Deconstructionism Books

Difference and Repetition

Gilles Deleuze

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 8 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

Deleuze wasn't messing around here, seriously. 5 out of 5 stars.
42 of 47 people found this review helpful.

Many people consider this to be the cornerstone of Deleuze's body of work, and in many ways it is. In many ways it is also invaluable, and perhaps the most significant piece of philosophy to emerge in the last half-century (though I don't think so, but I also don't think we're ready for this book yet, so I await Deleuze's Kojeve eagerly). Difference and Repetition is a front to back masterpiece, and on every page Deleuze's colossal creative genius is on full display. But, that doesn't mean you'll like it--in fact, I bet you (in your heart of hearts) won't. And I'm not challenging anyone--I don't even like it. Even stronger: I can't really fathom how it is POSSIBLE to like it. Let me tell you why, if you haven't already tried the beast a few times (in which case you know already).
D&R runs at a pace and a level of sophistication that perhaps no one in the world besides Deleuze himself could completely follow. It is assumed that not only are you familiar with the ins and outs of some of the most obscure aspects of people like Kant, Leibniz, and Bergson--but that you also be familiar with Deleuze's take on those aspects (which I just dont see how you could grasp in any way but superficially from this book). It's also assumed that you have experience in differential calculus and its theoretical underpinnings (granted mostly from Leibniz and Structuralism, but come on, who can really explain what a "singular point" is without it?). And to top all of that off, it is, very apparently (I won't say really) unwieldy and circulates between all of the above mentioned and more and much more in the snap of a finger. No doubt part of the book's affect and greatness, but, no doubt, more than part of the reason why no one can (under)stand it.
I'm not kidding when I say this: D&R is indisputably the most difficult piece of philosophy I've ever read. It will run off 15-20 dense pages at a time that are not just prolix and turgid, but sometimes senselessly so. Yeah, you wrestle with it about three or four times, you have your moments of lucidity, little chunks here and there that are admittedly shining examples of what sort of a writer Deleuze was and would become. But I repeat: you think Kant, Heidegger, Whitehead, Derrida, Jameson, and Hegel are difficult? I swear before everything holy and unholy this book that you might buy today is infinitely more difficult than anything any of them ever wrote.
But don't take my word for it. Try it, and be honest with yourself. Don't just get it so you can say "oh, come on, it's not that bad." Try and explain it, try and give accounts for your explanations, try and tie it all together, or not. Until I see a lucid exposition of this book (like Holland's for AO), I refuse to believe that anyone really likes it or understands its SPIRIT (not of course the letter, which anyone can get, and parrot). Yet--undoubtedly worth every minute of your time. Such is the enigma of Deleuze...

Editorial Review:

This brilliant exposition of the critique of identity is a classic in contemporary philosophy and one of Deleuze's most important works. Of fundamental importance to literary critics and philosophers,Difference and Repetition develops two central concepts--pure difference and complex repetition--and shows how the two concepts are related. While difference implies divergence and decentering, repetition is associated with displacement and disguising. Central in initiating the shift in French thought away from Hegel and Marx toward Nietzsche and Freud, Difference and Repetition moves deftly to establish a fundamental critique of Western metaphysics.

Poststructuralism: A Very Short Introduction (Very Short Introductions)

Catherine Belsey

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Total reviews: 7 Average rating: 3.5 of 5

Quite good, considering its length 4 out of 5 stars.
13 of 14 people found this review helpful.

French linguist Ferdinand de Saussure's assertion that the relationship between a signifier (i.e., a word, symbol) and the signified (the phenomenon it describes) is arbitrary is the starting point for all forms of Poststructuralism. It reveals that language (and all signifying systems) actually create, rather describe, the world we live in. Consequently, all our understandings of the world, be they through culture, knowledge, or ideology, are artificial constructs. While Poststructuralists do not necessarily deny the existence of reality, they argue that ALL understandings of reality are shaped by the signifying systems through which we must experience and understand it. Their objective, therefore, is not to dissect language/symbols in order to discover an ultimate Truth, but rather to reveal how language and symbols create meaning/reality. Here, Catherine Belsey shows how these ideas inform the work of diverse thinkers such as Roland Barthes, Louis Althusser, Michel Foucault, Jacques Lacan, Jacques Derrida, Julia Kristeva, Slavoj Zizek, and Jean-François Lyotard.

Although Poststructuralism is not necessarily political, it can been seen as "subversive" since by revealing how signifying systems create our understandings of the world, the individual learns to recognize and deconstruct the "realities" that control us. While Poststructuralism is empowering in this sense, it also has obvious shortcomings: we can no longer assert any absolutes. This leads the author to conclude that "Poststructuralism is more useful in prompting the uncertainty of questions than in delivering the finality of answers" (107).

