Derrida and the Political (Thinking the Political) - Hardcover

Beardsworth, Richard

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0415109663 ISBN 13: 9780415109666

Publisher: Routledge, 1996

Synopsis

Jacques Derrida, one of the most influential, controversial and complex thinkers of our time, has come to be at the centre of many political debates. This is the first book to consider the political implications of Derrida's deconstruction. It is a timely response both to Derrida's own recent shift towards thinking about the political, and to the political focus of contemparary Continental philosophy.
Richard Beardsworth's study, Derrida and the Political, locates a way of thinking about deconstruction using the tools of political philosophy. Richard Beardsworth has provided students of philosophy, politics and critical theory with a thought-provoking, upper level introduction to Derrida'a work as a political theorist.

About this title

Synopsis:

Derrida and the Political assesses for the first time the political implications of deconstruction, whilst also being a reading of Derrida's philosophy through political philosophy. Such a reading is apposite, not simply because it is in line with current trends to reconsider the political application of philosophy, but because it responds to Jacques Derrida's own recent shift towards political theory, particularly in his evaluation of the "new world order" in Specters of Marx . Richard Beardsworth's study opens the political implications of Derrida's thought in terms of a philosophy of time. Beardsworth focuses on the political dimension of the Derridean themes of aporia, invention and the lesser violence; he considers these motifs in the context of untying time from logic. He argues that in order to articulate the "and" between Derrida's philosophy and the political, this untying calls for a reinvention of the relation between political organisation and temporality.

Such a reinvention can only be understood by tracing Derrida's negotiation with political modernity, specifically with Kant and Hegel, and with the political fates of two attempts to leave this tradition - the philosophies of Heidegger and Levinas. For sympathisers of deconstruction, this book is political without politicizing deconstruction; for non-sympathisers, it rearticulates deconstruction's relation to philosophical modernity. Derrida and the Political is designed for upper level, undergraduate students of philosophy, politics and critical theory.

From the Back Cover:

This is the first book to consider the political implications of Derrida's philosophical project. It is a timely response to the current political focus of continental philosophy and to Derrida's own recent shift towards the political.

About this edition

• Publisher: Routledge
• Publication date: 1996
• ISBN 10: 0415109663
• ISBN 13: 9780415109666
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 192