Jacques Derrida's Ghost: A Conjuration

by David Appelbaum

Overview

A spirited reading of Derrida's view of ethics as transcendental and performative.

In Jacques Derrida's Ghost, David Appelbaum explores three of Derrida's favorite themes: the other, death, and the work of mourning. He shows how Derrida's unique philosophy, mindful of ghosts, proposes a respectful attitude toward otherness-whether the "other" be corporeal or indeed phantom. Taking up Derrida's concern with performative ethics, Appelbaum examines the possibility of such an ethics of subjectivity within the context of performance.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780791477496
Publisher:	State University of New York Press
Publication date:	10/23/2008
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	164
File size:	276 KB
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

David Appelbaum is Professor of Philosophy at the State University of New York at New Paltz. He is the author of several books, including The Delay of the Heart; Disruption; The Stop; Everyday Spirits; and Voice, all published by SUNY Press.

David Appelbaum is Professor Emeritus of Philosophy at the State University of New York at New Paltz. He is the author of several books, including A Propos, Levinas; Jacques Derrida's Ghost: A Conjuration; and The Delay of the Heart, all published by SUNY Press.

Table of Contents

Foreword
Acknowledgments
Exergue

Introduction

1. With the word I

2. The book begins

3. To be read

4. With the voice

5. Reading itself

6. Words ‘I’ write

7. A ghost

8. Writing itself

9. Into the Book

Speaking with the ghost

Notes
Bibliography
Index

Editorial Reviews

"This is a brilliant and striking example of the sustained poetic critique that contemporary critical theory inspires. Appelbaum admirably fulfills the literary mission that Derrida declared for philosophy." — Henry Sussman, author of Idylls of the Wanderer: Outside in Literature and Theory

"Taking on a performative mode, the author engages with a style of writing appropriate in response to Derrida as other, and which also serves as a haunting response to Derrida's death and the fraught questions of how we read him today." — Julian Wolfreys, author of Derrida: A Guide for the Perplexed

From the Publisher