The first part of the book is a short story by Blanchot and the seond part is Derrida's analysis. Derrida's critique is amazing stuff. He performs a close-reading, line by line. Derrida is one of the greatest thinkers, if not the most thought provoking theorist/critic, of our time.

This book is both an exhibtion catalogue to a show Derrida curated at the Louvre of drawings on the theme of blindness (complete with many reproductions of works) as well as a brillant investigation into the art of drawing by dealing with blindness as evidence of 'blindness' itself in every act of looking (and of course reproduction). As stated by Derrida, "every drawing of 'the blind' is a drawing 'of' the blind." More than just an example of applied deconstruction, Derrida's reading of these drawings questions the very foudnation of western ideologies of 'looking' and 'seeing' taken for granted as self-evident by artists for centuries. By the end, one wonders who is the author, the artist, the curator?, as Derrida does more with these drawings 'for drawing' than they ever did for drawing themselves. This book is a necessity for any visual artist producing critical work in the 21st century.

Giovanna Borradori's most recent project is a groundbreaking endeavor to forge a new understanding of terrorism in the post-9/11 age. Her searching questions draw both Habermas and Derrida from their traditionally diametrically opposed philosophical quarters, highlighting their surprisingly similar stances on what they perceive to be the necessary move toward a quasi-Kantian cosmopolitan international law. Moreover, we find in both of these dialogues and Borradori's supplements a reliance upon a few key figures (Kant, Schmitt, and Arendt for example), suggesting that the philosophical traditions with which each figure identifies-Critical Theory for Habermas and Deconstruction for Derrida-are perhaps not as mutually exclusive or sharply demarcated as we might have previously thought.

The structure of the book, dialogue followed by interpretive essay, helps ground the extemporaneous reflections on terrorism in Habermas' and Derrida's broader philosophical work. Habermas here seems much less conservative than in his other works, though his focus in a sense remains on the possibility of communication and understanding in light of the growing threat of terrorist attacks and current US policy. Derrida acts as our guide on a deconstructive journey, marking important moments and movements such as autoimmunity, always hyper-aware of the context (the end of the Cold War) in which 9/11 and the "war on terrorism" have been played out. To be sure, these dialogues also underscore these philosophers' different understandings, particularly in their responses to Borradori's question of 9/11 as an "event," as well as the proper approach to the United States' "war on terror".

Borradori's ability to fuse topics of terror, the United States' "crusade" against an unknown, unseen, and ever-present enemy, with issues of hospitality and tolerance makes possible a broader discussion than one might imagine. Further, her probing intellect and ability to guide conversation without imposing upon her subjects a pre-determined philosophical agenda make these dialogues remarkably readable and successful; undoubtedly this work has opened up a space for evaluating the possible and necessary contributions that philosophy can make in both critically evaluating and politically altering the course of human events.

This book is filled with poetry and, if you give to it, it will give back to you.

In The Politics Of Exodus: Soren Kierkegaard's Ethics Of Responsibility, Mark Dooley (Newman Scholar in Theology, University College, Dublin) argues persuasively Kierkegaard's affiliations with Jacques Derrida are deeper and more significant than has been traditionally believed. Dooley maintains that Kierkegaard is not a proponent of asocial individualism, but an advocate of "open quasi-community". The Politics Of Exodus is highly recommended reading for students of Kierkegaard's philosophy, as well as those with an interest in the area of ethics and politics, religion and postmodernism.

In this exposition of Derrida's recent writings, Caputo continues his work of making the trouble-making tools of deconstruction generally available. The clarity of his presentation is matched by his playfulness. Theme by theme, he teases out the revolutionary possibilities of Derrida's "religion," freeing words and phrases from jargon and obscurity. This book offers the gift of the relevance of Derrida for "faith." Caputo's own "Edifying Divertissments" are michieviously beautiful.

Mike Payne's book is a godsend to literary theory students. It distills the heavily theoretical works of Lacan, Derrida, and Kristeva, and makes them more easily understandable (if it is possible to truly understand these texts). I had the pleasure of being one of Prof. Payne's students at Bucknell, and I must say that he is as brilliant in class as he is on paper.

