Jacques Derrida, the French philosopher, developed his critical technique known as 'deconstruction'. His work is associated with ideas surrounding both post-structuralism and post-modern philosophy, and he was known to have challenged some of the unquestioned assumptions of our philosophical tradition. In this Very Short Introduction, Simon Glendinning explores both the difficulty and significance of the work of Derrida. He presents Derrida's challenging ideas as making a significant contribution to, and providing a powerful reading of, our philosophical heritage. Defending Derrida against many of the charges that were placed against him, he attempts to show why Derrrida's work causes such extreme reactions. Glendinning explains Derrida's distinctive mode of engagement with our philosophical tradition, and shows that this is not a merely negative thing. By exploring his most famous and influential texts, Glendinning shows how and why Derrida's work of deconstruction is inspired not by a 'critical frenzy', but by a loving respect for philosophy. ABOUT THE SERIES: The Very Short Introductions series from Oxford University Press contains hundreds of titles in almost every subject area. These pocket-sized books are the perfect way to get ahead in a new subject quickly. Our expert authors combine facts, analysis, perspective, new ideas, and enthusiasm to make interesting and challenging topics highly readable.

A collection of three interviews granted by Derrida that serve to clarify his thought and writing.

Speech and phenomena.--Form and meaning.--Differance.

Philosopher, film star, father of “post truth”—the real story of Jacques Derrida Who is Jacques Derrida? For some, he is the originator of a relativist philosophy responsible for the contemporary crisis of truth. For the far right, he is one of the architects of Cultural Marxism. To his academic critics, he reduced French philosophy to “little more than an object of ridicule.” For his fans, he is an intellectual rock star who ranged across literature, politics, and linguistics. In An Event, Perhaps, Peter Salmon presents this misunderstood and misappropriated figure as a deeply humane and urgent thinker for our times. Born in Algiers, the young Jackie was always an outsider. Despite his best efforts, he found it difficult to establish himself among the Paris intellectual milieu of the 1960s. However, in 1967, he changed the whole course of philosophy: outlining the central concepts of deconstruction. Immediately, his reputation as a complex and confounding thinker was established. Feted by some, abhorred by others, Derrida had an exhaustive breadth of interests but, as Salmon shows, was moved by a profound desire to understand how we engage with each other. It is a theme explored through Derrida’s intimate relationships with writers such as Althusser, Genet, Lacan, Foucault, Cixous, and Kristeva. Accessible, provocative and beautifully written, An Event, Perhaps will introduce a new readership to the life and work of a philosopher whose influence over the way we think will continue long into the twenty-first century.

First published in 1967, Writing and Difference, a collection of Jacques Derrida's essays written between 1959 and 1966, has become a landmark of contemporary French thought. In it we find Derrida at work on his systematic deconstruction of Western metaphysics. The book's first half, which includes the celebrated essay on Descartes and Foucault, shows the development of Derrida's method of deconstruction. In these essays, Derrida demonstrates the traditional nature of some purportedly nontraditional currents of modern thought—one of his main targets being the way in which "structuralism" unwittingly repeats metaphysical concepts in its use of linguistic models. The second half of the book contains some of Derrida's most compelling analyses of why and how metaphysical thinking must exclude writing from its conception of language, finally showing metaphysics to be constituted by this exclusion. These essays on Artaud, Freud, Bataille, Hegel, and Lévi-Strauss have served as introductions to Derrida's notions of writing and différence—the untranslatable formulation of a nonmetaphysical "concept" that does not exclude writing—for almost a generation of students of literature, philosophy, and psychoanalysis. Writing and Difference reveals the unacknowledged program that makes thought itself possible. In analyzing the contradictions inherent in this program, Derrida foes on to develop new ways of thinking, reading, and writing,—new ways based on the most complete and rigorous understanding of the old ways. Scholars and students from all disciplines will find Writing and Difference an excellent introduction to perhaps the most challenging of contemporary French thinkers—challenging because Derrida questions thought as we know it.

How does one start with Derrida? In this exciting and accessible book, Sean Gaston presents a new kind of introduction to Jacques Derrida, arguably the most important and influential European thinker of the last century. Derrida claimed that 'However old I am, I am on the threshold of reading Plato and Aristotle ... we need to read them again and again and again.' In Starting with Derrida, Gaston introduces all Derrida's major works and ideas by tracing Derrida's reading (and re-reading) of Plato, Aristotle and Hegel throughout his writings. Starting with Derrida argues for the importance of the relationship between philosophy, literature and history in Derrida's work and addresses all the key concepts in Derrida's thought, including his work on time and space, being and the soul, sensation and thought, history and literature, the concept and the name. The book encourages the reader to enter Derrida's varied and complex legacy through the moments in Derrida's work that are concerned with the question of origins and beginnings. By actively engaging with Derrida's ideas in this way, Gaston reveals a new and highly original reading of Derrida's work and provides a useful introduction to his entire corpus. This exciting new book is essential reading for students of philosophy and literary theory and, indeed, anyone interested in the work of this hugely important thinker.

The documentary comic books of the For Beginners series deal with complex and serious subjects. They attempt to untimidate and uncomplicate the great ideas and work of great thinkers. The movements and concepts dealt with are placed in their historical, political and intellectual contexts. The books are painstakingly researched, humourouly written and enlivened with classic comic-strip illustrations, photographs, paintings, etc. The range of subjects covered is truly vast and varied Malcom X and the New Age guru Castenanda, Shakespeare and Foucault, Jewish Holocaust and Arab and Israel, Structuralism and Biology.