_Radical Atheism_ presents a profound new reading of the influential French philosopher Jacques Derrida. Against the prevalent notion that there was an ethical or religious "turn" in Derrida's thinking, Hägglund argues that a radical atheism informs Derrida's work from beginning to end. Proceeding from Derrida's insight into the constitution of time, Hägglund demonstrates how Derrida rethinks the condition of identity, ethics, religion, and political emancipation in accordance with the logic of radical atheism. Hägglund challenges other major interpreters of Derrida's work (...) and offers a compelling account of Derrida's thinking on life and death, good and evil, self and other. Furthermore, Hägglund does not only explicate Derrida's position but also develops his arguments, fortifies his logic, and pursues its implications. The result is a groundbreaking deconstruction of the perennial philosophical themes of time and desire as well as pressing contemporary issues of sovereignty and democracy. (shrink)

This article develops Derrida's logic of the trace in relation to the concept of time and the revival of various forms of vitalism. Through a critical interrogation of Bergson's notion of duration, I show how the logic of the trace articulates an originary co-implication of time and space, which also entails a co-implication of the animate and the inanimate, the event and the machine. Refuting any vitalist conception of life, the deconstructive logic of the trace allows one to reckon with (...) the philosophical implications of Darwinism. (shrink)

With reference to three seminal books on cybernetics, communication theory and the calculus of distinctions, this article discusses some main threads in Niklas Luhmann's sociological systems theoretical thinking. It argues that the systems theory, despite its still lively reputation in some quarters of the humanities, is not technocracy's last attempt to cope with the complexity of modern society. Rather, it is an inquiry into the improbability of communication and into its translation into social structure, or better, into social form.