Paul De Man spent his early years in Europe as a confirmed Anti-Semitic fascist. When the Nazis invaded his homeland, he actively collaborated in creating and disseminating virulent polemics against Jews. After the war De Man fled to America. He was hired to teach at Yale (great background check, guys) while desperately attempting to conceal his wartime activities. De Man became famous at Yale for founding the School of Deconstructionism, an intellectually disreputable philosophy which claimed that works of art may be freely interpreted by observers without consideration for the creator's intentions. In other words, Hitler's "Mein Kampf" might have one meaning to a Bantu and another meaning to a Swede without concern for Hitler's intentions. This type of moral equivocation appealed to members of the politically correct sect, which faithfully regurgitated De Man's shallow assertions. Early in his Yale career De Man's European escapades became known to the senior staff and faculty at Yale. When confronted by his accusers, De Man lied. Yale never publicized De Man's record of violent bigotry (great moral courage, guys), allowing De Man to proselytize his message of moral relativism for decades without public recognition of the Great Scholar's character or moral fitness.

In the person of Paul De Man the politically correct are forced to confront the true nature of their inhuman philosophy. Thomas Jefferson preached freedom and liberalism while owning slaves, in direct contradiction of his philosophy, becoming a hypocrite. De Man preached genocide against helpless minorities, lied after the fact, and never apologized for his actions. In doing so he conformed perfectly to the moral relativism of political correctness. Deconstructionism became the intellectual shield behind which hides the totalitarian urge.

Although Derrida utilizes the death of a friend to illustrate reflections on other thinkers, the text primarily illustrates the double bind we find ourselves in when those close to us die, as illustrated in Freud's "Mourning and Melancholia" as well as in Holderin. We find ourselves making an impossible decision. We may repair our memories inward like a "tomb", a "bad object" incorporation resulting in an inward flow of libidinal cathexes, leading to a dead, incorporated otherness and a narcissistic and deadened state, or retrieve our libidinal investitures from our deceased friend, resulting in a sense of betrayal. A timeless human dilemna illustrated beautifully here. I suppose a third choice is a healthy dose of therapy. Maybe M. Derrida should have called on his buddy M. Lacan when he had the chance, like M. Althusser? At any rate, I can't comment on De Man's political activities prior to his Yale appointment because I don't know. I suppose I'm just an irresponsible intellectual. Nonetheless, "Memoires" is worthwhile for those initiated in continental thought and some of the nuances of presentation.

Originally written as a PhD thesis in 1986, this book should have been published sooner than it was (1993) because it forewarns just were Jacques Derrida's elusive philosophy was taking us - to a ghost dance, specifically to Derrida's latest ill-fated attempt to prove the ethico-political relevance of his Deconstruction in his book, Specters of Marx, 1993. The Architecture of Deconstruction focuses on Derrida's essays on Husserl (Introduction to the Origin of Geometry) and on Abraham and Torok (Fors) rather than Derrida's essays on architecture (there are enough now to full a book, many concerning Plato's intriguing use of the word Chora, but in '86 there was only one published) in order, writes Wigley, "to think the covert architectural economy of his (Derrida's) work", thus, a poverty of resource is disguised as a guiding principle. Wigley had ample opportunity to correct this before publishing but he chose not to. The core of Wigley's thesis is that there exists an unspoken contract between architecture and philosophy. The former lends itself to the latter as a cluster of metaphors for stability (spatially systematised concepts inside built on solid foundations outside) and in return architectural discourse is granted the authority and respectability of higher learning that only philosophy can give. And like all good conspiracy theories this is a self-fulfilling prophesy: someone will inevitably contradict you, thereby proving the conspiracy is operative by attempting to cover it up. If anything, this book proves that conspiracy theories do indeed work, but when Deconstruction dances, its partner will always be a ghost.

This book is not really three essays. It is three lectures. For Derrida, this is a big difference. Derrida is both a brilliant writer and a brilliant lecturer, but his lectures don't read that well. I think its admirable that publishers are making so much of Derrida's material available, but this book is inferior to much of the rest of Derrida's available work (such as: Margins of Philosophy, Glas, Of Spirit, ...) This book is really only for those who have worked their way through at least a couple of Derrida's other books.

Jacques Derrida is the "other" of reason. Actually, he's an inverted Kantian, nothing more. This is the sort of text his alterity-stricken fan club gets excited about. Its conversational style gives the impression that deep insights are waved at because they just never show up. The reader is made to feel that he missed something. And then the game is lost. Intangibility becomes intrinscially virtuous, and so the reader forgives the great Derrida's omissions, who is relieved of the responsibility of answering his own questions. Don't be fooled. He can't answer those questions because the special discourse he reserves for himself prohibits him from doing so in principle. That's the oldest con in the book. Derrida is the "other" of reason.

It's a collection of transcriptions of conversations/debates on various subjects between Derrida and other scholars. Sometimes I laughed out loud at the ridiculous statements and non-sequiturs.

In the book's central essay, Derrida deftly reads a short piece by Nietzsche on the way to reading the subject in the context of autobiography, of words one says about oneself. Those words, of course, return only by way of the ear so that one can locate oneself as the hearing other--hence his essay's title, "Otobiographies." The essay raises again the questions of speech and the voice and of the individual in language--questions that run through all of Derrida's work--as it paves the way for his later writings on the name. This is a must-read for anyone interested in the question of subjectivity that has so engrossed twentieth century philosophy as Derrida's account of the subject and of the way the subject knows about and can speak about itself is original, insightful, and provocative. The volume also includes the transcripts of two roundtable discussions: one on autobiography and one on translation, where Derrida with unusual clarity articulates an accessible version of his thinking on language. Finally there is an interview entitled "Choreographies" in which the editor forces Derrida to consider again the issue of gender and the status of woman. This volume is an often-overlooked but fascinating part of Derrida's corpus that will intrigue both the specialist and someone coming to Derrida's writings for the first time.

I gave this one star because the rating system does not permit 0 stars, the correct rating for the book. Eisenman, not to put too fine a point on it, is a fool. Sadly, he is a fool who influences the education of many impressionable students taken in by obscure writing. ("If we don't understand it, it must be complicated, and therefore great.")

It's time someone exposed this jackass for the nincompoop he really is. - Don't waste your money on this one.