Order from a Major Online Bookstore
Ultimate Book Price Comparison Engine
Save Your Time And Money
| AnyBook4Less.com | Order from a Major Online Bookstore |
|
| Home | Store List | FAQ | Contact Us | | ||
| Ultimate Book Price Comparison Engine Save Your Time And Money |
||
 |
Title: Given Time: I. Counterfeit Money by Jacques Derrida, Peggy Kamuf ISBN: 0-226-14314-7 Publisher: University of Chicago Press Pub. Date: May, 1994 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $16.00 |
Average Customer Rating: 3 (2 reviews)
Rating: 5
Summary: A matrix of Derrida's early programmatic texts and thought
Comment: If there could be such a thing as a text that 'exemplifies' Derrida's thought, one that meticulously and clearly explains the strategies of 'deconstruction' (I hate the word!), while at the same time distilling not just its own theory, but also producing a critical reading of several other prominent thinkers and their texts (and one that of course demonstrates the practical ends of the expose of his theory), then Given Time (Donner le temps) would unequivocally be that book. It is that good. For those who have read Derrida's texts of the late 60s and early 70s, and know where they stand regarding Derrida's ideas, this book acts like a kind of overview or survey of his thought, a matrix or map of his thought, an architectural plan, even a game plan.
The primary text is a story by Baudelaire, and Derrida uses this two-page story to explicate the relations he has with his own masters, the lessons learned and the major points that he has taken from them and transformed. Husserl on the notion of the gift and the necessity to zigzag (a "mouvement en vrille") amongst bound idealities, Heidegger on being and temporality and the impossibility of appropriation or presence, Bataille on excess. All through a refreshing reading of Baudelaire's story together with Mauss' seminal essay "The Gift," which conceives of a total social fact of gifting that Bataille had himself unhinged half a century ago by laying waste to Hegel's philosophical economy.
From a map of thought to Derrida's Joycean world
Given Time is a brief treatise on the layered notions of the "gift" (in Husserl, what is given to us in the world through the experience of our senses, i.e., phenomena), and which is done so through a 'time' of originary difference, in which the only possibility of authenticity will always be that of inauthenticity, which doubles and splits the difference -- much like 'counterfeit money' (the title of Baudelaire's story) you can't tell whether the coin is or isn't truly money that you can buy a commodity with and truly possess something. Is it or isn't it fake? It's a split decision. This important concept, which also runs throughout Deleuze's work, is a term he calls "the power of the false." But to give credit where it is due, it comes first of all in Heidegger's critique of his own project of a fundamental ontology (arguably, to my mind) in Section 72 of The Fundamental Concepts of Metaphysics, where he speaks of the assertive logos as "false," "deceptive," and "pretending," and discusses the as-structure that will be so crucial for all of Derrida's work -- in fact his explication of the true/false pair in Given Time explains this operative concept of 'relation' without naming it. 'Relation' is probably the most important concept in Derrida's thought, and he explicates it at length in Given Time.
Also, one can also read the entire book as a long commentary on capitalism, one which places Marxian thinkers in an uncomfortable position and that tries to think through capitalism a little bit further from within 'deconstruction' -- Derrida's overt attempts at this are 'From restrictive to general economy' of 1966 (a superb essay with a very pretentious title that plays on Einstein's 1905 Nobel-prize winning "Special [aka "Restricted"] and General Theory of Relativity") and Specters of Marx, from 1994, with a title that's taken from his mentor Louis Althusser's book Specters of Hegel. One also has to remember that this book was originally a lecture course from c. 1979. Derrida is of course using transcendental phenomenology as the guiding thread to discuss literature and sociology, and makes something really interesting occur in each, along with modifying our concept of capitalism. From anywhere you stand you can see Derrida's French qualities: literature, sociology, the belief that philosophy has to engage with capitalism if it is to be at all relevant. All are relevant to deconstruction, and are considered game for being folded into it, so long as they take you somewhere else, produce different thoughts regarding the world we inhabit, and permit these thoughts to be formalized.
There is no other book written by Derrida that lays out the material and the method so clearly and patiently. It does assume familiarity with his earliest programmatic works, but what philosopher wants to repeat themselves all the time (excepting Heidegger of course. oops. cat's out of the bag)?
As to the translation, it was wonderfully done by Peggy Kamuf, and it is very likely the best translation of any of Derrida's work into English. It is quite simply a pearl. It should have won her an award, but America doesn't acknowledge translators as well as it could.
Take what you need from the above and leave the rest -- just some thoughts on what is so far Derrida's most elegant and accessible treatise on his own philosophy, and a book that thoroughly transforms the interrelated concepts of the gift.
Rating: 1
Summary: Typical Deconstructionist Wool-Gathering
Comment: Derrida here engages in his usual word-games and cute metaphores, and the result is pointless and nearly incomprehensible, as usual. How exactly is human knowledge furthered in a positive and valuable way by saying things like "The title of the text is the title (without title) of the text"? Nothing but meaningless verbiage...
 |
Title: The Gift of Death by Jacques Derrida, David Wills ISBN: 0226143066 Publisher: University of Chicago Press (Trd) Pub. Date: April, 1996 List Price(USD): $12.00 |
 |
Title: The Gift: The Form and Reason for Exchange in Archaic Societies by Marcel Mauss, W. D. Halls, Mary Douglas ISBN: 039332043X Publisher: W.W. Norton & Company Pub. Date: August, 2000 List Price(USD): $13.95 |
 |
Title: On Cosmopolitanism and Forgiveness (Thinking in Action) by Jacques Derrida ISBN: 0415227127 Publisher: Routledge Pub. Date: August, 2001 List Price(USD): $12.95 |
 |
Title: Logic of the Gift: Toward a Ethic of Generosity by Alan D. Schrift ISBN: 0415910994 Publisher: Routledge Pub. Date: June, 1997 List Price(USD): $26.95 |
 |
Title: The Logic of Practice by Pierre Bourdieu, Richard Nice ISBN: 0804720118 Publisher: Stanford Univ Pr Pub. Date: August, 1992 List Price(USD): $21.95 |
Thank you for visiting www.AnyBook4Less.com and enjoy your savings!
Copyright� 2001-2021 Send your comments
