Bøger af Geoffrey Bennington

A theoretical and deconstructive analysis of the function of maxims, generalizations and other law-like statements in eighteenth-century French writing.

Lyotard has been associated primarily in the English-speaking world with the 'postmodern debate', but his work is of a breadth and importance beyond what this would suggest. This book, the first general introduction to Lyotard's work to appear in any language, presents the arguments which mark the crucial moments of a complex career, taking as its guiding thread Lyotard's preoccupation with the event (perhaps the major concern of recent French thought) through his reflections on desire, production, justice and language. Lyotard's fundamental drive to account for the event takes his work through phenomenology, psychoanalysis, politics and art to a general and ambitious 'philosophy of sentences' which bears comparision with the work of Jacques Derrida. The more obviously 'political' aspects of Lyotard's writing are discussed and situated as integral to Lyotard's view of philosophy as such.

A conviction underlying all these 16 essays is that philosophy defines itself in part by a repression (or at least an avoidance) of the issue of reading. Reading, in the sense these pieces elaborate more or less obliquely, is an event that philosophy as such cannot quite register. Contrary to widespread misconceptions, this does not mean that these essays engage in a 'literary' approach to philosophical texts. They all in fact endeavour to present arguments, often of a recognisably philosophical kind, in favour of an essentially non-philosophical understanding of reading. Reading, in the sense I am concerned to elaborate, must be taking place before philosophy: the point would be to develop an understanding of that 'taking place' that would not be simply pre-philosophical.

The 26 extant sessions of the 'Frontiers' seminar held at the University of Sussex, 1989-92

The 15 essays gathered in this volume attempt to ask questions about reading, and more especially about the minimal preliminary gesture of opening a book in order to read. What makes reading possible and impossible, and how are that possibility and impossibility figured in the texts we read? The concern here is not with 'how to read', nor with the 'fate of reading', but with a much more modest, but perhaps also more nagging, question: what does reading demand if it is to be reading? What is reading, reading itself? One constant thread here is this: reading entails the unreadable. The unreadable, rather than the merely readable, is the 'object' of reading. And once what is read is the unreadable, then the supposed unit of the book must be opened, certainly, but must also remain open beyond any normal calculation of reading time or interpretative outcomes. The open book is just what cannot be read like an open book, is not entirely open, cannot ever quite be read.

A kind of sequel to my earlier monograph Lyotard: Writing the Event. That book attempted a general presentation of Lyotard's thought up to, and a little beyond, his 'book of philosophy' Le différend (1983), in a context where the English-speaking reception of Lyotard was dominated by discussion of 'post-modernism'. Since 1988, many more translations have appeared, but more importantly, Lyotard continued to produce a good deal of work up to his death in 1998. This work was in many ways surprising enough to make me reconsider some of the positions taken in Writing the Event, and the essays gathered here are all in different ways attempts to register that surprise and to record that reconsideration.

A collection of occasional pieces and interviews, in English and French, on philosophy, literature, art, architecture and politics.

This book deconstructs the whole lineage of political philosophy, showing the ways democracy abuts and regularly undermines the sovereignist tradition across a range of texts from the Iliad to contemporary philosophy.

This book examines the figure of the frontier (both bilateral border and open edge of civilization) both literally in Kant's political writings, and figuratively in Critiques, developing via a reading of teleological judgment the concept of "interrupted teleology" as a reasoned but non-rationalistic response to rationalism.

This book gathers essays written by Geoffrey Bennington since the death of his friend Jacques Derrida in 2004. All continue the ongoing work of elucidating difficult and complex thought, often enough with reference to Derrida's persistent interrogation of the concepts of life and death, mourning and melancholia, and what he sometimes calls 'half-mourning'. Not Half No End relates this 'ethical' interruption of mourning to the persistent but still ill-understood motif of interrupted teleology, which, it is argued here, is definitive of deconstruction in general. This suspension or interruption of the end (which is none other than differance 'itself') has all manner of consequences for our thinking, and for how we attempt to categorize that thinking (as epistemological, ethical, political or aesthetic, for example). Not Half No End moves through all these domains, and the whole of Derrida's rich and varied corpus, in a weave of styles - from the expository and analytic to the autobiographical and confessional - in the ongoing process of deconstruction. Key Features* New collection of essays by major theorist* Expanded readings of late texts by Derrida* Research monograph on mourning and melancholy* First consideration of the legacy of Derrida by a co-author

This work by renowned Derrida scholar and translator Bennington presents incisive new readings of both Derrida and different interpretations of his work within the domains of ethics, politics and literature.

This work provides a defence and illustration of deconstruction. Bennington demonstrates the possibility of clear and rigorous explication of deconstructive thought, and explores the political potential of deconstruction, via readings of Rousseau, Kant, Hegel, Freud, De Man and Lyotard.

Geoffrey Bennington sets out here to write an account of the thought of Jacques Derrida. Responding to Bennington's text at every turn is Derrida's own, excerpts from his life and thought that resist circumscription. These texts, as a dialogue and a contest, are a critical introduction to Derrida.