Summary
Jacques Derrida: Positions
The book Positions is made up of three conversations that - in the period from 1967 to 1971 - Jacques Derrida (1930-2004) had with Henri Rons, Julia Kristeva, Jean-Louis Udbin and Guy Scarpet. This book is, in the words of Derrida himself, "an act of active interpretation" of his then newly published works (On Grammatology, Letter and Difference and Voice and Phenomenon).
During the conversations he conducted, Derrida in Positions tries to simultaneously read himself (by reexamining the positions he represents in the (extra)philosophical context of semiology, psychoanalysis and linguistics) and to put himself in the position of his opponents and critics (often being, in understanding the work of his own thinking, even more rigorous and consequential than them).
The basis of this book is actually a conversation about the conditions for the possibility of overcoming metaphysical thinking within philosophy, a conversation that Derrida actually has mostly with himself (and not so much with his interlocutors). Since Derrida takes the position of an interpreter of his own works, this book is at the same time a secondary literature for reading Derrida's works: it is a secondary literature whose author is Derrida himself. Hence, according to Jonathan Kahler, Positions are the best possible introduction to Jacques Derrida's oeuvre.
Biblos Newsletter
New titles, special copies and quiet recommendations from the antiquarian bookshop.