In this study, Paola Marrati approaches—in an extremely insightful, rigorous, and well-argued way—the question of the philosophical sources of Derrida's thought through a consideration of his reading of both Husserl and Heidegger. A central focus of the book is the analysis of the concepts of genesis and trace as they define Derrida's thinking of historicity, time, and subjectivity. Notions such as the contamination of the empirical and the transcendental, dissemination and writing, are explained as key categories establishing a guiding thread that runs through Derrida's early and later works. Whereas in his discussion of Husserl Derrida problematizes the relationship between the ideality of meaning and the singularity of its historical production, in his interpretation of Heidegger he challenges the very idea of the originary finitude of temporality.This book is essential reading not only for those interested in the philosophical roots of deconstruction, but for all those interested in the central questions of history and temporality, subjectivity and language, that pervade contemporary debates in cultural, literary, and visual theory alike.
Paola Marrati is Professor of Humanities and Philosophy, The Johns Hopkins University.
@fmct:Contents @toc4:Acknowledgementsii Translator's Noteii Introductionii @to1:Part One: Derrida, Reader of Husserl @toc2:1.1. Eidos and Time000 @toc3:1. The Problem of Genesis: Time and Truth000 2. Being has Always Already Begun: Phenomenological, Ontological and Empirical Geneses000 3. Transcendental Teleology and its Empirical Crisis: the Eidos of Europe000 @toc2:1.2. The Absolute is Passage000 @toc3:1. Reactivating the Origin: The Return Inquiry000 2. Truth Lives Only By Surviving000 3. Writing and the Transcendental Sense of Death000 4. The Crisis of History: Fact, Eidos and Fault000 @toc2:1.3. Forgetting and Memory (Of Ideality)000 @toc3:1. Difference Dwells in Language Alone000 2. Memory and Forgetting of Ideality000 3. Epoch? and Solitary Mental Discourse000 4. Originary Intuition and Signification000 5. Duration of the Augenblick: The World in Time000 6. Widersinnigkeit and Sinnlosigkeit: Ideality of Bedeutung and Non-Intuition000 @toc1:Part Two: Derrida Before Heidegger @toc2:2.1. Being is Not Gathered000 @toc3:1. On the Epoch of Representation000 2. Sendings [Des envois]000 3. The Paradox of the Origin in Heidegger000 @toc2:2.2. Whence the Future?000 @toc3:1. Originary Temporality and Originary Historicality000 2. Genesis and Origin of Time000 @toc2:2.3. Dasein's Life000 @toc3:1. Dasein Does Not Pass Away000 2. Is My Death Possible?000 @toc2:Conclusions @toc4:Notes000 Works Cited000