Description
Book SynopsisThis volume represents the first collection of essays devoted exclusively to Jacques Derrida's Death Penalty Seminars, conducted from 1999-2001. The volume includes essays from a range of scholars working in philosophy, law, Francophone studies, and comparative literature, including established Derridians, activist scholars, and emerging scholars.
Table of ContentsIntroduction: From Capital Punishment to Abolitionism: Deconstructing the Death Penalty
Stephanie M. Straub
Part I: Reading Derrida’s Death Penalty Seminars
1. Beginning with Literature
Peggy Kamuf
2. Derrida and the Scene of Execution
Elizabeth Rottenberg
3. Always the Other Who Decides: On Sovereignty, Psychoanalysis, and the Death Penalty
Michael Naas
4. The Death Penalty and Its Exceptions
Christina Howells
Part II: Derrida and His Interlocuters
5. Derrida at Montaigne: A Stay of Execution
Katie Chenoweth
6. “Bidding Up” on the Question of Sovereignty: Derrida Between Kant and Benjamin
Kir Kuiken
7. Calculus
Kas Saghafi
Part III: Extending Derrida’s Analysis
8. A Proper Death: Penalties, Animals, and the Law
Nicole Anderson
9. Figures of Interest: The Widow, the Telephone, and the Time of Death
Elissa Marder
10. Opening the Blinds on Botched Executions: Interrupting the Time of the Death Penalty
Kelly Oliver
Part IV: Derrida and Capital Punishment in the United States
11. Furman and Finitude
Adam Thurschwell
12. The Heart of the Other?
Sarah Tyson
13. An Abolitionism Worthy of the Name: From the Death Penalty to the Prison Industrial Complex
Lisa Guenther
List of Contributors
Index