Derrida: Writing Events

Description

Derrida wrote a vast number of texts for particular events across the world, as well as a series of works that portray him as a voyager. As an Algerian emigre, a postcolonial outsider, and an idiomatic writer who felt tied to a language that was not his own, and as a figure obsessed by the singularity of the literary or philosophical event, Derrida emerges as one whose thought always arrives on occasion. But how are we to understand the event in Derrida? Is there a risk that such stories of Derrida's work tend to misunderstand the essential unpredictability at work in the conditions of his thought? And how are we to reconcile the importance in Derrida of the unknowable event, the pull of the singular, with deconstruction's critical and philosophical rigour and its claims to rethink more systematically the ethico-political field. This book argues that this negotiation in fact allows deconstruction to reformulate the very questions that we associate with ethical and political responsibility and shows this to be the central interest in Derrida's work.

Simon Wortham is Professor of English and co-director of the London Graduate School at Kingston University London, UK.

"What makes Simon Morgan Wortham's work so remarkable and important is his clear and passionate thinking of the unavoidable politics of the institution in his timely study of the ongoing reverberations of the event." - Dr Sean Gaston, Brunel University, UK "A very exciting and important study, which will help to broaden the understanding of Derrida's work as one that is constitutively addressed to a broad public, from whom Derrida received not just solicitations, but also and above all invaluable stimulation and encouragement." - Samuel Weber, Avalon Professor of Humanities, Northwestern University, USA "Simon Morgan-Wortham is emerging as one of the most indispensable critical and political commentators of his generation. Shrewd, lucid, patient and disarmingly competent, his readings are altogether brilliant, staking strong and luminous arguments around Jacques Derrida's pathbreaking work." - Avital Ronell, Professor of German, New York University, USA, and Jacques Derrida Chair, European Graduate School Mention -Book News, February 2009 "Far from being an investigation into the minutiae of a particular strand of philosophical language, or a critique of grammar, Derrida: Writing Events demonstrates a broader and fresher perspective on Derrida, which is skillfully calculated to be neither too broad, nor too dense. For such a short book, this is a veritable achievement; and an ability to handle Derrida without loss of perspective is truly enviable...an important monograph in expounding the meaning of Derrida on the issue of writing events." - Chris Wojtulewicz, University of Birmingham, for Academici