Difference and Repetition
by Gilles Deleuze
from Columbia University Press
This brilliant exposition of the critique of identity is a classic in contemporary philosophy and one of Deleuze's most important works. Of fundamental importance to literary critics and philosophers, Difference and Repetition develops two central concepts--pure difference and complex repetition--and shows how the two concepts are related. While difference implies divergence and decentering, repetition is associated with displacement and disguising. Central in initiating the shift in French thought away from Hegel and Marx toward Nietzsche and Freud, Difference and Repetition moves deftly to establish a fundamental critique of Western metaphysics.
Poststructuralism: A Very Short Introduction (Very Short Introductions)
by Catherine Belsey
from Oxford University Press, USA
Poststructuralism changes the way we understand the relations between human beings, their culture, and the world. Following a brief account of the historical relationship between structuralism and poststructuralism, this Very Short Introduction traces the key arguments that have led
poststructuralists to challenge traditional theories of language and culture. While the author discusses such well-known figures as Barthes, Foucault, Derrida, and Lacan, she also draws pertinent examples from literature, art, film, and popular culture, unfolding the poststructuralist account of
what it means to be a human being.
The Field of Cultural Production
by Pierre Bourdieu
from Columbia University Press
-- Lisa Jardine, author of Worldly Goods: A New History of the Renaissance
Derrida For Beginners
by Jim Powell
from For Beginners
Derrida is one of those annoying geniuses you can take a class on, read half-a-dozen books by and still have no idea what he’s talking about. Derrida’s ‘writing’ is definitely confusing (it’s like he’s pulling the rug out from under the rug that he pulled out from under philosophy). But beneath the confusion, like the heartbeat of a bird in your hand, you can feel Derrida’s electric genius. It draws you to it; you want to understand it…but it’s so confusing. Jim Powell’s Derrida For Beginners is the clearest explanation of Derrida and deconstruction presently available in our solar system. Powell guides us through blindingly obscure texts like Grammatology (Derrida’s deconstruction of Saussure, Lévi Strauss, Roussseau), “Différance” (his essay on language and life), Dissemination (his dismantling of Plato, his rap on Mallarmé), along with his other masterpieces.
On the Name (Meridian: Crossing Aesthetics)
by Jacques Derrida
from Stanford University Press
Jacques Derrida thus poses a central problem in contemporary language, ethics, and politics, which he addresses in a liked series of the three essays. Passions: “An Oblique Offering” is a reflection on the question of the response, on the duty and obligation to respond, and on the possibility of not responding—which is to say, on the ethics and politics of responsibility. Sauf le nom (Post Scriptum) considers the problematics of naming and alterity, or transcendence, raised inevitably by a rigorous negative theology. Much of the text is organized around close readings of the poetry of Angelus Silesius.
The final essay, Khora, explores the problem of space or spacing, of the word khora in Plato’s Tmaeus. Even as it places and makes possible nothing less than the whole world, khora opens and dislocates, displaces, all the categories that govern the production of that world, from naming to gender. In addition to readers in philosophy and literature, Khora will be of special interest to those in the burgeoning field of “space studies”(architecture, urbanism, design).
Deconstruction: Theory and Practice (New Accents)
by Christopher Norris
from Routledge
In this third, revised edition, Norris builds upon his 1991 afterword with an entirely new postscript, reflecting upon recent critical debate. The postscript includes an extensive list of recommended reading, complementing what was already one of the most useful bibliographies available.
Subjects of Desire
by Judith Butler
from Columbia University Press
-- Allan Stoekl, Annals of Scholarship
The Kristeva Reader
by Julia Kristeva
from Columbia University Press
-- Elaine Showalter
On Deconstruction: Theory and Criticism After Structuralism
by Jonathan Culler
from Cornell University Press
From reviews of the first edition--
"Academic literary crticism continues to be dominated by 'theory' and the struggle between deconstructionist and humanist approaches to the business of reading. Jonathan Culler's On Deconstruction is a typically patient, thoughtful, illuminating exposition of the ideas of Jacques Derrida and their application to literary studies."--David Lodge, Commonweal
"Culler is lucid and thorough, can move into and out of other people's arguments without losing the sense of his own voice and argument, and can manage to seem equally at home with Freudianism, feminism, and traditional literary criticism."--Times Literary Supplement
"As a practicing critic Culler has always been a deconstructor, and he approaches this topic with special immediacy and force. In On Deconstruction he offers generous summaries of numerous representative articles and a fine annotated bibliography. . . . His magisterial way of tracing particular topics and techniques through our diaspora of critical texts, and his provocative analyses, cannot fail to focus any critic's thinking about deconstruction."--Modern Language Quarterly
"Gifted with grace and clarity, Culler provides us with a stimulating survey of contemporary literary criticism."--Antioch Review
With an emphasis on readers and reading, Jonathan Culler considered deconstruction in terms of the questions raised by psychoanalytic, feminist, and reader-response criticism. On Deconstruction is both an authoritative synthesis of Derrida's thought and an analysis of the often-problematic relation between his philosophical writings and the work of literary critics. Culler's book is an indispensable guide for anyone interested in understanding modern critical thought. This edition marks the twenty-fifth anniversary of the first publication of this landmark work and includes a new preface by the author that surveys deconstruction's history since the 1980s and assesses its place within cultural theory today.
Antigone's Claim
by Judith Butler
from Columbia University Press
"Could Antigone offer a model for a feminism (and more generally a radical politics) which resists and redefines the state, rather than seeks to enlist the state for its complaints? Most interpretations of Antigone's dilemma conscript her in the end for the state she opposes, even if only as a sign of that state's limits. In this brilliant book, Judith Butler explores Antigone's intricate family relations (she is her father's half-sister and her brother's aunt) as an interrogation of kinship and sexuality that in turn interrogate the state. 'Although not quite a queer heroine,'Butler writes, 'Antigone does emblematize a certain heterosexual fatality that remains to be read.'" -- Michael Wood, author of Children of Silence: On Contemporary Fiction
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