Jacques Derrida

Routledge Critical Thinkers

by Nicholas Royle

There are few figures more important in literary and critical theory than Jacques Derrida. Whether lauded or condemned, his writing has had far-reaching ramifications, and his work on deconstruction cannot be ignored. This volume introduces students of literature and cultural studies to Derrida's enormously influential texts, covering such topics as: deconstruction, text and difference; literature and freedom; law, justice and the 'democracy to come'; drugs, secrets and gifts. Nicholas Royle's unique book, written in an innovative and original style, is an outstanding introduction to the methods and significance of Jacques Derrida.

Genres: Philosophy, Nonfiction, Theory, Ebooks

208 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2003

Reviews

[فؤاد · Rating 1 out of 5]

دومين كتاب از مجموعه متفكران انتقادى راتلج، و افتضاح. هر چى كتاب فوكو روشنگر بود، اين پيچيده و گنگ و بدون خط سير مشخص بود. صد و بيست صفحه خوندم، بدون اين كه به قدر نصف صفحه مطلب دستگيرم شده باشه. مى خواستم حداقل تا پس فردا كه ميرم كتابخونه پسش بدم، بخونمش. ولى ديگه نكشيدم. نصفه رهاش كردم.

پس به كسايى كه مى خوان اين كتاب رو بخونن: نخونيد!

[Lazarus P Badpenny Esq · Rating 4 out of 5]

Like the Sun, Derrida may be looked at only indirectly.

[Arvin · Rating 5 out of 5]

این کتاب از مجموعه متفکران انتقادی ِ نشر مرکزه - که سردبیرش پیام یزدانجوه - ترجمه کتاب کار پویا ایمانیه که به نظر من یکی از بهترین مترجمای فلسفه‌س - چرا که خودش رشته‌ش فلسفه‌س
اما خود کتاب راجع به "دریدا" نوشته شده - فیلسوفی که کارش "دریدا" نبودنه - کسی که شالوده‌ی خودشو میشکنه در عین حالی که به خودش وفاداره - توسط یک "دریدا شناس"
چیزی که من فهمیدم از دریدا اینه که فیلسوف آخرالزمانیه به قول خودش - آخرالزمان به این معنا که زمانی زنده‌ها پس از مرگ که برای مرگ یا زندگی آماده میشن! فیلسوفی که دنبال در حضور دنبال چیزهایی که غایبه می‌گرده - هرچیزی تو متن به حاشیه رونده میشه رو به چشم ما میاره - فیلسوفی که شبح‌واره : در عین حالی که هست ، نیست - توی هستی دنبال نیستی میگرده توی نیستی دنبال هستی ! لرزه ایجاد میکنه تو همه‌ی ساختارها - در عین اینکه ساختارها رو میشکنه به اونها هم وفاداره - فیلسوفِ "راز" و "تفاوط" و "شالوده شکنی " و "زبان" و "ادبیات" و "سیاست"
فیلسوفی که با حوصله میشینه شعر و رمان و ادبیات و سینما و هرچیز دیگه‌ای رو مطالعه میکنه و شالوده‌شکنیشون میکنه در عین حالی که ستایششون میکنه بهشون میخنده ! فیلسوفی که رد ِ همه‌چیزو میگیره - نه فیلسوف تحلیلیه نه فیلسوف قاره‌ای در عین حال هردوهم هست !
کتاب هم به سبک نوشتار دریدایی نوشته‌ شده یعنی برای شما ایده‌های دریدا رو به صورت خلاصه توضیح نمیده بلکه در هر فصل ایده‌ی دریدا و دریدا رو به صورت عملی حاضر میکنه جلوتون در حالی که دریدا و ایده‌ش غایبه.
کتابهای زیادی از دریدا ترجمه نشدن به خاطر ااینکه زبان ساده‌ای نداره فقط مقدمه کتاب مهمش "از گراماتولوژی" تو ایران از انتشارات رخداد نو ترجمه شده و گویا مترجم ِ فیلسوف ِ دیگه‌ای به اسم "شاهین کوهساری" مشغول ترجمه‌ی کل کتابه.
خوندن این کتاب تجربه‌ی متفاوتی برای من بود - تجربه‌ی متفاوتی از ادبیات و فلسفه - مرز این دو گم شد مثل کار خود دریدا

