Jacques Derrida and the Humanities: A Critical Reader

Description

The work of Jacques Derrida has transformed our understanding of a range of disciplines in the humanities through its questioning of some of the basic tenets of western metaphysics. This volume is a trans-disciplinary collection dedicated to his work; the assembled contributions - on law, literature, ethics, history, gender, politics and psychoanalysis, among others - constitute an investigation of the role of Derrida's work within the field of humanities, present and future. The volume is distinguished by work on some of his most recent writings, and contains Derrida's own address on 'the future of the humanities'. In addition to its pedagogic interest, this collection of essays attempts to respond to the question: what might be the relation of Derrida, or 'deconstruction' to the future of the humanities? The volume presents the most sustained examples yet of what deconstruction is in its current phase - as well as what its possible future may be.

Tom Cohen is Professor at the Department of English at the State University of New York, Albany. He is the author of Anti-Mimesis (Cambridge, 1994)and Ideology and Inscription (Cambridge, 1998). He is also contributing editor of Material Events: Paul de Man and the Afterlife of Theory (2000).