & Francis Books Ltd
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced
or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means,
now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording,
or in any information storage or retrieval system,
without permission in writing from the publishers.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
Bennington, Geoffrey.
Interrupting Derrida / Geoffrey Bennington.
p. cm. — (Warwick studies in European philosophy)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
1. Derrida, Jacques. I. Title. II. Series.
B2430.D484 B457 2000
194—dc21 99-056919
ISBN 0-415-22426-8 (hbk)
ISBN 0-415-22427-6 (pbk)
FOR ALICE
This page intentionally left blank
CONTENTS
Acknowledgements ix
Abbreviations xi
Introduction 1
PART I
Pedagogics 5
1 ‘Jacques Derrida’ 7
2 Derrida and politics 18
3 Deconstruction and ethics 34
4 Derrida’s Mallarmé 47
PART II
Allographics 59
5 R.I.P. 61
6 X 76
7 Circanalysis (The thing itself) 93
8 Forever friends 110
9 Is it time? 128
10 Almost the end 141
vii
CONTENTS
PART III
Philopolemics 153
11 Genuine Gasche (perhaps) 155
12 Emergencies 162
13 An idea of syntax 180
Notes 197
Index 231
viii
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Several chapters of this book have been published elsewhere: details are given in
the first footnote to each chapter. Acknowledgements are due to the following:
Blackwell Publishers for Chapter 1; Cambridge University Press for Chapter 2;
Macmillan for Chapters 3 and 6; Exeter University Press for Chapter 4; Stanford
University Press for Chapter 5; Imprimatur for Chapter 11; and The Otford Literary
Review for Chapter 12.
Colleagues and friends too numerous to mention have helped me in many
ways in the completion of this book. My thanks go especially to a succession of
graduate students at the University of Sussex with whom I have developed and
refined many of the points that appear in these essays. Special thanks to Benjamin
Roberts for his invaluable bibliographical assistance in the preparation of the final
typescript.
St Gervais des Sablons
August 1999
ix
