The deconstruction bombshell that rocked the Anglophone world.
Jacques Derrida’s revolutionary approach to phenomenology, psychoanalysis, structuralism, linguistics, and indeed the entire European tradition of philosophy—called deconstruction—changed the face of criticism. It provoked a questioning of philosophy, literature, and the human sciences that these disciplines would have previously considered improper. Forty years after Of Grammatology first appeared in English, Derrida still ignites controversy, thanks in part to Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak’s careful translation, which attempted to capture the richness and complexity of the original.
This fortieth anniversary edition, where a mature Spivak retranslates with greater awareness of Derrida’s legacy, also includes a new afterword by her which supplements her influential original preface. Judith Butler has added an introduction. All references in the work have been updated. One of contemporary criticism’s most indispensable works, Of Grammatology is made even more accessible and usable by this new release.
Jacques Derrida (1930–2004) taught at the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales in Paris and the University of California, Irvine. Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak is University Professor at Columbia University. Judith Butler is the Hannah Arendt Chair at the European Graduate School.
Table of Contents
Introduction by Judith Butler Acknowledgments Translator's Preface Foreword Part One Exergue 1. The End of the Book and the Beginning of Writing The Program The Signifier and Truth The Written Being / The Being Written 2. Linguistics and Grammatology The Outside and the Inside The Outside Is the Inside The Hinge [La Brisure] 3. Of Grammatology as a Positive Science Algebra Science and the Name of Man The Rebus and the Complicity of Origins Part Two Introduction to the "Epoch of Rousseau" 1. The Violence of the Letter The Battle of Proper Names Writing and Man's Exploitation by Man 2. ". . . That Dangerous Supplement . . ." From/Of Blindness to the Supplement The Chain of Supplements The Exorbitant. Question of Method 3. Genesis and Structure of the Essay on the Origin of Languages I. The Place of the Essay Writing, Political Evil, and Linguistic Evil The Present Debate The Initial Debate and the Composition of the Essay II. Imitation The Interval and the Supplemen The Engraving and the Ambiguities of Formalism The Turn of Writing III. Articulation "That Movement of the Wand . . ." The Inscription of the Origin The Neume That "Simple Movement of the Finger." Writing and the Prohibition of Incest 4. From/Of the Supplement to the Source The Originary Metaphor The History and System of Scripts The Alphabet and Absolute Representation The Theorem and the Theater The Supplement of (at) the Origin Afterword, by Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak Notes Index
