Table of Contents

Acknowledgements.

Abbreviations.

Apologia.

1. Phenomenology.

2. Structuralism.

3. Language: Speech and Writing.

4. Deconstructing the Text: Literature and Philosophy.

5. Deconstruction and Psychoanalysis.

6. The Ethics and Politics of Deconstruction and the Deconstruction of Ethics and Politics.

Notes.

Bibliography.

Index.

About the Author

Christina Howells is Reader in French and Fellow of Wadham College, Oxford.

Reviews

"Christina Howells has written a sharply focused study which will delight equally those who have not yet started reading Derrida and those who cannot stop. Its concise and elegant expositions of texts ranging from his very early to his very recent ones will disarm all but the most dogmatic of Derridaphobes, showing them gently but firmly that their resistance arises from their own misconstruction of how deconstruction works. All Derridaphiles will wish that they themselves had written this just and responsible book." John Llewelyn, lately Reader in Philosophy at the University of Edinburgh and Visiting Professor at the University of Memphis and Loyola University of Chicago

"As we have come to expect from Christina Howells' exemplary earlier work on Sartre, this book on Derrida is comprehensively researched, clearly written and strongly argued. It is a valuable and much-needed addition to the literature that will be essential reading for anybody interested in Derrida." Simon Critchley, University of Essex

"interesting - her claims around the idea that deconstructive readings subject philosophical texts "to the same kind of analysis as literary ones" are particularly thought-provoking" Simon Glendinning, Times Literary Supplement