[Michael Scott · Rating 1 out of 5]

I read this book with the (naive) intention of finding an accessible introduction to Derrida's works, and a comparative analysis of structuralism and post-structuralism. I left the book without either. Thus, I have the dejected feeling that I was reading plays upon plays ... upon plays on words; I am not arguing this is not a good explanation of Derrida's work, just that it's not for me and certainly not what I expect from a book in the Routledge Critical Thinkers series.

[Prithvi Shams · Rating 1 out of 5]

I picked up this book hoping to make sense of Jacques Derrida. I put it down wondering if there really was anything to make sense of in his extensive corpus of word salad and running around in semantic circles.

[Kathleen · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a fantastic introduction to Derrida's thought. Royle doesn't spoon-feed you the "main ideas" in Derrida's works. Instead, he leads the reader in thinking through Derrida's ideas. It's conversational, with lots of questions. Royle encourages the reader to slow down, to become comfortable pondering the spaces where ambiguity exists. In doing so, he illuminates Derrida's methods of thinking.
For some people, that might be unsatisfying. Although, I don't think it should be. Anyone even minimally familiar with Derrida's work should realize that the whole project of identifying "main ideas" or offering a definitive, introductory account of "Derrida" is incompatible with his work. Royle explains this in the intro, and in this explanation, he gets at the style of Derrida's thinking.

[Tanmay Tathagat · Rating 4 out of 5]

An appropriately mind-bogging introduction to Derrida's thought that would irritate and infuriate a majority of its readers, but would be have it any other way? How can we possibly have a straightforward boilerplate listing of "key ideas" for somebody as revolutionary as Derrida? It is an invigorating text, which makes for an exceptional reading experience. It is a book one should return to again and again, preferably with a notebook and a pen, because there's just no damn way you got everything the first time. But quite definitely, this is simply not the book you should be reading if you have your paper on Deconstruction or Post-Structuralism the next morning, and in this, it is very different from a lot of the books in this series.

[Sahand · Rating 1 out of 5]

Could it be any worse? There is absolutely nothing about Derrida's philosophy in this mumbo jumbo of nothingness. The writer keeps telling you how great Derrida is, but never even tries to explain why.
This series has books of different values; the one on Barthes is one of the best.

[Mrityunjay Mrityunjay · Rating 3 out of 5]

Derrida explained, in 200 pages, in a derridean way = overdose. As much I liked this reading, I like reading Derrida slow and steady.

[Michael A. · Rating 3 out of 5]

Decent introduction to Derrida from a literary studies standpoint (as opposed to philosophical). Special attention is paid to the concepts of supplementarity, the text, the secret, and the gift.

[Francisca · Rating 4 out of 5]

i may need a couple of days of sorting through my notes and the work of my highlighter before i can begin explaining what this whole book was about. all i can say right now is that i do feel like i've learned something--even more so considering i knew next to nothing about derrida's work or ideas. still, i can't help feeling relieved as well that my dissertation supervisor did not recommend me deconstructionism for my theoretical framework.

[L · Rating 3 out of 5]

'Jacques Derrida' by Nicholas Royle is a book in the Routledge Critical Thinkers series which has set rules of presentation. First the book must open with a 'Why thinker?', then the thinker's key ideas are explained, and then the book ends with an 'after thinker'. Royle plays with this style, by first deconstructing the ideas of the series which then opens up the text to a vast number of interpretations. For example, the question of 'why Derrida?' can be considered in many ways, the most immediate response would be 'why should we read Derrida?' but contained within the first question are ideas such as 'why does Derrida exist?' and 'why should there be such a thing as Derrida?', the question is then ontological and the context changes.

