The long-awaited conclusion to Derrida’s seminar on the gift and time.In 1991, Jacques Derrida published the first half of a seminar delivered from 1978 to 1979 on gifts and time, but the second installment (though expected) was not completed in his lifetime. Given Time II completes the seminar with eight sessions that showcase Derrida’s most advanced work on the problematic of the gift in Heidegger, with deep dives into some of the most difficult texts in...

Interpretations of Plato, Stéphane Mallarmé, and Philippe Sollers' writings in three essays: "Plato's Pharmacy," "The Double Session," and "Dissemination.""The English version of Dissemination [is] an able translation by Barbara Johnson . . . Derrida's central contention is that language is haunted by dispersal, absence, loss, the risk of unmeaning, a risk which is starkly embodied in all writing. The distinction between philosophy and literature therefore ...

The translated, complete text of Derrida's 1997 ten-hour address, "The Autobiographical Animal," focusing on the industrialized treatment of animals.The Animal That Therefore I Am is at once an affectionate look back over the multiple roles played by animals in Derrida's work and a profound philosophical investigation and critique of the relegation of animal life that takes place as a result of the distinction?dating from Descartes?between man as thinking a...

"An important contribution to the critical study of ethics . . . [for those] made curious by the controversy that . . . attends Derrida." — Booklist, on the first editionThe Gift of Death, Jacques Derrida's most sustained consideration of religion, explores questions first introduced in his book Given Time about the limits of the rational and responsible that one reaches in granting or accepting death, whether by sacrifice, murder, executi...

Throughout his long career, Jacques Derrida had a close, collaborative relationship with Critical Inquiry and its editors. He saved some of his most important essays for the journal, and he relished the ensuing arguments and polemics that stemmed from the responses to his writing that Critical Inquiry encouraged. Collecting the best of Derrida's work that was published in the journal between 1980 and 2002, Signature Derrida provides a remarkable introduction to t...

A significant event in Derrida scholarship, this book marks the first publication of his long-lost philosophical text known only as "Geschlecht III." The third, and arguably the most significant, piece in his four-part Geschlecht series, it fills a gap that has perplexed Derrida scholars. The series centers on Martin Heidegger and the enigmatic German word Geschlecht, which has several meanings pointing to race, sex, and lineage. Throughout the series, Derrida engages wit...

The eminent philosopher pays homage to his beloved French city and the philosophical friendships he had there—"an illuminating addition to his legacy" ( The Times Literary Supplement).A towering figure in twentieth-century philosophy, Jacques Derrida was born in Algeria, but spent four decades living in the French city of Strasbourg, located on the border between France and Germany. This moving collection of writings and interviews about his life there ope...

Published shortly after the fall of Communism in Eastern Europe and the dissolution of the Soviet regime, Specters of Marx is one of Derrida's most interesting and prophetic books. Whilst many in the West heralded the triumph of liberal democracy and “the end of history”, Derrida takes several steps back to argue that whilst Communism may have disappeared in much of the world, the questions posed by Marx continue to haunt us.In his customary provocative style, he asks some...

Three renowned philosophers discuss the work of Martin Heidegger, and the moral quandary of engaging with a major philosopher who was also a Nazi.In February 1988, philosophers Jacques Derrida, Hans-Georg Gadamer, and Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe came together in Heidelberg before a large audience to discuss the philosophical and political implications of Martin Heidegger's thought. Heidegger's involvement in Nazism has always been an unsettling stain on his legacy. Bu...

First published in 1992. "Acts of Literature", compiled in close association with Derrida, brings together for the first time a number of Derrida's writings on literary texts on the question of literature. The essays discuss literary figures such as Rousseau, Mallarme, Joyce, Shakespeare and Kafka. Comprising pieces spanning Derrida's career, the collection includes a substantial new interview with him on questions of literature, deconstruction, politics, feminism and history. Derek Attrid...

In this newest installment in Chicago’s series of Jacques Derrida’s seminars, the renowned philosopher attempts one of his most ambitious goals: the first truly philosophical argument against the death penalty. While much has been written against the death penalty, Derrida contends that Western philosophy is massively, if not always overtly, complicit with a logic in which a sovereign state has the right to take a life. Haunted by this notion, he turns to the key places where such logic ha...

Jacques Derrida remains a leading voice of philosophy, his works still resonating today—and for more than three decades, one of the main sites of Derridean deconstruction has been the arts. Collecting nineteen texts spanning from 1979 to 2004, Thinking out of Sight brings to light Derrida's most inventive ideas about the making of visual artworks.The book is divided into three sections. The first demonstrates Derrida's preoccupation with visibility, image, and space. The se...