The Deconstruction of Time is a necessary read for anyone interested in phenomenology or deconstruction--and David Wood shows clearly why an interest in one requires an interest in the other. He does so by tracing the central importance of the concept of time in works by Nietzsche, Husserl, Heidegger and Derrida. In each case, Wood analyzes the treatment of time with a clarity that makes the book accessible by nonexperts, and a rare sensitivity that will undoubtedly appeal to the well-versed reader as well. Taking the question of time as its axis, The Deconstruction of Time shows what is at stake in practicing phenomenology or deconstruction, illuminating along the way the fundamental tendencies, limitations, and values of each. In addition to his lucid analyses, Wood also offers sophisticated problematizations of the texts and positions he treats, submitting phenomenology to deconstruction, and holding deconstruction to a sort of phenomenological standard--he walks a fine and cautious line between the dominant impulses of these two ways of thinking about time, and he does so with grace and wit. Highly recommended!

This book is a fascinating reflection on the possibility of thinking time outside of the traditional metaphysical logic of
representation. David Wood shows that the contemporary
deconstructions of time lead to opening a sense -- and a future -- of philosophy as event, and performativity.
This is an important and original work, and a brilliant demonstration of what it might mean to speak of time, and thinking, as event. It also performs new interpretations of the works of Nietzsche, Husserl, Heidegger, and Derrida.

You can give someone life--or you can put someone to death. But you cannot "give" someone their own death. Death is a "gift" because it insures our irreplaceableness in God's eyes; it is ours and ours alone. No one can die in my place no more than I can die in theirs. Our willingness to acknowledge this relationship with our own deaths (which above all requires "responsibility," a term Derrida seems to prefer to "faith") in turn unites us with God and the self, with the giver and the receiver.

I'll admit I hadn't expected a deconstructionist to use terms like "absolute," "transcendant," "God," "self"--in profusion and in earnest. But perhaps Derrida has sufficiently exposed the instability, metaphoric basis and deceptive play of language to be able to employ it without qualifiers, disclaimers, and tedious textual self-referentiality. As is his custom, he represents his own work as a critique of others' works--Plato's "Phaedo," Nietzsche's "Genealogy of Morals," Kierkegaard's "Fear and Trembling," and the contemporary, politically executed Polish philosopher Jan Potocka. While he establishes his distance from Plato and Nietzsche, his re-visioning of Kierkegaard offers new angles without questioning or challenging the great Dane's existential reading of the Abraham-Isaac story. And his alignment with Potocka is so complete as to suggest more an apologia than a critique of the latter's work. Add to these texts numerous references to Heidegger and to both the Old and New Testaments as well as to stories by Poe and Hawthorne, and you'll have some idea of how richly allusive, not to mention dense, Derrida's discourse can be, even in a brief work such as this.

The primary requisite for reading "The Gift of Death" is some knowledge of its precursor, "Fear and Trembling." Like Kierkegaard, Derrida defines religion as access to the responsibility of a free self, which in turn is defined as a relationship consciously and secretly experienced by the individual subject who sees him or herself in the gaze of God. Truth is separated from Socrates' truth by its interiority, by its replacement of reason, ethics, and aesthetics with the sheer horror of the abyss. Compared to Kierkegaard, however, Derrida's account is less romantic, less inspiring, more disturbing. The leap of faith involves not a sacrifice of Isaac but of oneself, a secret and senseless meeting with one's own death. Derrida interprets the absence of woman in the Abraham and Bartleby stories as proof that the "knight of faith's" quest is not the "tragic hero's". Instead, it is beyond all knowledge, a confrontation with the abyss that marks the Absolute singularity of the self. (This latter observation is reminiscent of Marlowe's inability, or unwillingness, in Conrad's "Heart of Darkness," to share the "truth" of Kurtz' final words, "The horror, the horror," with Kurtz' fiance.)

In the latter part of his critique, Derrida offers a paradoxical criticism of the technological, modern age. Far from becoming quantified or de-naturalized, we have returned to the demonic and orgiastic from which religion arose. Modern man has fallen into inauthenticity, becoming not a self or person but assuming the mask of a "role." Present-day democracy, in turn, is not about the equality of individuals but of roles. Hence the importance of discovering and accepting the gift of death that determines human uniqueness. Responsibility is the criterion; freedom is the result.

This is a work not to be read quickly or only once. Derrida moves slowly, taking two steps backward before moving one step forward, but his method insures the communication of his meanings. If it's any inducement to the reader, I would suggest that the fourth and final chapter, "Tout autre est tout autre," is anticlimactic and unhelpful. By then the attentive reader will already have located the gift.

Derrida, as usual, is able to tease apart the conventional ways of thinking--in this case about the (im)possibility of ethics--and force us to think in a completely different way. I might disagree with his analysis of the ramifications of the ethical gesture explicated in Kierkegaard's "Fear and Trembling," but i can't say old Jack didn't make me think.