I think this work is a very good "general" introduction to the topic. For only 107 pages, I don't think anyone could expect anything more. But, for anyone already familiar with Poststructuralism, it may seem a bit superficial.

Editorial Review:

Poststructuralism changes the way we understand the relations between human beings, their culture, and the world. Following a brief account of the historical relationship between structuralism and poststructuralism, this Very Short Introduction traces the key arguments that have led poststructuralists to challenge traditional theories of language and culture. While the author discusses such well-known figures as Barthes, Foucault, Derrida, and Lacan, she also draws pertinent examples from literature, art, film, and popular culture, unfolding the poststructuralist account of what it means to be a human being.

Power: Essential Works of Foucault, 1954-1984, Volume III

Michel Foucault, Robert Hurley, James D. Faubion, Paul Rabinow

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Total reviews: 1 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

Not Just for Foucault Fanatics 4 out of 5 stars.
22 of 23 people found this review helpful.

This collection of Foucault's essays, lectures, interviews, and editorials, offers even the casual reader of Foucault welcome insights into his methods, his intellectual biography and the development of his own methods. Most valuable perhaps are interviews collected from various magazines where he is challenged by his interviewers to respond to their criticisms and the criticisms of others. In one, for instance, Foucault tries hard to correct those who read his works as a totalizing critique of capitalism, or the current penal system, or the mental institution. He insists that his works are only intended to be seen as the history of various specific institutions and that those critics and followers who are tempted to project his findings onto current practices distort his intent. Whether or not you believe him, his defense of his method and his avowed intent are compelling. In another, he also quickly and cogently characterizes his two main intellectual influences, Hegelism and phenomenology, explains why he rejected these particular philosophical trends, but how they nevertheless challenged him to arrive at his own agenda and the course of his studies. Throughout Foucault is ruthlessly honest about his own failings -- for instance his lack of knowledge about the Frankfurt School, and thoughtful -- his appraisal of the problems that inhere in national healthcare programs, which he generally supports but with interesting qualifications. The editorials, while they address issues that may seem remote or dated, demonstrate that he was actively engaged in the politics of his time, and show how he applies his analytical methods to current events. Some selections will be of interest only to the Foucault fanatic or to his biographers, which is the reason for the four star, instead of the five-star, rating. Highly recommended.

Editorial Review:

The final volume in the definitive collection of Foucault's articles, interviews, and seminars. Power, the third and final volume of The New Press's Essential Works of Foucault series, draws together Foucault's contributions to what he saw as the still-underdeveloped practice of political analysis. It covers the domains Foucault helped to make part of the core agenda of Western political culture—medicine, psychiatry, the penal system, sexuality—illuminating and expanding on the themes of The Birth of the Clinic, Discipline and Punish, and the first volume of The History of Sexuality. Power includes previously unpublished lectures, later writings highlighting Foucault's revolutionary analysis of the politics of personal conduct and freedom, interviews, and letters that illuminate Foucault's own political activism.

The Field of Cultural Production

Pierre Bourdieu

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Total reviews: 1 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

Important 5 out of 5 stars.
1 of 2 people found this review helpful.

Bourdieu's analyses of class, taste and culture are seminal and serve as a framework for deeper examination of the embeddedness of class structure in the choices of individuals.

Editorial Review:

During the last two decades, sociologist Pierre Bourdieu has become a dominant force in cultural activity ranging from taste in music and art to choices in food and lifestyles. brings together Bourdieu's major essays on art and literature and provides the first introduction to Bourdieu's writings and theory of a cultural field that situates artistic works within the social conditions of their production, circulation, and consumption. Bourdieu addresses many of the burning issues that have consumed literary, art, and cultural criticism over the past decade: aesthetic value and canonicity, intertextuality, the institutional frameworks of cultural practice, the social role of intellectuals and artists, and structures of literary and artistic authority.

The Political Unconscious: Narrative as a Socially Symbolic Act (Routledge Classics)

Fredric Jameson

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Total reviews: 6 Average rating: 3.5 of 5

Paralogisms and enchainment. Literary productions..., 5 out of 5 stars.
38 of 46 people found this review helpful.

