Of Grammatology [Paperback]

Jacques Derrida (Author), Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak (Translator)

Book Description

Publication Date: January 8, 1998 | ISBN-10: 0801858305 | ISBN-13: 978-0801858307 | Edition: Corrected

Jacques Derrida's revolutionary theories about deconstruction, phenomenology, psychoanalysis, and structuralism, first voiced in the 1960s, forever changed the face of European and American criticism. The ideas in De la grammatologie sparked lively debates in intellectual circles that included students of literature, philosophy, and the humanities, inspiring these students to ask questions of their disciplines that had previously been considered improper. Thirty years later, the immense influence of Derrida's work is still igniting controversy, thanks in part to Gayatri Spivak's translation, which captures the richness and complexity of the original. This corrected edition adds a new index of the critics and philosophers cited in the text and makes one of contemporary criticism's most indispensable works even more accessible and usable.

Editorial Reviews

Review

The translation is a noble job, and we should be grateful to have this distinguished book in our hands... [Spivak's] situating of Derrida among his precursors—Nietzsche, Freud, Heidegger, Husserl—and contemporaries—Lacan, Foucault, and the elusive animal known as structuralism—is very lucid and extremely useful.

(Michael Wood New York Review of Books )

The tool-kit for anyone who wants to empty the 'presence' out of any text he has taken a dislike to. A handy arsenal of deconstructive tools are to be found in its pages, and the technique, once learnt, is as simple, and as destructive, as leaving a bomb in a brown paper bag outside (or inside) a pub.

(Roger Poole Notes and Queries )

There is cause for rejoicing in the translation of De la grammatologie... Just as Derrida discloses in Rousseau a writer who distrusts writing and longs for the proximity of the self to its voice, so Spivak approaches Derrida through the structure of his diction; no ideas but in the words themselves.

(Denis Donoghue New Republic )

Reading Derrida was the shock of a decentering, the critical shift into a world of the interminable movement of difference, the crisis of any closure. Of Grammatology was and remains the most tightly worked... and exemplary... demonstration of the science of this shift and crisis.

(Canto )

One of the major works in the development of contemporary criticism and philosophy.

(J. Hillis Miller, Yale University )

Language Notes

Text: English (translation)
Original Language: French

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 456 pages
• Publisher: The Johns Hopkins University Press; Corrected edition (January 8, 1998)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0801858305
• ISBN-13: 978-0801858307
• Product Dimensions: 6.1 x 1.1 x 9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.3 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (32 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #25,986 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #1 in Books > Politics & Social Sciences > Philosophy > Movements > Deconstruction
  • #38 in Books > Politics & Social Sciences > Philosophy > Modern
  • #49 in Books > Education & Reference > Words, Language & Grammar > Linguistics

More About the Author

Jacques Derrida (1930-2004), was born in Algeria, has been called the most famous philosopher of our time. He was the author of a number of books, including Writing and Difference, which came to be seen as defining texts of postmodernist thought.

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

37 of 43 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars juggling the (extra)ordinary April 1, 2000

By H. Montandon

Format:Paperback

In the context of Derrida's early project - to provide a critique of the foundational human science - linguistics - Of Grammatology is an essential book. In it he develops ideas about "writing" and about the "trace", ideas which illuminate much about the modern science of linguistics. His work is an astringent when applied to other more "analytical" philosophers of language (e.g. John Searle).

Derrida's writing style may seem difficult at first, until one realizes that it embodies two other important ideas - play and undecideability. Of Grammatology is not exactly a book of philosophy, and not exactly a book on linguistics, and not exactly a literary work but one which rests uneasily among these three disciplines. By not drawing conclusions, by keeping in play many concepts at once, Derrida manages to provide provocative ideas on mental representations while at the same time instantiating these ideas in the ebb and flow of the work itself.

Because of its kalidescopic style, the book can be read for the pure enjoyment of a rambunctious entertainment, and as an important philosophical text, and as a satire, and as profoundly serious.

As the academic furor over "decontruction" dies down, Derrida's work perhaps can begun to be read for its human importance. Those who value an insistent questioning will find a champion here.

29 of 37 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Among the most important texts of the 20th century April 3, 2004

By D. Fineman

Format:Paperback

This volume is central to Derrida's project and is, perhaps, his single most important work. In it, one finds the essentail contentions that inform his other essays. Whether one views, from the analytic tradition, these concepts as indulgent rubish or as culmination of a pre-Socratic force hidden under the ubiquitous effects of Plato and Aristotle, they are critical in understanding the disjunctions of philosophy.

While Derrida's writing may be difficult because it is both dense and playful, allusive and iconoclastic,these presentational "quirks" are not empty but tied to the basic structures of his argumentation.

Since its publication, popular characterizations of this book have attributed to it positions it does not hold. Derrida is, among his other gifts, a scholar of the first order and behind his statements are close readings of many of the philosphical greats that preceded his effort. This is not the babbling of the manic mind but a huge encounter with the dominant tradition of interpretation.

Such a gigantic target cannot be exhausted in one volume, but even if one wishes to affirm the analytic tradition, this volume should be read with the respect and care one gives a worthy enemy.

24 of 31 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Derrida's most accessible work. March 19, 2000

By Craig G Cram

Format:Paperback

Having spent many frustrating hours looking for the substance in Derrida's many labyrinthine works, I make this suggestion to others: `Of Grammatology' is the thread text to start your wonderings through the rest of Derrida's thought.