Full Description
Jacques Derrida's revolutionary approach to phenomenology, psychoanalysis, structuralism, linguistics, and indeed the entire European tradition of philosophy-called deconstruction-changed the face of criticism. It provoked a questioning of philosophy, literature, and the human sciences that these disciplines would have previously considered improper. Forty years after Of Grammatology first appeared in English, Derrida still ignites controversy, thanks in part to Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak's careful translation, which attempted to capture the richness and complexity of the original. This fortieth anniversary edition, where a mature Spivak retranslates with greater awareness of Derrida's legacy, also includes a new afterword by her which supplements her influential original preface. Judith Butler has added an introduction. All references in the work have been updated. One of contemporary criticism's most indispensable works, Of Grammatology is made even more accessible and usable by this new release.
Contents
Introduction by Judith Butler
Acknowledgments
Translator's Preface
Foreword
Part One
Exergue
1. The End of the Book and the Beginning of Writing
The Program
The Signifier and Truth
The Written Being / The Being Written
2. Linguistics and Grammatology
The Outside and the Inside
The Outside Is the Inside
The Hinge [La Brisure]
3. Of Grammatology as a Positive Science
Algebra
Science and the Name of Man
The Rebus and the Complicity of Origins
Part Two
Introduction to the "Epoch of Rousseau"
1. The Violence of the Letter
The Battle of Proper Names
Writing and Man's Exploitation by Man
2. ". . . That Dangerous Supplement . . ."
From/Of Blindness to the Supplement
The Chain of Supplements
The Exorbitant. Question of Method
3. Genesis and Structure of the Essay on the Origin of Languages
I. The Place of the Essay
Writing, Political Evil, and Linguistic Evil
The Present Debate
The Initial Debate and the Composition of the Essay
II. Imitation
The Interval and the Supplemen
The Engraving and the Ambiguities of Formalism
The Turn of Writing
III. Articulation
"That Movement of the Wand . . ."
The Inscription of the Origin
The Neume
That "Simple Movement of the Finger." Writing and the Prohibition of Incest
4. From/Of the Supplement to the Source
The Originary Metaphor
The History and System of Scripts
The Alphabet and Absolute Representation
The Theorem and the Theater
The Supplement of (at) the Origin
Afterword, by Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak
Notes
Index