The Political Unconscious is a prodigious crical enterprise that unveils in a stimulating protean verve, the relationship between the political structure and the narrative enterprises of a variety of literary movements and/or individual authors. A model work of Marxist Criticism that sharpens our sensitivity and awareness in relation to the confines and intransigence of political schemas, for these affect and filter, construct and deflect the interpretation of artistic ouvres, while also creating the space for them within the tension provided. A treasure as is all of Jameson's criticism, his reading of Conrad's fiction is exceptional and vibrant in tone and exposition, to the extent that one rushes to re-read "Lord Jim" and plunge into a dialogue with Jameson while at it. Fredric Jameson is an artist and a cultural critic whose philosophy and literary analysis conveyed an American brand of Marxism that is second to none. The Political Unconscious is a fable, an historical approach that disseminates, and disrupts the fixed political schemas in a valient and elegant attempt at rousing readers from the slumber in which we are , however unconsciously, shrouded. A very important work indeed; It is with refreshing vigour that he reminds us of the importance of reading and writing. Yet he does so without the ascendancy of negative theology, such as is done by Blanchot and Agamben, although they also deserve our respect and gratitude. It is just that Jameson's texts are not mired in a restless solitude that asserts itself as feigned indifference. As was the case with Adorno and Allon White, a passionate surge is provoked, and the tragedy of being human(and all the more one of those doomed creatures known as scholars)is evoked in a confessed ambiguity that laments and hates the fact that it loves and believes in this, our life.
OF NOTE: A corresponding reading of Pierre Macheray "A Theory of Literary Production" for it will illuminate the theoretical impetus of the here reviewed book that much more.

Editorial Review:

In this ground-breaking and influential study Fredric Jameson explores the complex place and function of literature within culture. At the time Jameson was actually writing the book, in the mid to late seventies, there was a major reaction against deconstruction and poststructuralism. As one of the most significant literary theorists, Jameson found himself in the unenviable position of wanting to defend his intellectual past yet keep an eye on the future. With this book he carried it off beautifully. A landmark publication, The Political Unconscious takes its place as one of the most meaningful works of the twentieth century.

Antigone's Claim

Judith Butler

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Total reviews: 10 Average rating: 3.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

The celebrated author of Gender Trouble here redefines Antigone´s legacy, recovering her revolutionary significance and liberating it for a progressive feminism and sexual politics. Butler´s new interpretation does nothing less than reconceptualize the incest taboo in relation to kinship -and open up the concept of kinship to cultural change. Antigone, the renowned insurgent from Sophocles´s Oedipus, has long been a feminist icon of defiance. But what has remained unclear is whether she escapes from the forms of power that she opposes. Antigone proves to be a more ambivalent figure for feminism than has been acknowledged, since the form of defiance she exemplifies also leads to her death. Butler argues that Antigone represents a form of feminist and sexual agency that is fraught with risk. Moreover, Antigone shows how the constraints of normative kinship unfairly decide what will and will not be a livable life. Butler explores the meaning of Antigone, wondering what forms of kinship might have allowed her to live. Along the way, she considers the works of such philosophers as Hegel, Lacan, and Irigaray. How, she asks, would psychoanalysis have been different if it had taken Antigone -the "postoedipal" subject -rather than Oedipus as its point of departure? If the incest taboo is reconceived so that it does not mandate heterosexuality as its solution, what forms of sexual alliance and new kinship might be acknowledged as a result? The book relates the courageous deeds of Antigone to the claims made by those whose relations are still not honored as those of proper kinship, showing how a culture of normative heterosexuality obstructs our capacity to see what sexual freedom and political agency could be.

The Kristeva Reader

Julia Kristeva

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Total reviews: 3 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Celebrating Language and Thought 4 out of 5 stars.
21 of 22 people found this review helpful.

The Kristeva Reader is a good, even great, introduction to the work of Julia Kristeva. Some of Kristeva's most important works are brilliantly exerpted in readable prose by Toril Moi. Lovers of linguistics, rhetoric, literary theory, and psychology will find Kristeva's work compelling. One interesting aspect of the text is that it offers the reader a glimpse into the creative process. In an early essay, "Word, Dialogue, and Novel," Kristeva responds to the theory of Mikhail Bakhtin. Her later essay, "Revolution in Poetic Language," shows the evolution of Kristeva's language theory. Unfortunately, in order to make Kristeva accessible, Moi had to make some difficult choices in her editing. A serious scholar will undoubtedly find herself looking for the complete essays in another text.

Editorial Review:

An easily accessible introduction to Kristeva's work in English. The essays have been selected as representative of the three main areas of Kristeva's writing--semiotics, psychoanalysis, and political theory--and are each prefaced by a clear, instructive introduction. For beginners or those familiar with Kristeva's work this is a good complement to The Portable Kristeva with a convenient selection of articles from Kristeva's earlier work some of which are otherwise hard to come by.

Derrida For Beginners

Jim Powell

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Total reviews: 16 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

If your new to Derrida, here is your introduction. 5 out of 5 stars.
24 of 25 people found this review helpful.

Derrida is my favorite philosopher. I don't think that his 'Deconstruction' is holistic necessarily but the gist of it explains the inherent problems of doing philosophy better then anything else I've read.

Unlike the greats of Science who simplify complex ideas (i.e..Stephen Hawking, Richard Feynman), the guru's of philosophy take fairly straight-forward ideas and shroud them with such mysterious sounding proprietary language that their work becomes nearly impossible to decipher. Derrida is no exception. This is a shame because his underlying message is brilliant...and really not not all that abstract.

