The cults, claques, and cliques of Derrida devotees will surely reach for their hankies; everyone else will look on dry-eyed.
Mourning, deconstruction-style.
Derrida (Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales and Univ. of California at Irvine) laments the deaths of his friends and fellow philosophers in this collection of 14 essays. The dead so honored include Roland Barthes, Paul de Man, Michel Foucault, Louis Althusser, Gilles Deleuze, and Jean-Francois Lyotard—each of whom is lauded individually through a range of genres, including the typical (condolence letters, memorial essays, eulogies, and funeral orations) and the atypical (academic lectures). Derrida, the godfather of deconstruction, whose theories of interpretation have stimulated unprecedented productivity in academia, offers some curiously stale and sterile words to mark the passing of his loved ones, as in these for Barthes: “The metonymic force thus divides the referential trait, suspends the referent and leaves it to be desired, while still maintaining the reference.” To translate: “I love you and will never forget you.” Brault and Naas write that we need “to learn something more from Jacques Derrida about taste, about a taste for death,” but on the contrary: most people mourn truly, deeply, and powerfully without instruction in the opposition between the signifier/signified dyad. With the death of a loved one, grief and mourning rip into our lives and shatter the orders of affection we wish to maintain; unfortunately, too little instruction is needed to grasp its power. Mercifully, some less jargon-ridden sentiments do appear here, including the eulogies to Deleuze and Lyotard; still, these passages do little to elicit the interest of the general reader, as one enters into the relationship only at its very end. Still, Derrida can reach a plaintive and stirring lamentation to highlight, appropriately enough, the failure of words to communicate when we need them most.
The cults, claques, and cliques of Derrida devotees will surely reach for their hankies; everyone else will look on dry-eyed.Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2001
ISBN: 0-226-14316-3
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Univ. of Chicago
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2001
Worthwhile reference stuffed with facts and illustrations.
A compendium of charts, time lines, lists and illustrations to accompany study of the Bible.
This visually appealing resource provides a wide array of illustrative and textually concise references, beginning with three sets of charts covering the Bible as a whole, the Old Testament and the New Testament. These charts cover such topics as biblical weights and measures, feasts and holidays and the 12 disciples. Most of the charts use a variety of illustrative techniques to convey lessons and provide visual interest. A worthwhile example is “How We Got the Bible,” which provides a time line of translation history, comparisons of canons among faiths and portraits of important figures in biblical translation, such as Jerome and John Wycliffe. The book then presents a section of maps, followed by diagrams to conceptualize such structures as Noah’s Ark and Solomon’s Temple. Finally, a section on Christianity, cults and other religions describes key aspects of history and doctrine for certain Christian sects and other faith traditions. Overall, the authors take a traditionalist, conservative approach. For instance, they list Moses as the author of the Pentateuch (the first five books of the Hebrew Bible) without making mention of claims to the contrary. When comparing various Christian sects and world religions, the emphasis is on doctrine and orthodox theology. Some chapters, however, may not completely align with the needs of Catholic and Orthodox churches. But the authors’ leanings are muted enough and do not detract from the work’s usefulness. As a resource, it’s well organized, inviting and visually stimulating. Even the most seasoned reader will learn something while browsing.
Worthwhile reference stuffed with facts and illustrations.Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2005
ISBN: 978-1-5963-6022-8
Page Count: -
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 23, 2010
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
This a book of earlier, philosophical essays concerned with the essential "absurdity" of life and the concept that- to overcome the strong tendency to suicide in every thoughtful man-one must accept life on its own terms with its values of revolt, liberty and passion. A dreary thesis- derived from and distorting the beliefs of the founders of existentialism, Jaspers, Heldegger and Kierkegaard, etc., the point of view seems peculiarly outmoded. It is based on the experience of war and the resistance, liberally laced with Andre Gide's excessive intellectualism. The younger existentialists such as Sartre and Camus, with their gift for the terse novel or intense drama, seem to have omitted from their philosophy all the deep religiosity which permeates the work of the great existentialist thinkers. This contributes to a basic lack of vitality in themselves, in these essays, and ten years after the war Camus seems unaware that the life force has healed old wounds... Largely for avant garde aesthetes and his special coterie.
Pub Date: Sept. 26, 1955
ISBN: 0679733736
Page Count: 228
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: Sept. 19, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1955
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