Writing and Difference (UK HB 1st in DJ)

Derrida, Jacques

ISBN 10: 0710000804 / ISBN 13: 9780710000804

Published by Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1978

About this Item

UK hardback first impression of this important collection. Near fine in VG jacket with some light rubbing to edges.

Seller Inventory # ABE-1664397134783

Bibliographic Details

• Title: Writing and Difference (UK HB 1st in DJ)
• Publisher: Routledge & Kegan Paul
• Publication Date: 1978
• ISBN 10: 0710000804
• ISBN 13: 9780710000804
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition: 1st Edition.
• Condition: Near Fine
• Dust Jacket Condition: Very Good

About this title

Synopsis

Writing and Difference. JAQUES DERRIDA

From the Inside Flap

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 anddifférence—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 findWriting and Difference an excellent introduction to perhaps the most challenging of contemporary French thinkers—challenging because Derrida questions thought as we know it.