What would political thought look like without the foundation of ethics? Drawing on the work of Emmanuel Levinas, Jacques Derrida and Jean-Luc Nancy, Madeleine Fagan puts forward a radical and ...far-reaching refusal of foundational ethics. Instead, she proposes an account of the inseparability of ethics and politics. The 'ethical' should not be understood as a label; it does not mean 'good' or 'right', it is not an evaluation or guide. Rather, both the ethical and the political are descriptions of the context in which we find ourselves. The book highlights the necessity of a practice-based rethinking of the relationship between ethics and politics and so denaturalises a series of commonplaces about poststructuralist ethics.
An expanded edition of the first book to argue for the ethical turn in Derrida's workNew for this editionThis third edition contains three new texts, and a new preface where Critchley reflects upon ...the origins, motivation and reception ofThe Ethics of Deconstruction
The Ethics of Deconstruction, Simon Critchley's first book, was originally published to great acclaim in 1992. It was the first book to argue for the ethical turn in Derrida's work and to show as powerfully as possible how deconstruction has persuasive ethical consequences that are vital to our thinking through of questions of politics and democracy. Rather than being concerned with deconstruction in terms of the contradictions inherent in any text - an approach typical of the early Derrida and those in literary criticism aiming to extract a critical method for an application to literature - Critchley concerns himself with the philosophical context necessary for an understanding of the ethics of deconstructive reading. Far from being some sort of value-free nihilism or textual free-play, Critchley showed the ethical impetus that was driving Derrida's work. His claim was that Derrida's understanding of ethics has to be understood in relation to his engagement with the work of Levinas and the book lays out the details of their philosophical confrontation.
« Perdre la tête, ne plus savoir où donner de la tête, tel est peut-être l’effet de la dissémination ». Seize ans après sa mort, hériter de Jacques Derrida signifie hériter de sa philosophie de ...l’héritage dont l’autre nom serait dissémination, in(ter)vention par-delà le connu et le déterminé, au-delà du sens et du signe. Mais dans le vivant, rien que dans le vivant, car le séminal ne fait jamais oublier son acception la plus organique. Parce que Jacques Derrida résistait à séparer le penser du vécu, hériter de sa pensée opère dans l’expérience et l’épreuve de nos vies. Ce que montre la série de textes ici réunis. Dans son parti pris pour penser une mémoire comme dynamis, ce volume souhaite montrer comment la constellation conceptuelle et épistémologique inaugurée par Jacques Derrida a pu être efficace dans les différentes sciences humaines et sociales, autant pour en ouvrir les méthodologies que pour aider à la compréhension des transformations socio-politiques contemporaines (les nouvelles formes de terrorisme, les migrations, les nouvelles technologies, le biopolitique…).
Is Europe’s crisis merely a financial one? Tackling issues ranging from Europe’s legal, institutional and cultural identity to its border, citizenship and integration policies, and looking forward to ...its legacy for the future, the contributors to this volume interrogate the various dimensions and contours of the European crisis. By revisiting Derrida’s diagnosis of the crisis of European identity, they simultaneously propose a new direction for Europe, and an alternative response to today’s crisis.
Since the late 1980s, much of the debate on sustainability has been dominated by ecological perspectives. However, the last decade has seen an increasing interest in the social aspects of ...sustainability. While, to some extent, general consensus has been reached regarding the definitions of ecological sustainability, the definition of social sustainability is still in the making. Therefore, there is a need for conceptual frameworks and theoretical constructs in order to develop the understanding of social sustainability further. This article addresses the lack of theorisation and is composed of three different sections. The first section is a literature overview covering some of the most influential texts on social sustainability. The second section introduces and relates a number of existing, polemically constructed theoretical frameworks. In the third section, Jacques Derrida's theory of différance is used to suggest a way of understanding the relationship between the oppositional positions identified in the frameworks.
Few thinkers of the latter half of the twentieth century have so profoundly and radically transformed our understanding of writing and literature as Jacques Derrida (1930–2004). Derridian ...deconstruction remains one of the most powerful intellectual movements of the present century, and Derrida's own innovative writings on literature and philosophy are crucially relevant for any understanding of the future of literature and literary criticism today. Derrida's own manner of writing is complex and challenging and has often been misrepresented or misunderstood. In this book, Leslie Hill provides an accessible introduction to Derrida's writings on literature which presupposes no prior knowledge of Derrida's work. He explores in detail Derrida's relationship to literary theory and criticism, and offers close readings of some of Derrida's best known essays. This introduction will help those coming to Derrida's work for the first time, and suggests further directions to take in studying this hugely influential thinker.
Entre justification et explication, entre dire et faire, la destruction. Est-ce une chose ou un événement ? Un geste, une œuvre ou une opération ? Un thème ou un titre ? Est-ce même bien un mot ? ...Qu’appelle-t-on, ce sera là ma question, destruction ? Avec Heidegger, Derrida en appelle à la destruction. Oui, à la destruction. L’a-t-on entendu ? Comme Heidegger (et c’est aussi ce « comme » qu’il s’agira d’examiner ici), Derrida nomme et renomme la destruction. Il lui donne le temps et le nom, une renommée. Il la surnomme — déconstruction, par exemple, ou, plus tard, « mal d’archive ». Comme Heidegger, Derrida travaille, traduit et retraduit la destruction, faisant parfois comme si tous ses mots, tous les mots et les phrases qu’il propose et déploie sur et à propos de la destruction, entretenaient des rapports sans rapport, rapports déjà trop clairs, ou encore bien obscurs. Qu’appelle-t-on destruction ? Après Heidegger, Derrida s’y est attardé, lui qui parlait, encore et encore, de destination et de destruction, lui qui nous a rappelé si souvent à la destruction qui arrive, partout où elle arrive. Posons que c’était l’un de ses combats, l’une de ses longues guerres (avec luimême, d’abord, et avec la destruction). Sera-ce finalement la nôtre ? Est-il aujourd’hui temps de penser — après Heidegger, avec Derrida —, temps de combattre aussi peut-être, au moins d’écouter, la destruction qui vient ? Est-il encore temps de témoigner de la destruction qui croît ?
E. Lygizos’ The Boy Eats the Food of the Bird (2012) and P. Koutras’ Xenia (2014) narrate, among other things, the starving and the alimentary obsessions of their young protagonists. This new ...eating-the-Greek-way meets the concept of philoxenia that is thought of as the very condition of Greekness itself. Doing so, they clarify the hostipitality of Greece as homeland, a site or territory.
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