Overview

The chapters of this book revolve around the notion of the other in Jacques Derrida's work. How does Derrida write of and on the other? Arguing that Derrida offers the most attentive and responsible thinking about the undeniable experience of the alterity of the other, Apparitions--of Derrida's Other examines exemplary instances of the relation to the other--the relation of Moses to God, Derrida's friendship with Jean-Luc Nancy, Derrida's relation to a recently departed actress caught on video, among others--to demonstrate how Derrida forces us to reconceive who or what the other may be. For Derrida, the singularity of the other, always written in the lower case, includes not only the formal or logical sense of alterity, the otherness of the human other, but also the otherness of the nonliving, the no longer living, or the not yet alive. The book explores welcoming and hospitality, salutation and greeting, approaching, and mourning as constitutive facets of the relation to these others. Addressing Derrida's readings of Husserl, Levinas, Barthes, Blanchot, and Nancy, among other thinkers, and ranging across a number of disciplines, including art, literature, philosophy, and religion, this book explores the apparitions of the other by attending to the mode of appearing or coming on the scene, the phenomenality and visibility of the other. Analyzing some of Derrida's essays on the visual arts, the book also demonstrates that video and photography display an intimate relation to spectrality, as well as a structural relation to the absolute singularity of the other.

Full Product Details

9780823235094

Table of Contents

Reviews

Topics include the philosopher's readings of Husserl, Levinas, Barthes, Blanchot, and Nancy. A lucid, subtle, and thought-provoking study of the work of Jacques Derrida that provides a fine critical account of the importance of spectrality and haunting in contemporary philosophy and culture.-Nicholas Royle In a series of wonderful readings, Saghafi clarifies the way Derridaunderstands the relation of self and other, of why the relation betweenMoses and God, for example, is the paradigm for the law of the relation tothe other.-Rodolphe Gasch

Topics include the philosopher's readings of Husserl, Levinas, Barthes, Blanchot, and Nancy. A lucid, subtle, and thought-provoking study of the work of Jacques Derrida that provides a fine critical account of the importance of spectrality and haunting in contemporary philosophy and culture.-Nicholas Royle In a series of wonderful readings, Saghafi clarifies the way Derridaunderstands the relation of self and other, of why the relation betweenMoses and God, for example, is the paradigm for the law of the relation tothe other.-Rodolphe Gasch

Author Information

KAS SAGHAFI is Assistant Professor of Philosophy at the University of Memphis.

Tab Content 6

Customer Reviews

Recent Reviews

Countries Available