Derrida and Autobiography

The work of Jacques Derrida can be seen to reinvent most theories. In this book Robert Smith offers both a reading of the philosophy of Derrida and an investigation of current theories of autobiography. Smith argues that for Derrida autobiography is not so much subjective self-revelation as relation to the other not so much a general condition of thought as a general condition of writing - what Derrida calls the 'autobiography of the writing' - which mocks any self-centred finitude of living and dying. In this context and using literary-critical philosophical and psychoanalytical sources Smith thinks through Derrida's texts in a new but distinctly Derridean way and finds new perspectives to analyse the work of classical writers including Hegel Nietzsche Kierkegaard Freud and de Man. Language: English