Jacques Derrida's revolutionary theories about deconstruction, phenomenology, psychoanalysis, and structuralism, first voiced in the 1960s, fore... read full description
reviews
Aug 15, 2011
well, i read the first chapter, but i have almost no idea what it said even though i tried very hard to know what it was saying. then i went back to read the translator's preface. thanks for nothing, spivak. i'll keep trying.
5 comments
like
(2 people liked it)
Oct 29, 2007
Jamey
rated it: 
I need a bucket. This is the a-hole through which there has flowed a river of anemic pretentious francophilic crap for three decades. Derrida seems to have little of Foucault's erudition and a strange compulsion to make the same empty gestures over and over again. Everything Schopenhauer said about Hegel applies here (that the guy is a charlatan selling his own image in the guise of a new philosophical language). Maybe other books by Derrida are wonderful; I've only read "Of Spirit,"
More...
2 comments
like
(1 person liked it)
Oct 06, 2011
Adam
rated it:
John Searle on deconstruction:
"One sometimes gets the impression that deconstruction is a kind of game that anyone can play. One could, for example, invent a deconstruction of deconstructionism as follows: In the hierarchical opposition, deconstruction/logocentrism (phono-phallo-logocentrism), the privileged term "deconstruction" is in fact subordinate to the devalued term "logocentrism," for, in order to establish the hierarchical superiority of deconstruction, the More...
"One sometimes gets the impression that deconstruction is a kind of game that anyone can play. One could, for example, invent a deconstruction of deconstructionism as follows: In the hierarchical opposition, deconstruction/logocentrism (phono-phallo-logocentrism), the privileged term "deconstruction" is in fact subordinate to the devalued term "logocentrism," for, in order to establish the hierarchical superiority of deconstruction, the More...
Sep 11, 2011
Naxa
rated it: 
A lot of the reviews on this site seem to be begging people for an explanation of what Derrida is attempting to convey in this book or if anything is trying to be conveyed at all. I can say with a deconstructionists certainty that something was attempting to be conveyed in this book, but as with all texts it is open to misunderstandings, new interpretations and the general ups and downs associated with the inter subjective nature of language. I will attempt to give a summary of what is commonly
More...
Apr 30, 2011
Name
rated it: 
To Derrida, the writing itself carried a message. His idea, the definition of grammatology, was to study writing as a stand-alone concept, something beyond the bounds of vocal communication, on an ontological level, which was a dimension left untouched by the field of linguistics because of the self-imposed limits and barriers the linguistics, and the western philosophy in general, had set up or agreed to be confined by. An exterior, outsider view to our concept of writing, language and philosop
More...
Jul 17, 2009
Bob
rated it:
I didn't finish the book. I got to page 289--27 short of the end--and just couldn't go any further. So if there was a brilliant insight located in the last 27 pages, I missed it.
This book was an utter waste of my time. That's not necessarily a reflection on Derrida. It may be that I am an idiot. Either way, I got nothing of value from it, so there's not much more that I can say about it.
My guess is it's Derrida, though. I would suggest you stay away from this book u More...
This book was an utter waste of my time. That's not necessarily a reflection on Derrida. It may be that I am an idiot. Either way, I got nothing of value from it, so there's not much more that I can say about it.
My guess is it's Derrida, though. I would suggest you stay away from this book u More...
Dec 05, 2009
Ellen
rated it: 
I enjoyed reading the other reviews on this book and empathized with those who found Derrida unnecessarily dense. His essay, "Structure, Sign, and Play in the Discourse of the Human Sciences," for example, though important, certainly lacks a riveting prose style.
In my own (possibly simplistic) interpretation, deconstruction works--impossibly, of course--at ground zero. It is an attempt to flatten preconceptions. Derrida explains in Of Grammatology, how Rousseau's writing su More...
In my own (possibly simplistic) interpretation, deconstruction works--impossibly, of course--at ground zero. It is an attempt to flatten preconceptions. Derrida explains in Of Grammatology, how Rousseau's writing su More...
Mar 25, 2010
Justin
rated it:
Totally exhausting, but just about worth it. Derrida has some interesting things to say. I always hear him associated with "deconstruction," but he does more than pull things apart; he pulls things apart to figure out how they work. In this case, he pulls human beings' relationship with language--both written and spoken--apart to figure out how it works, and from this he culls conclusions. So he has a little more to say than you might expect. I'm not totally sure how much I understood,
More...
