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  • Understanding Derrida
  • Patrick Crowley
Understanding Derrida. Edited by Jack Reynolds and Jonathan Roffe. . New York — London, Continuum, 2004. 168 pp. Pb £17.99.

This is Derrida as understood by scholars from Departments of Philosophy and English in the Anglophone world. The editors have organized this volume around twelve themes — language, metaphysics, religion, the subject, politics, ethics, the decision, translation, religion, psychoanalysis, literature, art — and follow these thematic concepts with a series of short, intelligent pieces on philosophers with whose work Derrida has engaged, such as Husserl, Lévinas and Hegel. The articles are brief, eschew secondary materials (apart from David Roden's reference to Rodolphe Gashé's The Tain of the Mirror) and, at the end of each chapter, there is a section that lists the relevant texts by Derrida and provides a commentary of a few lines on each. These sections are too brief to be useful. Certainly, framing Derrida's thoughts within thematic binds makes for useful pathways, but the theme can subsume the disparate elements at play in Derrida's work. Kevin Hart's article on religion is a cogent piece, but his claim 'If la différance is beyond being and unable to be captured by our concepts, it resembles the God of negative theology' tells us perhaps more about Hart's argument than it does about différance. In Chapter 1, the editors suggest that 'where this text differs from other introductory volumes is in its ongoing insistence on returning to Derrida's own writings'. None the less, though we get an understanding of Derrida's thought from this volume, we rarely get an insight into the work of Derrida's close readings, into how Derrida works with ideas and texts. Also, at times, the intricacy of Derrida's thought is left aside due to the constraint of space. In his chapter on decision, Jack Reynolds, for example, writes: 'Derrida's main purpose in discussing the supplement is to problematize any suggestion that the supplement is, in fact, secondary (and this is a complicated argument that I cannot address here).' Organizing the volume around themes is understandable, but within these articles the student needs to be exposed to complicated arguments that deal with Derrida's operative concepts, such as différance, supplement and trace. Unfortunately, the index can prove to be a barrier: there are, for example, too many inaccuracies in the page references to the trace. More positively, the editors have intelligently ordered the chapters such that they overlap and set up a series of cross-references. Claire Colebrook's chapter on literature is followed by Julian Wolfreys on art and David Roden on the subject. All three touch upon questions of the border and the frame and the result is satisfying. Indeed, this collection includes a number of chapters that elucidate Derrida's positions with critical poise. The best of these make clear their terms of reference and provide examples from Derrida's work. Christopher Norris's piece on Derrida and metaphysics is lucid, as is David Roden's excellent [End Page 155] chapter. In these articles, as in others, complexity is acknowledged and its distillation provides a pure drop. Overall, the parts are greater than the sum but students will find this volume helpful.

Patrick Crowley
University College Cork
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