Geoffrey Bennington

A recurrent typographical slip makes a democrat of Democritus, Demokratos of Demokritos, in an exemplary instance of the atomists' persistent analogy of atoms and letters. This essay argues that the rhythmic resonances between ancient materialism and democracy can be read in terms of a fundamental scatter that tends to deconstruct the teleologism endemic in the philosophical tradition's thinking about politics (and indeed matter). The curious resistance that scatter opposes to any kind of telos (including that of any absolute scatter) might itself make deconstruction interestingly resonate with the differential vibrations of string theory.

The principle whereby any bit of deconstruction brings with it all of deconstruction must affect the philosophical understanding of art usually subsumed under the title ‘aesthetics’. There can in principle be no deconstructive aesthetics (any more than there could be a deconstructive ethics or a deconstructive epistemology. Aesthetics in general is mortgaged to sensory perception, and from very early Derrida ‘perception does not exist’. Whence his interest in blinking, blindness and the trait of drawing. But the trace is not the trait, colour too is differential, and aesthetic judgement in general is thereby marked with a secret ‘political’ dimension.

Following Derrida's identification of the death-penalty as the (quasi-) transcendental of penal law in general, this essay traces the logic of its justification by the talionic principle in Kant (whose arguments in favour of the death penalty Derrida repeatedly describes as the most rigorous) and Hegel (who in a certain sense is even more rigorous than Kant in this respect). Showing how the death penalty (inflicted for murder) is in fact the only case in which the talionic principle operates without mediations or a calculus of equivalents, it is argued that this im-mediacy locates the death penalty (for murder) contradictorily at both the height of the rational and the depth of the barbaric. This allows the further suggestion that the concept of sovereignty functions as a non-dialectical attempt to resolve that contradiction, but one that leaves the Kantian attempt to defend the principles of sovereignty paradoxically outside the law it was concerned to defend, ex lex, treasonable, thus opening onto deconstructive possibilities beyond Kant's explicit claims.

One of the most significant contemporary thinkers in continental philosophy, Jacques Derrida’s work continues to attract heated commentary among philosophers, literary critics, social and cultural theorists, architects and artists. This major new work by world renowned Derrida scholar and translator, Geoffrey Bennington, presents incisive new readings of both Derrida and interpretations of his work. Part one sets out Derrida’s work as a whole and examines its relevance to, and ‘interruption’ of, the traditional domains of ethics, politics and literature. The second part of the book presents compelling insights into some important motifs in Derrida’s work, such as death, friendship, psychoanalysis, time and endings. The final section introduces trenchant appraisals of other influential accounts of Derrida’s work. This influential and original contribution to the literature on Derrida is marked by a commitment to clarity and accuracy, but also by a refusal to simplify Derrida’s often difficult thought.

One of the most significant contemporary thinkers in continental philosophy, Jacques Derrida’s work continues to attract heated commentary among philosophers, literary critics, social and cultural theorists, architects and artists. This major new work by world renowned Derrida scholar and translator, Geoffrey Bennington, presents incisive new readings of both Derrida and interpretations of his work. Part one sets out Derrida’s work as a whole and examines its relevance to, and ‘interruption’ of, the traditional domains of ethics, politics and literature. The second part of the book presents compelling insights into some important motifs in Derrida’s work, such as death, friendship, psychoanalysis, time and endings. The final section introduces trenchant appraisals of other influential accounts of Derrida’s work. This influential and original contribution to the literature on Derrida is marked by a commitment to clarity and accuracy, but also by a refusal to simplify Derrida’s often difficult thought.