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However widely—and differently—Jacques Derrida may be viewed as a "foundational" French thinker, the most basic questions concerning his work still remain unanswered: Is Derrida a friend of reason, or philosophy, or rather the most radical of skeptics? Are language-related themes--writing, semiosis--his central concern, or does he really write about something else? And does his thought form a system of its own, or does it primarily consist of commentaries on individual texts? This book seeks to address these questions by returning to what it claims is essential history: the development of Derrida's core thought through his engagement with Husserlian phenomenology. Joshua Kates recasts what has come to be known as the Derrida/Husserl debate, by approaching Derrida's thought historically, through its development. Based on this developmental work, Essential History culminates by offering discrete interpretations of Derrida's two book-length 1967 texts, interpretations that elucidate the until now largely opaque relation of Derrida's interest in language to his focus on philosophical concerns.

A fundamental reinterpretation of Derrida's project and the works for which he is best known, Kates's study fashions a new manner of working with the French thinker that respects the radical singularity of his thought as well as the often different aims of those he reads. Such a view is in fact "essential" if Derrida studies are to remain a vital field of scholarly inquiry, and if the humanities, more generally, are to have access to a replenishing source of living theoretical concerns.

Table of Contents

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  1. Contents
  2. p. ix
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  1. Acknowledgments
  2. p. xi
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  1. List of Abbreviations of Works by Jacques Derrida
  2. pp. xiii-xiv
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  1. Introduction
  2. pp. xv-xxix
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  1. 1. The Success of Deconstruction: Derrida, Rorty, Gasch
  2. pp. 3-31
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  1. 2. “A Consistent Problematic of Writing and the Trace”: The Debate in Derrida/Husserl Studies and the Problem of Derrida’s Development
  2. pp. 32-52
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  1. 3. Derrida’s 1962 Interpretation of Writing and Truth: Writing in the “Introduction” to Husserl’s Origin of Geometry
  2. pp. 53-82
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  1. 4. The Development of Deconstruction as a Whole and the Role of Le probl
  2. pp. 83-114
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  1. 5. Husserl’s Circuit of Expression and the Phenomenological Voice in Speech and Phenomena
  2. pp. 115-157
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  1. 6. Essential History: Derrida’s Reading of Saussure, and His Reworking of Heideggerean History
  2. pp. 158-217
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  1. Notes
  2. pp. 219-296
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  1. Bibliography
  2. pp. 297-305
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  1. Index
  2. pp. 307-318
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