Introducing Derrida - Softcover

Collins, Jeff

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1840461187 ISBN 13: 9781840461183

Publisher: Icon,Totem Books, 2001

Synopsis

Jacques Derrida is one of the most influential figures in contemporary philosophy. Yet, Derrida has undermined the accepted rules of philosophy, rejected its methods and concepts, disrupted its boundaries and "contaminated" philosophy with other kinds of writings. Derrida's approach is an initially puzzling array of oblique, sliding and yet rigorous tactics for destabilising texts, meanings and identities. "Deconstructions" as these strategies have been called, has been reviled as a politically pernicious nihilism and celebrated as a liberatory politics of choice and difference. This work describes the key strategies of Derrida's writing, explains their controversial effects in philosophy, and shows how Derrida has put them to work in literature, art, architecture and politics. The book offers a starting point for an intellectual adventure that threatens to disturb some of the most comfortable habits of contemporary thought.

About this title

From Library Journal

This book series is part of an alarming trend in higher education?learning through amusement?and an even more alarming new genre?intellectual comic books trafficking as serious learning tools. It is to philosophy what the Classic Comic is to literature and the campaign ad to politics: Cliff Notes meet the sound bite. Short on text and long on large cartoons?emotivism gets 13 lines and four dialog balloons; the Theory of Forms seven lines and two balloons?the texts badly introduce individual thinkers or areas of thought. The sound bite is empty enough when presenting facts, but as a way to get across concepts, positions and arguments, it is self-defeating. These works necessarily emphasize what the thinker thinks, presented informationally, not why or how those conclusions were reached. Thus, even when the texts aren't superficial, the thinkers' claims are utterly obscure. The art work is high quality and witty, and the agenda clearly postmodern?Kant is read as a protodeconstructionist, the universalist enterprise of ethics gets mocked. Thus, their best audience is the opposite of the one intended: not the beginner but the advanced reader of philosophy who can appreciate the fun. At their best, these works belong in Father Guido Sarducci's "Five-Minute College," in which for each course he gives a slogan. At their worst, these books will change remembering a slogan to remembering a picture. Not recommended.?Lee Horvitz, Miami Univ., Middletown, Ohio
Copyright 1997 Reed Business Information, Inc.

About this edition

• Publisher: Icon,Totem Books
• Publication date: 2001
• ISBN 10: 1840461187
• ISBN 13: 9781840461183
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 2
• Number of pages: 176