Bearing in mind Derrida's honey-like style, with which both writes and absents himself, this book shows that in Truth Hegel is the last philosopher of the book and the first thinker of writing owing to his entirely transgressive relationship with his sister (whom he loved) by virtue of the influence of Genet's oeuvre (which is not a work), the latter clearly touching Hegel for the simple reason that his avatars and demons (Sartre, Bataille) misrecognized him, as though he were the sun which they dared not look upon for fear of blindess. The rose pricks the eagle and the eagle tumbles.

Bearing in mind the sweet honey of Derida's style, with which he writes and absents himself, we can say that Derrida has shown Hegel to be the last philosopher of the book and the first thinker of writing by the economic grace of his utterly perverted relationship with his sister, starting with the B column on Genet, who was misconstrued by Bataille and so by Sartre. The rose pricks the eagle.

Inter allya

The world will be blind whitout people like him. I hope, man, women, I hope you read too. Only if you wanna see the secrets of your solud. I mean, the blind point, I hope you read too.

I need of this boock quickly in english, J want only for a small citation. Thank you very much for your help. Omer Corlaix

Interviews are a very rare genre in literary criticism. However, Salusinszky created an astounding gathering of the top critics in the U.S. The book is not based necessarily on individual interviews, because the points of view of one critic about the others are included. This, of course, allows a clear, direct source on the opinions that Said has on Bloom or Lentricchia on Hartman. A must have for anybody looking for a comprehensive and personal approach to contemporary critics.

Jacques Derrida was famously asked a few years ago, by a newspaper journalist, to explain deconstruction "in a nutshell". Derrida's response, whether a wry smile or a volley of foul language (the latter unlikely as Derrida is, by all accounts, a very gracious man) is unrecorded but in all likelihood the reporter was left in little doubt as to the impossibility of such a task.

Our soundbite obsessed journalist friend might have been better advised to consult Christopher Johnson's excellent book. At just 55 pages this is about as close to a "nutshell" as he could hope to find. In by far the best "Derrida for beginners" book I've read, Johnson focuses on Derrida's critique of a text by Levi-Strauss in order to provide a clear, detailed, and thorough demonstration of what deconstruction is, how it works, and its implications for many of our most deeply held beliefs and assumptions regarding language, signification, consciousness and reality.

A book of this length cannot, of course, hope to provide a complete overview of Derrida's work, but the central idea - that the entire Western tradition of philosophy/metaphysics is based on fundamentally flawed and unsustainable principles (of "presence", moments of "originary truth" etc.) - is clearly explained. Much light is also shed on why Derrida himself is often difficult to read, especially in English translation.

Highly readable and fascinating throughout, this book is an essential buy for anyone interested in understanding the thought of one of our world's most radical and original thinkers. And it costs almost nothing. Buy it!

Martin Srjak provides a new and intriguing means of conceptualizing Derrida's project of deconstructionism. This book is a positive and articulate discussion of postmodernist ideas, and it will serve as a means for de-simplifying many of the overly simplistic ideas about poststructuralist discourse.

Before I read this book, all I ever hear of Derrida is that he is so hard to read. Upon reading this, I realized where this could be true. This beginners book is very well written and made Derrida's work simple to understand. Although one may need a basic knowledge in linguistics and Sassure, one does not need it all together to comprehend some of Derrida's work. Author Jim Powell gives a concise look into the dense writings of the linguist which I not only found easy, but exciting - enough to make me want to go out and read some of the material that is written about. Along with an explanation of Derrida's work is also a brief biography which gives on an idea where he is coming from. Highly reccomended! One of the best beginners book to date.

Before I read this book, I knew almost nothing about Jacques Derrida, though I had browsed through some of his works. I think this is a good book for the general reader. It goes more into depth on Derrida than Powell's other book Postmodernism for Beginners.

I thought that the book was excellent. I would think that anyone who read it would be able to tackle texts like Dissemination etc. There are so many bad introductions to Derrida around that this book came as a refreshing surprise. I felt that it gave a very good coverage of Derrida's work.

The question of Dasein, for Heidegger always, questioning is a "way"... Heidegger does pronounce Dasein as being-towards-death, but Derrida's tiff is not with Dasein's non-relational to death; in fact he recognizes as such (not 'as such')-- the negativity of Dasein, its dying- or being-towards-death is always already before and beyond that which can be represented. So Derrida is revealing a problem with Heidegger's speaking of Dasein at all in this context (he is not objecting to 'as such' on the basis that Dasein is towards an end, rather the possibility -which is then, right then, an impossibility- that Heidegger can ever say 'as such' about that which can never be represented.

birth == death. Heidegger is wading into eastern philosophical waters here. The impossibility of Being through the possibility of death of Being or as Being.

Dasein is not being towards death if death is non-relational and unrepresentable, and about those two points we seem to agree. Rather, dasein is death, it is not related to death. How else can one understand the equivalence birth=death? If that is the case, then the problem of the as such is not a problem, because dasein is not related to death, it is related to the nothing, and the nothing as such, the nihil absolutum, which opens up another big can of worms.Derrida does so much dancing around that he avoids the real problem.