So until philosophers realize that less words does not directly translate to less intelligence, we should be very glad to have commentators like Jim Powell around.

"Derrida For Beginners" concentrates on developing the key concept of "differance" and defining the necessary Derridian terminology used to communicate its meaning. The book clearly defines, "binary opposites", "texts", "logocentricism" etc.. and has plenty of diagram's to help you get the idea. While I can't say the artwork did much for me, the cartoon setting does force the message to be carried accross succinctly...no babling. The first book I read after failing miserably to tackle "Of Grammatology" was "Derrida" by Christopher Norris. While his was an excellent introduction..I will say that after I read "Derrida for Beginners" I went back and read most of Norris' book again and got a lot more out of it. Try this: read "Derrida for Beginners" as many times as needed until you have all the words in bold print at your fingertips..then, read Norris' book "Derrida". With this few hours of investment, do some online searches and read some of the commentaries and criticism of Derrida. You will be surprised at how badly he is misunderstood by so many who have studied him a lot more then you, and should feel good about your knowledge in comparisom. Of course you then need to get humble again so start reading "Of Grammatology". :)

Editorial Review:

Derrida is one of those annoying geniuses you can take a class on, read half-a-dozen books by and still have no idea what he’s talking about. Derrida’s ‘writing’ is definitely confusing (it’s like he’s pulling the rug out from under the rug that he pulled out from under philosophy). But beneath the confusion, like the heartbeat of a bird in your hand, you can feel Derrida’s electric genius. It draws you to it; you want to understand it…but it’s so confusing. Jim Powell’s Derrida For Beginners is the clearest explanation of Derrida and deconstruction presently available in our solar system. Powell guides us through blindingly obscure texts like Grammatology (Derrida’s deconstruction of Saussure, Lévi Strauss, Roussseau), “Différance” (his essay on language and life), Dissemination (his dismantling of Plato, his rap on Mallarmé), along with his other masterpieces.

A Derrida Reader: Between the Blinds

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Total reviews: 4 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

good ideas, tedious excursion 3 out of 5 stars.
17 of 36 people found this review helpful.

It's unfortunate that Derrida has carried on the Western philosophical tradition of unnecessarily turgid, convoluted, and just plain bad writing inaugurated by the inflated Hegel and exemplified by Sartre and a host of other heady hacks. On the plus side, this is a solid collection of Derrida's most important pieces and enumerates some of his best ideas: difference, logocentrism, the trace, etc. Not for beginners, but if you're determined to read an important thinker, this may be required reading...some of it anyhow.

probes from concepts on high as a bird in flight looking 5 out of 5 stars.
15 of 33 people found this review helpful.

by far this is the most accessible introduction tothe forbidden threshold of Derrida's thought. Peggy Kamuf mounts the fairly limitless edifice of his work through seasoned selected excerpts,If you are fascinated forever by the conceptual,the literary,or analytic,the performative or philosphic focus,Derrida's work is like an alive moment that touches each in between elements of text,of ideas.All sometimes in simultanaeity or in context to each.If you come to Derrida it must from some place(time,geographic/cultural)some discipline,and sadly enough that acts to skew and blind,to opaque-ify Derrida's virtuoso,contextual,cross-referencing,overdetermined,overanalyzed modes of thought. But if you have scoured literature(Blanchot,Ponge,Jabes) not for its own sake,or thought,looked at ideas(Plato) (Heidegger) retrogressively yet with a committment to subversion(Genet) (Marx) of the Western canon,Derrida work serves these realms quite admirably.I humbly request you gander and pass time at this collection, peak between the blinds(Kamuf's metaphor)before you proceed directly to an original work. Derrida's work has that element of throwing forward a growth of petrified thought finding new conceptual life in the present, or not so distant past. So wherever you begin in Derrida it is like a timeless warp to be repeated some place,some time to come or had come,or had been,or will not ever be.

Editorial Review:

This is the only available collection of Jacques Derrida's contributions to philosophy, presented with a comprehensive introduction. From Speech and Phenomena to the highly influential "Signature Event Context," each excerpt includes an overview and brief summary.

Paper Machine (Cultural Memory in the Present)

Jacques Derrida

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Editorial Review:

This book questions the book itself, archivization, machines for writing, and the mechanicity inherent in language, the media, and intellectuals. Derrida questions what takes place between the paper and the machine inscribing it. He examines what becomes of the archive when the world of paper is subsumed in new machines for virtualization, and whether there can be a virtual event or a virtual archive.

Derrida continues his long-standing investigation of these issues, and ties them into the new themes that governed his teaching and thinking in the past few years: the secret, pardon, perjury, state sovereignty, hospitality, the university, animal rights, capital punishment, the question of what sort of mediatized world is replacing the print epoch, and the question of the “wholly other.” Derrida is remarkable at making seemingly occasional pieces into part of a complexly interconnected trajectory of thought.