This unique presentation of Derrida's ideas remains 'authentic' to Derrida's theories, particularly around deconstruction, and therefore could be seen in some ways as a post-deconstructive introduction to the deconstructive thinker. Which, ironically, I am not doing now as I am referring to 'Derrida' as a unified, singular thing, and referring to deconstruction as inherently 'Derridean, or as Derrida's'.

While this text is intended to be an introduction, a survey, and in some areas a rough ouline of Derrida it still remains 'Derridean' in style. So, when compared to other books which have a similar intention, such as Penelope Deutscher's 'How to Read Derrida' this book not only gives a more complete survey of Derrida's ideas but it also invites the reader to read a pseudo-Derridean text.

Afterword: For a book with a section titled 'after Derrida' there is an eerie presence of Derrida within the book (besides the inclusion of his writings in the text), in the format of a review at the beginning: 'Excellent, strong, clear and original'.

[A.N. · Rating 5 out of 5]

An exhilarating book, generously affording insightful etymologies of words in question along with a recourse to far-fetched yet accessible literary examples, Royle's stands among the best sources ever written on this phenomenon called Derrida. In the course of this book, Royle's style, as is the case in many of his other works as well, remains original, far from overwhelmed by the weight of the compelling arguments it puts forward, playing instead playfully on Derrida's (non-)linguistic plays. In his uncanny style, Royle nears what he once quotes in his book as the status of "abolish[ing] the distance between what he is writing about and what his writing is doing." Highly recommended!

[Mohsen panahi · Rating 4 out of 5]

سال قبل این کتاب را تهیه کردم اما تنها 80یا 90 صفحه مطالعه کرده بودم که کتاب را بستم. مفاهیم در مقابلم مقاومت میکردند. شاید هم بی حوصله تر از الان بودم. در هر حال کمتر میفهمیدم.
یک ماه قبل دوباره کتاب را گشودم و خواندم. همزمان، مقاله ی نیرو و معنا را از کتاب نوشتار و تفاوت دریدا مطالعه کردم. سعی کردم عجول نباشم. با صبر و حوصله بعضی از فصل ها را دوباره و سه باره خواندم. اولین چیزی که از دریدا میتوان آموخت همین است:عجول نباشید. این دفعه که تا صفحه آخر خوانده ام، نمیتوانم کتاب را ببندم. فکر میکنم طی چند ماه آینده دوباره و دوباره به کتاب مراجعه کنم.

[Myrthel · Rating 3 out of 5]

I've come to appreciate this series, these compact little books are a great way to introduce you to the main ideas of a modern thinker before you go on to explore their theories and writings. With Derrida I needed this help more than usual because although the french philosopher writes beautifully the content of his work is often mind boggling and confuses the hell out of me.

[Hossein · Rating 3 out of 5]

Good, but there are better companions to Derrida which are thicker, but more informative and easier to understand. You should know that Derrida is difficult. You must read one of these companions in order to understand him. This one is good.

[Bisher · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very dense, very exciting, did I mentioned very dense?

[Linda · Rating 4 out of 5]

Reading Derrida's writing is hard work. Royle notes in his chapter of Differance that "no one is pretending that […] any of Derrida's other works – is a piece of cake. At any event, if Derrida is a piece of cake – and I would not wish to press the richness of this analogy too far – we should bear in mind what Friedrich Engels said of Hegel: 'The fellow demands time to be digested'."

That makes me feel better; however, I still have a mental-stomach-ache even after reading through Royle's explanations. 'There's a difference between drowning and waving' as the old saying goes. It brings to mind Clifford Geertz's words "the difference, however un-photographable, between a twitch and a wink is vast … the winker is communicating … a mere twitch... carries no meaning." I can't shake the uncomfortable feeling that everyone who reads Derrida is winking and I'm sitting well outside the in-joke.

