Jacques Derrida

  • I’m planning to tweet live video of my research seminar on Michel Serres and the Question of Alterity next Tuesday

    I’m planning to tweet live video of my research seminar on Michel Serres and the Question of Alterity next Tuesday

    Next Tuesday I will be giving a seminar at Deakin Univesity, Melbourne, on Michel Serres’s understanding of alterity. The paper comes from the first chapter of my book on Michel Serres, on which I have been able to do some more work recently. I’m trying to get permission from Deakin to tweet a live video

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  • Explaining Derrida with Diagrams 2: Messianicity without messianism

    Explaining Derrida with Diagrams 2: Messianicity without messianism

    In a previous post I introduced the very idea of Diagramming Derrida before explaining his notion of différance diagrammatically. In this post I set out to tackle the idea of “messianicity without messianism” and, more generally, Derrida’s characteristic motif of “x without x”, for example “religion without religion” or “God without God”. Messianism as Derrida understands it

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  • Explaining Derrida with Diagrams 1: Différance

    Explaining Derrida with Diagrams 1: Différance

    I’ve written a book on Derrida which is intended to be accessible to non-philosophers, and one of the challenges is to explain Derrida’s thought both faithfully and clearly. I have decided to use diagrams as one way of helping readers to grasp what Derrida is saying and, equally importantly, what he isn’t saying. I am

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  • Can you help me subtitle my book on Derrida? Describe him in five words or fewer

    Can you help me subtitle my book on Derrida? Describe him in five words or fewer

    I have a little book on Derrida coming out later this year, aimed at an advanced undergraduate and postgraduate readership and accessible to non-philosophers. Its aim is to explain Derrida’s thought as clearly and faithfully as possible using diagrams and examples, and then to bring him into conversation with the prologue of John’s gospel in the

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  • Third Derrida Podcast: Derrida, Atheism and Theology

    The third of the podcasts on Derrida and Reformed theology has now been released. The first considered questions of metaphysics and the second focused on Derrida’s ethics; this final podcast discusses Derrida’s engagement with theological themes. I begin by discussing Derrida’s cautious affirmation that “I rightly pass for an atheist”, and try to dismantle the myth that, for

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  • Podcast on Derrida, metaphysics and Reformed theology

    In January I had the pleasure of recording a series of three podcasts with The Reformed Forum discussing Derrida’s metaphysics, ethics and theology alongside ideas from the Reformed theological tradition. The first of the podcasts has just been released here. In this first podcast I introduce Derrida and debunk the myth that he thinks language is meaningless or

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  • Question about Freud’s “Psyche ist ausgedehnt” in Derrida and Nancy

    In On Touching Derrida makes much of Freud’s posthumous fragment “Psyche ist ausgedehnt; weiss nichts davon”, and the fragment is also treated in Nancy’s Corpus. As far as I can see, the translation is always given as something approximating “Psyche is extended; it knows nothing of it.” My question is this: how do we know

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