"One of the major works in the development of contemporary criticism and philosophy." -- J. Hillis Miller, Yale University Jacques Derrida's revolutionary theories about deconstruction, phenomenology, psychoanalysis, and structuralism, first voiced in the 1960s, forever changed the face of European and American criticism. The ideas in De la grammatologie sparked lively debates in intellectual circles that included students of literature, philosophy, and the humanities, inspiring these students to ask questions of their disciplines that had previously been considered improper. Thirty years (...) later, the immense influence of Derrida's work is still igniting controversy, thanks in part to Gayatri Spivak's translation, which captures the richness and complexity of the original. This corrected edition adds a new index of the critics and philosophers cited in the text and makes one of contemporary criticism's most indispensable works even more accessible and usable. (shrink)

" "Positions brings together three interviews with Derrida, outlining his central concerns and ideas.

An edition of three essays by the leading French philosopher and theorist Jacques Derrida on the ethical, political and linguistic issues posed by the act of 'naming'. Passions: An Oblique Offering is a reflection on the question of the response, on the duty and obligation to respond, and on the possibility of not responding - which is to say, on the ethics and politics of responsibility. Sauf le nom (Post Scriptum) considers the problematics of naming and alterity, or transcendence, raised (...) inevitably by a rigorous negative theology. Much of the text is organised around close readings of the poetry of Angelus Silesius. The final essay, Khora, explores the problem of space or spacing, of the word 'khora' in Plato's Timaeus. Even as it places and makes possible nothing less than the whole world, 'khora' opens, dislocates and displaces all the categories that govern the production of that world, from naming to gender. (shrink)

Viewed this way, the texts yield striking examples of language and notation that are irreducibly ambiguous and productive because they are ambiguous.

Many commentators have remarked in passing on the resonance between deconstructionist theory and certain ideas of quantum physics. In this book, Arkady Plotnitsky rigorously elaborates the similarities and differences between the two by focusing on the work of Niels Bohr and Jacques Derrida. In detailed considerations of Bohr's notion of complementarity and his debates with Einstein, and in analysis of Derrida's work via Georges Bataille's concept of general economy, Plotnitsky demonstrates the value of exploring these theories in relation to each (...) other. Bohr's term complementarity describes a situation, unavoidable in quantum physics, in which two theories thought to be mutually exclusive are required to explain a single phenomenon. Light, for example, can only be explained as both wave and particle, but no synthesis of the two is possible. This theoretical transformation is then examined in relation to the ways that Derrida sets his work against or outside of Hegel, also resisting a similar kind of synthesis and enacting a transformation of its own. Though concerned primarily with Bohr and Derrida, Plotnitsky also considers a wide range of anti-epistemological endeavors including the work of Nietzsche, Bataille, and the mathematician Kurt Gödel. Under the rubric of complementarity he develops a theoretical framework that raises new possiblilities for students and scholars of literary theory, philosophy, and philosophy of science. (shrink)

Offers a fascinating snapshot of magic throughout various cultures as well as deep sociological and religious insights still very much relevant today.

This paper will apply post-structural semiotic theories to study the texts of Gödel's first incompleteness theorem. I will study the texts’ own articulations of concepts of ‘meaning’, analyze the mechanisms they use to sustain their senses of validity, and point out how the texts depend (without losing their mathematical rigor) on sustaining some shifts of meaning. I will demonstrate that the texts manifest semiotic effects, which we usually associate with poetry and everyday speech. I will conclude with an analysis of (...) how the picture I paint relates to an ethics of mathematical production. (shrink)