Nonetheless, I do feel better informed having read this book by Royle. It has helped me start to 'digest' several ideas that seem to be central to Derrida's writing – including that there is no 'central' anything. Several terms which Derrida uses frequently are covered, including Decentralisation; the notion that whilst we can discuss the centre of a circle, once there, there is nothing – but none the less that 'nothing' can be transformed. Deconstruction; the idea relates not so much to pulling things apart, but that ideas and meaning can (do) defy structures and rules, and therefore any sense can spring from anything at any time (akin to Barthes' "halo of virtualities"). Differance; the notions of differing and deferring combined. Paraegon; the deframing of truth and of information (Royles gives the example of placing text in the book in a grey box, thereby illustrating an applied frame to what one person says is essential). And so on and so on, creating a veritable dictionary of neologisms manifested by Derrida's busy brain.

So overloaded with ideas is Derrida, that even those recorded as 'asides' trigger ramifications for my research. For example, his approach to 'speech' marks and parenthesis (Latin for 'put in beside') which, in his hands, can be transgressive in their attempt to (subliminally) remove the stated 'thing' from 'reality' and 'truth.' For me, it explains why readers remain divided by Derrida's deliberately 'discursive' (non)sense.

A curious idea liberates the written language from being 'bookish' with the redefinition of 'text,' or as Derrida prefers to call it making your 'mark.' Once you relinquish the Western-alphabetic notion of text, you can see that all animals, including humans, are driven to make their mark. Consider, for example, an animal's territorial scent, a handprint on a cave wall or an ink-blotch on parchment made by an illiterate. These marks, he notes, are neither rhetorical nor anthropological, they are "pre-linguistic," associated with 'non-knowledge' and as such, "the mark has no need for language." Significantly, all of these textual marks are designed as Derrida says, to survive the death of their author or signatory. We might say, therefore, that these textual marks aim at being eternal. Once acknowledged, texts can 'live on' and are never a 'finished product' but "a fabric of traces referring endlessly to something other than itself."

Perhaps my favourite Derrida notion is the one of 'hauntology' to replace ontology. 'Ontos' is Greek for being, and Derrida argues that absence is as relevant as the presence or being. As such, there is a meaning which, like a ghost haunts our thoughts, and although such meaning is ephemeral and insubstantial, it none the less, leaves a trace and can initiate transformation.

Although I do feel transformed with new insight, I still can't shake the feeling, perhaps due to what Royle call's Derrida's "funny-uncanny" tone, that even now, Derrida is winking at me. All I can offer in response is an involuntary facial glitch. Regardless, nice try Royle; it's 'me' not 'you.'

[Tim · Rating 4 out of 5]

Part of a series subtitled "essential guides for literary studies", as I didn't notice till I'd finished it. I'm not especially a literary studies kind of guy, but very much a JD fan, and always in the market for a new introductory-level presentation. I've been reading Derrida (and around him) forever, although with a marked preference for certain bits of the oeuvre over others; in any case I'm fairly familiar with the basics. I'm not sure how helpful this would be for its intended readership (Royle spends a fair bit of the book going on about how at odds Derrida's whole endeavour is with the very idea of things like "essential guides" and "key ideas", and I think establishes that point at least quite thoroughly). For me reading the text was like surfing around familiarish waters, and the book was most useful for its numerous pointers to other texts likely to be interesting for me; in that respect it is excellent.

[Simon Barraclough · Rating 4 out of 5]

Easily the best of all the short guides to Derrida that I’ve read: funny, digressive, comprehensive, surprising, moving and open-minded. If it doesn’t gather in all of Derrida’s nets, it lets you know how many oceans they contaminate.

[db67671321 · Rating 3 out of 5]

a lighthearted reading of Derrida's works, and itself an effigy of Derrida

[Henrique Valle]

:D