Description
Book SynopsisThe End of the World and Other Teachable Moments follows the remarkable itinerary of Jacques Derrida’s final seminar, The Beast and the Sovereign (2001-2003), as the explicit themes of the seminar, namely, sovereignty and the question of the animal, come to be supplemented and interrupted by questions of death, mourning, survival, the archive, and, especially, the end of the world.
Trade Review"With his luminous and generous intelligence, Michael Naas makes the task of reading Derrida look easy. But that's only because, like the finest of teachers, he takes us patiently through the difficulties and countenances bravely the disconcerting turns taken by this final seminar, what he calls its teachable moments. Naas's clarity of thought, the acuteness of his ear, and the deftness of his writing are gifts that readers appreciate on every page. This book will be indispensable reading from now on for whoever attends to Derrida's seminars." -- -Peggy Kamuf University of Southern California "The End of the World and Other Teachable Moments is a striking tribute to the end of the world that was Derrida, and it lives up to the responsibility of carrying forward what remains." -- -Kelly Oliver Vanderbilt University "Naas solidifies his singular place as our most brilliant and incisive scholar of Derrida's work." -- -Jeffrey Nealon Pennsylvania State University "Michael Naas is one of the most authoritative interpreters anywhere of Jacques Derrida's work. Naas's writing about Derrida is characterized by a remarkable intellectual generosity. The End of the World and Other Teachable Moments is a brilliant reading of Derrida's last seminar, The Beast and the Sovereign (2001-2003). Naas provides an exegesis of that seminar both in itself and in the light of an amazing in-depth knowledge of all Derrida's previous work, back to its beginning in the 1960's. This distinguished book is an essential guide for all those who are perplexed in one way or another by Derrida's writings." -- -J. Hillis Miller UCI Distinguished Professor Emeritus of Comparative Literature and English at the University of California, Irvine
Table of ContentsAbbreviations of Works by Jacques Derrida Acknowledgments Introduction: Derrida's Other Corpus 1 1. Derrida's Flair (For the Animals to Follow ...) 2. "If you could take just two books ...": Derrida with Heidegger and Robinson Crusoe at the Ends of the World 3. To Die a Living Death: Phantasms of Burial and Cremation in Derrida's Final Seminar 4. Reinventing the Wheel: Of Sovereignty, Autobiography, and Deconstruction 5. Pray Tell: Derrida's Performative Justice 6. Derrida's Preoccupation with the Archive 7. "World, Finitude, Solitude": Derrida's Walten Conclusion: Desormais Notes Name and Subject Index
