Derrida From Now On

by Michael Naas

Overview

Written in the wake of Jacques Derrida's death in 2004, Derrida From Now On attempts both to do justice to the memory of Derrida and to demonstrate the continuing significance of his work for contemporary philosophy and literary theory.

If Derrida's thought is to remain relevant for us today, it must be at once understood in its original context and uprooted and transplanted elsewhere. Michael Naas thus begins with an analysis of Derrida's attachment to the French language, to Europe, and to European secular thought, before turning to Derrida's long engagement with the American context and to the ways in which deconstruction allows us to rethink the history, identity, and promise of post-9/11 America.

Taking as its point of departure several of Derrida's later works (from "Faith and Knowledge" and The Work of Mourning to Rogues and Learning to Live Finally), the book demonstrates how Derrida's analyses of the phantasms of sovereignty, the essential autoimmunity of democracy or religion, or the impossible mourning of the nation-state can help us to understand what is happening today in American culture, literature, and politics.

Though Derrida's thought has always lived on only by being translated elsewhere, his disappearance will have driven home this necessity with a new force and an unprecedented urgency. Derrida From Now On is an effect of this force and an attempt to respond to this urgency.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780823229604
Publisher:	Fordham University Press
Publication date:	08/25/2009
Series:	Perspectives in Continental Philosophy
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	300
File size:	3 MB

About the Author

Michael Naas is Professor of Philosophy at DePaul University in Chicago. His research covers the fields of philosophy and comparative literature, with a particular focus on ancient Greek thought and contemporary French philosophy and with a strong interest in the thinkers Nietzsche, Heidegger, Derrida, Lyotard, and Levinas. He has edited and co-translated into English a number of Jacques Derrida’s texts: The Work of Mourning (2011), Learning to Live Finally (2007), Rogues (2005), and Adieu: To Emmanuel Levinas (1999). His most recent publications are The End of the World and Other Teachable Moments: Jacques
Derrida’s Final Seminar (2015), Miracle and Machine: Jacques Derrida and the Two Sources of Religion, Science, and the Media (2012), and Plato and the Invention of Life (2018).

Editorial Reviews

Michael Naas's Derrida From Now On has the depth and seriousness thatexperienced readers of Derrida will demand. Yet the style of the bookis so clear and direct, so engaging, that those who are just beginningto read Derrida will also be eminently rewarded by it. A remarkableachievement! -David Farrell Krell

Naas is a true heir of Derrida.-Dawne McCance

A genuine homage to Derrida.-Leonard Lawlor

From the Publisher

Naas is a true heir of Derrida.

University of Manitoba - Dawne McCance

A genuine homage to Derrida.

University of Memphis - Leonard Lawlor

Michael Naas's Derrida From Now On has the depth and seriousness that experienced readers of Derrida will demand. Yet the style of the book is so clear and direct, so engaging, that those who are just beginning to read Derrida will also be eminently rewarded by it. A remarkable achievement!

DePaul University / Universitat Freiburg - David Farrell Krell