Jul 06, 2008
Damien
rated it:
"Derridean" is one of those words that is evoked with equal frequency as an epithet as it is as a description of a method of analysis. Derrida is a laborious read. Whether this is because he's a bad writer, because he's writing about difficult concepts, because the French academic style of prose is difficult to translate, or, as some would claim, because he is just spouting gibberish, I'm sometimes unsure. Derrida is a restless writer. He creates new concepts and terms only to drop
More...
2 comments
like
(2 people liked it)
Jan 16, 2011
Lane
rated it:
yes, i have read this insufferable text. granted, i could deconstruct it and give it five stars as a brilliant coming-of-age story, but i won't resort to such petty criticism (that is, of course, if you consider inconsistency and contradiction petty, which i take most deconstructionists would indeed consider)
truthfully, Derrida was not an idiot. his programme is insightful and it does attend to real concerns in literary analysis. the problem with deconstructionism is found in it's wi More...
truthfully, Derrida was not an idiot. his programme is insightful and it does attend to real concerns in literary analysis. the problem with deconstructionism is found in it's wi More...
Jan 23, 2009
It's about time I actually read something by Derrida. This book seemed the logical starting place, and one of my professors has been telling me to trying bringing Derrida into my dissertation, so here goes! It's going slow, since I need to devote most of my time to more straightforward medieval studies, especially the primary sources which I came here to study in the first place, so I've only gotten through a bit of the (substantial) introduction-- which is incredibly helpful, and has also ser
More...
Jun 19, 2009
Deconstruction and the concept ("concept" should probably be crossed out there) of "writing under erasure" are fascinating. I haven't revisited this mode (again, cross it out) of literary cricisism since grad school but the translator's introduction to this volume is an excellent portal through which to reenter.
May 30, 2011
Gwen
rated it:
The defining work of Deconstruction. This work is also unbelievably hard to approach. I would really only recommend it if you really want to understand deconstruction and if you have texts, background, and a professor to help you understand what is going on. Great work, greatly unapproachable.
May 11, 2009
Brian
rated it:
Two things have plagued my reading of this text so far: 1) Chompsky's nagging critique that Derrida is being willfully obtuse, and 2) the clarity and, as much as can be said, straightforwardness of Spivak's preface mostly confirms number 1.
Oct 22, 2011
Gene
rated it:
Worth it for the Translator's Preface, which made Derrida clear to me. I don't think Derrida is a major philosopher, not really, but certainly a useful one for critical academics.
Dec 10, 2008
eesenor
rated it:
Derrida subverts the traditional view that Writing is a derviative representation of Thought by showing how Thought is unthinkable without Writing.
Oct 27, 2009
Scroutch
rated it:
...trace me an arche-writing and I will speech you a lack, and supplement and supplement and supplement as the day is long.
Nov 25, 2011
Phạm
rated it:
u either get this book or u don't, and when you do (it may take a few attempts), u'll find it rather brilliant!
Dec 16, 2009
Conrad
rated it: 
The best way to read this is by skipping Gayatri Spivak's useless and ponderous foreword. The rest is a pretty banal but I guess unique observation on the supplementarity of writing to the spoken word wrapped up in a ton of hackwork. Compared to Limited Inc, this, and Writing and Difference, Derrida's later works are generally more easily comprehended, like Work of Mourning, Acts of Religion, etc. Like Foucault, Derrida enjoyed a late but breathtaking conversion to something like liberalism, and
More...
Oct 11, 2011
Mark M.
rated it:
utter nonsense (deconstruct that sentence if you wish; however, I repeat this is nonsense).
Jan 11, 2010
Jacob Israel
rated it:
Among the most difficult and enduringly rewarding texts I've ever gotten into.
Feb 08, 2012
Tyler
rated it:
I can't even compose a review for this, as the signifier cannot properly sign the signified, which is an ethnocentric judgment anyway.
Dec 04, 2010
I only read certain sections of this after the first 80 pages or so while re-reading other Derridas I read in college (with the aid of readers/compilations of excerpts/articles those reference/build on). I don't know Rousseau at all, so most the stuff towards the end escaped me and I skipped around to what I could grasp (which wasn;t much). The beginning where I read it sequentially was some of the more difficult Derrida I've grappled with.
Dec 16, 2009
David
rated it:
Well, I made my way through most of this thing, but it's definitely something I'll come back to, again and again and again. Frankly, I think that it would have been better to start elsewhere, perhaps with Writing and Difference, or, better yet, Speech and Phenomena. I've found that the more I've learned about the roots of Derrida's though (mainly in phenomenology), the easier it is to understand what he's getting at.