I bought this book at a time when Nietzsche's works interested me much more than anything that real people had to say about Nietzsche. When I was a youth, a commission had been appointed to try to understand a series of riots, and my reading of Nietzsche was more sympathetic to those who had reasons for trying to demoralize the old order, a motive which I always have read into Nietzsche, than any professor would admit. But I was being ignored, along with my efforts to ridicule people who thought they could outsmart Nietzsche by being more moral or better educated in modern intellectual survival mechanisms. I wasn't talented enough, musically, to be a rock 'n' roller, (this was about the time someone at work told me I could play guitar, "But don't sing,") so it seemed natural to me that college professors weren't astute enough to make their criticisms of Nietzsche stick with me, particularly when rocking out seemed much closer to my escape mechanisms than the loss of self which I could experience by actually understanding Nietzsche in a sense that defied any explanation. I probably bought this book in 1995, when it seemed to be the newest work in the field on Nietzsche's relation to the feminine, and my luck in finding an attempt to plumb the deepest portions of that relationship through striking surveys of the psychological field of thought in this area was great. I believe this book is still in print, an accomplishment which has eluded a number of other works on this topic, and it really is time to start taking this one seriously.

My first great discovery in this book was its discussion of the comedians of the ascetic ideal. A lot of what I learned was in the notes at the end of the book, but Kelly Oliver clearly captured Nietzsche's relationship to the ascetic ideal on page 42 with her description, "Like the plundering soldier, he steals its armor and wears it mockingly, making fun of his enemy. By doing so, however, he is always also mocking himself. . . . This laughter is the only thing that sets the faker apart from the real thing." As a philosopher, Nietzsche definitely mocks himself, but picturing him as a plundering soldier, his laughter appears to be the most real thing about him, and any trouble that I have been in is a sure sign that I am too close to the truth on this point.

The other parts of this book which I could comment on might be considered equally troubling, but the index is helpful in tracking down where this book is really great, and my favorite entry, which might be considered a concept which summarizes the kind of confusion that this book is attempting to avoid more often than not, is metaforeplay.

I haven't read this book, but have read most of the obits. The introduction I read in the excerpt here was strong, and if the rest of the material is anything like what I have already encountered (espec. Levinas and Deleuze), it is a remarkable book. Derrida writes beautifully and compassionately when writing of the beloved Other; his infamous turgidity is infrequent in these pieces. Well worthwhile.

This book was cool man! It's like forget everything because nothing exists, right? I think the only other time I had this much fun was when I whooped Gabe's arse in Power Stone 2.

In regard to the two seminal essays that make up the 100 or so pages of "Plato's Pharmacy" - these are reprints of articles published in the late 1960s, and presumably based on research dating back even earlier.

The historical research behind these essays has dated badly. Much of the argument rests on the notion that, for the Greeks, "pharmakon" signified remedy or poison. It did, but it also could mean painters pigment, perfume, magical talisman (both medical or non-medical, as for example for spell-casting) or intoxicant. The Greek understanding, which continually blurred the understanding of these functions is so significant that is requires extensive analysis (perfumes were frequently added to wines, for example). It is certainly true for Plato. And is not the Republic's "noble lie" described by Plato as a pharmakon? How could Derrida miss that? Plato's Pharmacy, ironically, with its emphasis on this false "remedy" vs. "poison" dichotomy, reproduces Western binary "logocentric" reasoning that deconstruction supposededly circumvents, evades, folds back upon itself, or whatever. For anyone who has followed the current research in cultural anthropology, the history of pharmacology, medicine, and the like, "Plato's Pharmacy" cannot but produce a mix of mirth and annoyance. The Phaedrus, the Platonic dialogue discussed throughout most of "Plato's Pharmacy", is permeated with language and allusions drawn from the Eleusian Mysteries, yet Derrida doesn't even mention the "potion" of Eleusis, the "kykeon" which many ancient sources indicate produced visions, and is now widely believed to have contained ergot of barley, a substance similar to LSD-25. So read these essays only after having taken a pill - of extreme doubt. "Plato's Pharmacy" may be a classic of deconstructionist methodological form, but any connection with Plato's world, or the substance of Plato's thought, is at best tenuous, and certainly suspect.

Reading most of Jacques Dierrda's body of work is a task akin to Chinese water torture. Dierrda's project is to debunk the foundation of Western philosophy by subverting it's classic texts. Dierrida uses deconstructive readings of these texts to point out logical flaws, indeterminate meanings and self referrential errors which call into question all that we understand about the structuralist notion of the relationship of the self to the other. In short, Dierrda may be the most radical thinker in modern history, because the success of his project would leave western civilization in the lurch. If Plato was wrong, then all we have learned from the beginning of philosophy is rendered useless. Barbara Johnson's translation of this difficult text is the best grip on Dierrda's project that I have ever read. Stay away from other intrepetations of Derrida, Johnson's translation is elegant and erudite.