Understanding Derrida, Understanding Modernism: (Understanding Philosophy, Understanding Modernism)

This volume makes a significant contribution to both the study of Derrida and of modernist studies. The contributors argue, first, that deconstruction is not “modern”; neither is it “postmodern” nor simply “modernist.” They also posit that deconstruction is intimately connected with literature, not because deconstruction would be a literary way of doing philosophy, but because literature stands out as a “modern” notion. The contributors investigate the nature and depth of Derrida’s affinities with writers such as Joyce, Kafka, Antonin Artaud, Georges Bataille, Paul Celan, Maurice Blanchot, Theodor Adorno, Samuel Beckett, and Walter Benjamin, among others. With its strong connection between philosophy and literary modernism, this highly original volume advances modernist literary study and the relationship of literature and philosophy.

Table of Contents:
Introduction: Derrida’s modernity and our modernism Jean-Michel Rabaté, University of Pennsylvania, USA Part 1. Rethinking the main concepts of modernism 1. Trickster Economy: Derrida’s Baudelaire, and the Role of Money, Counterfeits, and Alms in the Modern City Marit Grøtta, University of Oslo, Norway 2. Kant’s Celestial Economy; a Footnote to The Gift of Death Eddis N. Miller, Pace University, USA 3. Derrida and Kafka: A Talmudic Disputation Before the Law Vivian Liska, Antwerp University, Belgium 4. Derrida with Heidegger: Poetic Language, Animality, World Jennifer Anna Gosetti-Ferencei, Fordham University, USA 5. To Wound the Language: Derrida Reads Celan Miriam Jerade, University of Mexico, Mexico Part 2. Engaging with the poetics of canonical modernism 6. Derrida’s Joyce Sam Slote, Trinity College, Dublin 7. Derrida re-voicing Artaud Alhelí Alvarado, Columbia University, USA 8. Derrida on Bataille: from dueling to duet Claire Lozier, University of Leeds, UK 9. A Cross in the margin, Inscription and Erasure in Derrida and Pound Mark Byron, University of Sydney, Australia 10. Derrida after Valéry (after Derrida) Suzanne Guerlac, University of California, Berkeley, USA Part 3. Différance as performance: pushing modernism beyond its borders 11. Three ways of looking at Derrida’s encounter with Austin Raoul Moati, University of Chicago, USA 12. Writing in the Shadow of Sartre’s Genet, Derrida’s Glas and the Ethics of Biography Robert Doran, Rochester University, USA 13. Derrida, Cixous, and (Feminine) Writing Marta Segarra, University of Barcelona, Spain 14. Reading between the lines: Derrida, Blanchot, Beckett Leslie Hill, University of Warwick, UK Part 4. Glossary Jean-Michel Rabaté Aporia Auto-immunity Biography/Autobiography/Autothanatography Deconstruction Différance Hauntology Hospitality Iterability Lies Methods Performative Poetry Undecidability Writing / Texting Index

About the Author :
Jean-Michel Rabaté is one of the world's foremost literary theorists. Since 1992, he has been professor of English and Comparative Literature at the University of Pennsylvania, USA. Professor Rabaté has authored or edited more forty books on modernism, psychoanalysis, contemporary art, philosophy, and writers like Beckett, Pound and Joyce. Recent books include Crimes of the Future (Bloomsbury, 2014), The Cambridge Introduction to Psychoanalysis and Literature (2014), The Pathos of Distance (Bloomsbury, 2016), and Rust (Bloomsbury, 2018). He is one of the founders and curators of Slought Foundation in Philadelphia (slought.org) and the Managing Editor of the Journal of Modern Literature. Since 2008, he has been a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

Review :
Understanding Derrida, Understanding Modernism is a superb, transformative exercise of critical thought, attuned to both contextual and philosophical-ethical différance; it allows Derrida’s work to be read next to, and by, a multi-angled and often eccentric philosophical and literary modernism. In a scholarship of industrial proportions, it stands out as writing after one of the most revolutionary thinkers of all time. Rabaté’s collection releases Derrida from negative and narrow appreciations of deconstruction to reveal a multifaceted philosopher with contrasting concerns and projects for the study of literary modernism and modernity. Simultaneously, modernism and modernity are throughout proven as apposite lenses for contextualizing and apprehending Derrida’s various pursuits. [...] In concretely outlining Derrida’s links to canonical modernisms, and repeatedly insisting on the continued relevance of Derrida’s philosophical rigour, Rabaté’s collection lays the groundwork for the elaboration of such connections in the future. The 14 diverse and original essays in this volume—along with Rabaté's important introduction and brilliant glossary of Derrida keywords—make it an immensely useful resource for understanding Derrida's relation to major European modernists…More important, however, are the local insights these essays provide on topics such as Baudelaire's ethics of almsgiving, the difference between Agamben and Derrida on reading Kafka, the relation of Bataille's "general economy" to Derrida's "arche-writing," the agon between Derrida and Sartre vis-à-vis Genet… Summing Up: Highly recommended. Derrida as a reader of modernism; Derrida as a modernist: both these propositions—and the relationship between them—are explored in this fascinating collection of essays, ably introduced and edited by Rabaté. The volume makes a fresh contribution to our understanding of the reach and richness of Derrida’s work as well as the multifaceted character of modernist literature and philosophy. Who, or better yet, what speaks in ‘literature’ for Derrida? This long-awaited book offers thought-provoking answers to this question, examined here through close readings of Derrida’s countersignatures to writers such as Baudelaire, Kafka, Celan, Joyce, Blanchot, Beckett, and Cixous. Neither a theory nor a critical method, Derrida’s approach gives us something else to ponder: the conditions of the impossible enacted by the event of literature. This impressive volume thus allows us to better understand how Derrida reconfigures the concept of modernity, beyond all labels, genres, or periodizations. Moreover, this book is itself a remarkable and timely contribution to the ‘humanities to come’ Derrida so pressingly called for. Whether it concern the Law, the absolute singularity of the other, the secret and testimony, or democracy, literature always lies affirmatively and performatively at the very core of Derrida’s thought.