Understanding Derrida

by Jonathan Roffe (Editor), Jack Reynolds (Editor)

Jacques Derrida continues to be the world's single most influential philosophical and literary theorist. He is also one of the most controversial and most complex. His own works and critical studies of his work proliferate, but where can a student, utterly new to the work of Derrida, start?

Understanding Derrida is written as an introduction to the full range of Derrida's key ideas and influences. It brings together the world's leading authorities on Derrida, each writing a short, accessible essay on one central aspect of his work. Framed by a clear introduction and a complete bibliography of Derrida's publications in English, the essays systematically analyze one aspect of Derrida's work, each essay including a quick summary of Derrida's books which have addressed this theme, guiding the student towards a direct engagement with Derrida's texts.

The essays cover language, metaphysics, the subject, politics, ethics, the decision, translation, religion, psychoanalysis, literature, art, and Derrida's seminal relationship to other philosophers, namely Husserl, Heidegger, Levinas, Hegel and Nietzsche.

Genres: Philosophy

184 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2004

Reviews

[Rhiannon Grant · Rating 4 out of 5]

It's taken me a while to work through this - fortunately the chapters are each short and readable, so it worked well to take it in bite-size chunks. I don't know Derrida's work well enough to say whether this is an accurate depiction of it as a whole, but I can say that what's presented here is coherent and relatively comprehensible (by 'relatively' I mean: on a scale from one to Judith Butler, this is about a four in terms of the complexity of the ideas mapping well to the complexity of the style). In other words, it's not a light read but it's difficult in terms of content not presentation. I particularly liked some of the sections on iterability, and that when I'd scribbled down a note to think about how a particular section related to Wittgenstein's work, I found a comparison to Wittgenstein already made on the next page!

[Linda · Rating 3 out of 5]

A compilation of several short essays by Derridean experts. A solid overview of Derrida’s work offering plenty of insight. My only issue is that it is often as hard to read as Derrida himself, and as such, it feels as if you need to be very familiar with his material to benefit from this book. The most useful chapter, for me, was the last in which a number of other philosophers are summarised in terms of their relationship with Derrida.

[Cheng Wen Cheong · Rating 3 out of 5]

I do get a sense that the accounts given of Derrida's wide application of deconstructionism is quite incomplete from the length of each chapter. Good for easing a beginner in, but limited in depth.