Jacques Derrida: 0854 (Twayne's World Authors S.) - Hardcover

Champagne, Roland A.

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0805743103 ISBN 13: 9780805743104

Publisher: Twayne Publishers Inc.,U.S., 1994

Synopsis

Series Editors: Bernth Lindfors, University of Texas at Austin; Robert Lecker, McGill University; David OConnell, Georgia State University; David William Foster, Arizona State University; Janet PĆ(c)rez, Texas Tech University.TWAYNES UNITED STATES AUTHORS, ENGLISH AUTHORS, and WORLD AUTHORS Series present concise critical introductions to great writers and their works. Devoted to critical interpretation and discussion of an authors work, each study takes account of major literary trends and important scholarly contributions and provides new critical insights with an original point of view. An Authors Series volume addresses readers ranging from advanced high school students to university professors. The book suggests to the informed reader new ways of considering a writers work. A reader new to the work under examination will, after reading the Authors Series, be compelled to turn to the originals, bringing to the reading a basic knowledge and fresh critical perspectives.

About this title

About the Author

Roland A. Champagne is professor of French at the University of Missouri-St. Louis.

From the Back Cover

Jacques Derrida (1930-) is widely regarded as among the most influential - and controversial - of contemporary French intellectuals. The author of numerous, ground-breaking works on philosophy, literature, and aesthetic theory, he is a founding member of the prestigious College International de Philosophie, and in France he has played a major role in transforming the teaching of philosophy. In the United States, where he has taught regularly since the early seventies, his rigorous and allusive writings have been at the (often volatile) center of critical debates surrounding literary theories of deconstruction and have influenced an entire generation of scholars and students. Yet Derrida's work has also frequently been attacked as needlessly hermetic and perniciously frivolous. In this clear-headed and critical study, Roland A. Champagne provides a lucid introduction to Derrida's thought for the general, educated reader. He traces Derrida's intellectual formation, from his boyhood as a Sephardic Jew in the educational system of French colonial Algeria, to his training at the Ecole normale superieur in Paris; from his early exchanges with Althusser, Hyppolite, and Foucault, to his widening contemporary influence in American academic circles; from his early studies of the phenomenology of Husserl and Heidegger, to his involvement with speech-act theory, to his abiding preoccupation with the works of Levinas, Jabes, and Celan, with Jewish identity and the political engagement of feminist theory. Professor Champagne remains true to the subtlety of Derrida's arguments (a rarity in the highly polemicized discourse on deconstruction), while at the same time raising the central question of theethics of Derrida's philosophical practice. Derrida is also known for his neologisms, and readers will find here a helpful glossary of key terms in his philosophy, as well as a wealth of references for those interested in further pursuing these crucial and timely critical issues.

Edition details

• Publisher: Twayne Publishers Inc.,U.S.
• Publication date: 1994
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0805743103
• ISBN 13: 9780805743104
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 200