Understanding Derrida, Understanding Modernism

by Jean-Michel Rabaté (Editor), Laci Mattison (Editor), Paul Ardoin (Editor), S. E. Gontarski (Editor)

Overview

This volume makes a significant contribution to both the study of Derrida and of modernist studies. The contributors argue, first, that deconstruction is not "modern"; neither is it "postmodern" nor simply "modernist." They also posit that deconstruction is intimately connected with literature, not because deconstruction would be a literary way of doing philosophy, but because literature stands out as a "modern" notion. The contributors investigate the nature and depth of Derrida's affinities with writers such as Joyce, Kafka, Antonin Artaud, Georges Bataille, Paul Celan, Maurice Blanchot, Theodor Adorno, Samuel Beckett, and Walter Benjamin, among others.

With its strong connection between philosophy and literary modernism, this highly original volume advances modernist literary study and the relationship of literature and philosophy.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781501371318
Publisher:	Bloomsbury Academic
Publication date:	11/26/2020
Series:	Understanding Philosophy, Understanding Modernism
Pages:	328
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.69(d)

About the Author

Jean-Michel Rabaté is one of the world's foremost literary theorists. Since 1992, he has been professor of English and Comparative Literature at the University of Pennsylvania, USA. Professor Rabaté has authored or edited more forty books on modernism, psychoanalysis, contemporary art, philosophy, and writers like Beckett, Pound and Joyce. Recent books include Crimes of the Future (Bloomsbury, 2014), The Cambridge Introduction to Psychoanalysis and Literature (2014), The Pathos of Distance (Bloomsbury, 2016), and Rust (Bloomsbury, 2018). He is one of the founders and curators of Slought Foundation in Philadelphia (slought.org) and the Managing Editor of the Journal of Modern Literature. Since 2008, he has been a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

Table of Contents

Introduction: Derrida's modernity and our modernism
Jean-Michel Rabaté, University of Pennsylvania, USA
Part 1.Rethinking the main concepts of modernism
1. Trickster Economy: Derrida's Baudelaire, and the Role of Money, Counterfeits, and Alms in the Modern City
Marit Grøtta, University of Oslo, Norway
2. Kant's Celestial Economy; a Footnote to The Gift of Death
Eddis N. Miller, Pace University, USA
3. Derrida and Kafka: A Talmudic Disputation Before the Law
Vivian Liska, Antwerp University, Belgium
4. Derrida with Heidegger: Poetic Language, Animality, World
Jennifer Anna Gosetti-Ferencei, Fordham University, USA
5. To Wound the Language: Derrida Reads Celan
Miriam Jerade, University of Mexico, Mexico
Part 2. Engaging with the poetics of canonical modernism
6. Derrida's Joyce
Sam Slote, Trinity College, Dublin
7. Derrida re-voicing Artaud
AlhelíAlvarado, Columbia University, USA
8. Derrida on Bataille: from dueling to duet
Claire Lozier, University of Leeds, UK
9. A Cross in the margin, Inscription and Erasure in Derrida and Pound
Mark Byron, University of Sydney, Australia
10. Derrida after Valéry (after Derrida)
Suzanne Guerlac, University of California, Berkeley, USA
Part 3.Différance as performance: pushing modernism beyond its borders
11. Three ways of looking at Derrida's encounter with Austin
Raoul Moati, University of Chicago, USA
12. Writing in the Shadow of Sartre's Genet, Derrida's Glas and the Ethics of Biography
Robert Doran, Rochester University, USA
13. Derrida, Cixous, and (Feminine) Writing
Marta Segarra, University of Barcelona, Spain
14. Reading between the lines: Derrida, Blanchot, Beckett
Leslie Hill, University of Warwick, UK
Part 4. Glossary
Jean-Michel Rabaté
Aporia
Auto-immunity
Biography/Autobiography/Autothanatography
Deconstruction
Différance
Hauntology
Hospitality
Iterability
Lies
Methods
Performative
Poetry
Undecidability
Writing / Texting

Index

Editorial Reviews

Who, or better yet, whatspeaks in 'literature' for Derrida? This long-awaited book offers thought-provoking answers to this question, examined here through close readings of Derrida's countersignatures to writers such as Baudelaire, Kafka, Celan, Joyce, Blanchot, Beckett, and Cixous. Neither a theory nor a critical method, Derrida's approach gives us something else to ponder: the conditions of the impossible enacted by the event of literature. This impressive volume thus allows us to better understand how Derrida reconfigures the concept of modernity, beyond all labels, genres, or periodizations. Moreover, this book is itself a remarkable and timely contribution to the 'humanities to come' Derrida so pressingly called for. Whether it concern the Law, the absolute singularity of the other, the secret and testimony, or democracy, literature always lies affirmatively and performatively at the very core of Derrida's thought.
Ginette Michaud, Professor of French Literature, Université de Montréal, Canada

Derrida as a reader of modernism; Derrida as a modernist: both these propositions-and the relationship between them-are explored in this fascinating collection of essays, ably introduced and edited by Rabaté. The volume makes a fresh contribution to our understanding of the reach and richness of Derrida's work as well as the multifaceted character of modernist literature and philosophy.
Derek Attridge, Emeritus Professor of English, University of York, UK, and author of The Singularity of Literature (2004)

The 14 diverse and original essays in this volume-along with Rabaté's important introduction and brilliant glossary of Derrida keywords-make it an immensely useful resource for understanding Derrida's relation to major European modernists...More important, however, are the local insights these essays provide on topics such as Baudelaire's ethics of almsgiving, the difference between Agamben and Derrida on reading Kafka, the relation of Bataille's "general economy" to Derrida's "arche-writing," the agon between Derrida and Sartre vis-à-vis Genet... Summing Up: Highly recommended.
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From the Publisher