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INTERRUPTING DERRIDA Whether he is elucidating tricky passages in Derrida’s texts, confronting large issues such as the relation of deconstruction to politics and ethics, or gently correcting the misreadings of other commentators, Geoffrey Bennington is always a highly reliable and often an extremely entertaining guide. There are few readers of Derrida who achieve such fidelity to the windings of his thought. Derek Attridge, University of York Jacques Derrida’s work continues to attract heated commentary and debate among philosophers, literary critics, social and cultural theorists, architects and artists. Interrupting Derrida, a major new book by Geoffrey Bennington, renowned Derrida scholar and translator of Derrida’s work, presents incisive new readings of both Derrida and interpretations of Derrida’s work. Part I lays 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 provides compelling insights into some important motifs in Derrida’s work, such as death, friendship, psychoanalysis, time and endings. The final section presents some trenchant appraisals of other influential accounts of Derrida’s work. Throughout, Interrupting Derrida is marked by a commitment to clarity and accuracy, but also by a refusal to simplify Derrida’s often difficult thought. Interrupting Derrida will be of great interest to all readers of Derrida, conti nental philosophy, and literary and cultural theory. Geoffrey Bennington is Professor of French at the University of Sussex. His previous publications include Legislations: The Politics of Deconstruction and Jacques Derrida. WARWICK STUDIES IN EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY Edited byAndrew Benjamin if if Pr?ftssor Philosophy, University Warwick This series presents the best and most original work being done within the European philosophical tradition. The books included in the series seek not merely to reflect what is taking place within European philosophy but also to contribute to the growthand developmentofthat plural tradition.Works written in the English language as well as translations into English are included, engaging the tradition at all levels- whetherby introductionsthatshow the contemporary philosophical force of certain works, collections that explore an important thinkerortopic, orsignificantcontributions thatcallfor theirowncriticalevalua tions. Alsoavailable: Bataille: Blanchot: WritingtheSacred ExtremeContemporary EditedbyCaro!rnBaileyGill LeslieHill Retreating the Political HegelAfter Derrida PhilippeLacoue-LabartheandJean-LueNancy EditedbyStuartBarnett Emmanuel Levinas: Textures ofLight: TheGenealogyofEthics VisionandTouchinIrigaray,Levinasand JohnLlewe!rn Merleau-Ponty CathrynVasseleu OnJean-Luc Nancy: TheSenseofPhilosophy The Hypocritical Imagination: EditedbyDarrenSheppard,SimonSparksandColin BetweenKantandLevinas Thomas JohnLlewe!rn Maurice Blanchot: Essays on Otherness TheDemandofWriting JeanLaplanche EditedbyCaro!rnBaileyGill PhilosophyandTragedy Deleuze and Philosophy: EditedbyMiBueldeBeisteBuiandSimonSparks TheDifferenceEngineer Relating Narratives: EditedbyKeithAnsellPearson StorytellingandSelfhood Body-and Image-Space: AdrianaCavarero Re-readingWalterBenjamin KantTrouble: SiBridWeiBel ObscuritiesoftheEnlightened Very Little ... Almost Nothing: DianeMorBan Death,Philosophy,Literature Critique ofViolence: SimonCritchley BetweenPoststructuralismandCritical Passion inTheory: Theory ConceptionsofFreudandLacan BeatriceHanssen RobynFerrell INTERRUPTING DERRIDA Geoffrej Bennington s' Routledge o Taylor Si Francis Group LONDON AND NEW YORK First published 2000 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon 0X14 4RN Simultancously published in the USA and Canada by Routledge 711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2000 Geoffrey Bennington Typeset in Perpetua by Taylor & Francis Books Ltd All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Bennington, Geoffrey. Interrupting Derrida / Geoffrey Bennington. p. cm. — (Warwick studies in European philosophy) Includes bibliographical references and index. 1. Derrida, Jacques. I. Title. II. Series. B2430.D484 B457 2000 194—dc21 99-056919 ISBN 0-415-22426-8 (hbk) ISBN 0-415-22427-6 (pbk) FOR ALICE This page intentionally left blank CONTENTS Acknowledgements ix Abbreviations xi Introduction 1 PART I Pedagogics 5 1 ‘Jacques Derrida’ 7 2 Derrida and politics 18 3 Deconstruction and ethics 34 4 Derrida’s Mallarmé 47 PART II Allographics 59 5 R.I.P. 61 6 X 76 7 Circanalysis (The thing itself) 93 8 Forever friends 110 9 Is it time? 128 10 Almost the end 141 vii CONTENTS PART III Philopolemics 153 11 Genuine Gasche (perhaps) 155 12 Emergencies 162 13 An idea of syntax 180 Notes 197 Index 231 viii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS Several chapters of this book have been published elsewhere: details are given in the first footnote to each chapter. Acknowledgements are due to the following: Blackwell Publishers for Chapter 1; Cambridge University Press for Chapter 2; Macmillan for Chapters 3 and 6; Exeter University Press for Chapter 4; Stanford University Press for Chapter 5; Imprimatur for Chapter 11; and The Otford Literary Review for Chapter 12. Colleagues and friends too numerous to mention have helped me in many ways in the completion of this book. My thanks go especially to a succession of graduate students at the University of Sussex with whom I have developed and refined many of the points that appear in these essays. Special thanks to Benjamin Roberts for his invaluable bibliographical assistance in the preparation of the final typescript. St Gervais des Sablons August 1999 ix