Derrida from Now On

Written in the wake of Jacques Derrida's death in October 2004, Derrida From Now On attempts both to do justice to the memory of Derrida and demonstrate the continuing significance of Derrida's work for contemporary philosophy and literary theory. If Derrida's thought is to remain relevant for us today, it must be at once understood in its original context and uprooted and transplanted elsewhere. Derrida From Now On thus begins with an analysis of Derrida's attachment to the French language, to Europe, and to European secular thought, before turning to Derrida's long engagement with the American context and to the ways in which deconstruction allows us to rethink the history, identity, and promise of post-9/11 America. Taking as its point of departure several of Derrida's later works (from "Faith and Knowledge" and The Work of Mourning to Rogues and Learning to Live Finally), the book demonstrates how Derrida's analyses of the phantasms of sovereignty, the essential autoimmunity of democracy or religion, or the impossible mourning of the nation-state, can help us to understand what is happening today in American culture, literature, and politics. From now on, it is argued, Derrida's thought will live on only by being translated elsewhere; though this has in fact always been the case, Derrida's disappearance will have driven home this necessity with a new force and an unprecedented urgency. Derrida From Now On is at once an effect of this force and an attempt to respond to this urgency.

Michael Naas is Professor of Philosophy at DePaul University. His most recent books include Taking on the Tradition: Jacques Derrida and the Legacies of Deconstruction and Derrida from Now On (Fordham).