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  • Jacques Derrida: Live Theory
  • Ian Maclachlan
Jacques Derrida: Live Theory. By James K. A. Smith. London, Continuum, 2005. xvii + 157 pp. Pb £9.95 doi:10.1093/fs/knm323.

This is a serviceable introduction to Derrida's thought, which places a particular emphasis on the ethical and political dimensions of deconstruction. Generally, it does this reliably, with some worthwhile pages on Derrida's later writings. However, it is to Smith's credit that he is also at pains to suggest the continuity of Derrida's ethical and political concerns, resisting the notion of an ethico-political 'turn' in Derrida's career. It is helpful, in this respect, that Smith takes what remains the relatively less-trodden path of beginning with Derrida's work on Husserl (rather than introducing deconstruction first of all via structuralism), as this allows him to focus on the crucial role of alterity in Derrida's earliest engagements with phenomenology. Almost inevitably in a short introduction like this, the treatment of key motifs and issues is uneven, though in ways which tend to complement existing introductory works. Thus, the uninitiated will probably find the discussion here of iterability or the supplement, or of Derrida's relation to Freud or Heidegger, too perfunctory to be really enlightening. On the other hand, they will find more than could have been expected on Derrida's debt to Kierkegaard, or on the religious themes developed in his later work. They will also find a helpfully wide range of reference to and quotation from Derrida's writings, though precious little reference to secondary literature other than to Smith's own, hitherto unheralded contributions to the field. The book is least successful in its beginning and ending. The opening pages engage in too much shadow-boxing around misrepresentations of Derrida and general throat-clearing that could have been skipped. It is a feature of the series in which this book appears that volumes should conclude (in the supposed spirit of 'live theory') with an interview with their subject. Derrida's death, recorded in the opening pages of the book, does not seem to have been the cause of the lack of such an interview here, as Smith refers obliquely to the fact that 'Derrida was not able (or willing?) to sit for an interview for this volume' (p. 104). Instead, ensnared perhaps between an editorial requirement of the series and the refusal or unavailability of his subject, Smith has recourse to the unhappy solution of a fictitious interview, albeit one which is virtually a collage of existing interviews and other quotations from Derrida. None the less, it is entirely unsatisfactory to defend this procedure, as Smith does, on the grounds of the inescapable risk of appropriating the other that any reading encounter must run. Deconstruction does indeed attest to such a risk, but that does not justify employing a device which merely turns that risk into a near certainty. [End Page 238]

Ian Maclachlan
Merton College, Oxford
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