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Deconstruction in a Nutshell: A Conversation with Jacques Derrida (Perspectives in Continental Philosophy) 1st Edition

by John D. Caputo (Editor)
4.6 4.6 out of 5 stars 36 ratings
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Responding to questions put to him at a Roundtable held at Villanova University in 1994, Jacques Derrida leads the reader through an illuminating discussion of the central themes of deconstruction. Speaking in English and extemporaneously, Derrida takes up with unusual clarity and great eloquence such topics as the task of philosophy, the Greeks, justice, responsibility, the gift, the community, the distinction between the messianic and the concrete messianisms, and his interpretation of James Joyce. Derrida convincingly refutes the charges of relativism and nihilism that are often leveled at deconstruction by its critics and sets forth the profoundly affirmative and ethico-political thrust of his work. The Roundtableis marked by the unusual clarity of Derrida's presentation and by the deep respect for the great works of the philosophical and literary tradition with which he characterizes his philosophical work. The Roundtable is annotated by John D. Caputo, the David R. Cook Professor of Philosophy at Villanova University, who has supplied cross references to Derrida's writings where the reader may find further discussion on these topics. Professor Caputo has also supplied a commentary which elaborates the principal issues raised in the Roundtable. In all, this volume represents one of the most lucid, compact and reliable introductions to Derrida and deconstruction available in any language. An ideal volume for students approaching Derrida for the first time, Deconstruction in a Nutshell will prove instructive and illuminating as well for those already familiar with Derrida's work.
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  1. ISBN-10
    0823217558
  2. ISBN-13
    978-0823217557
  3. Edition
    1st
  4. Publisher
    Fordham University Press
  5. Publication date
    January 1, 1996
  6. Part of series
    Perspectives in Continental Philosophy
  7. Language
    English
  8. Dimensions
    8.9 x 0.5 x 5.8 inches
  9. Print length
    215 pages
  10. See all details
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Editorial Reviews

Review

A wonderfully helpful and stimulating book. . . . Highly recommended.

One of the most comprehensive and valuable interpretations of deconstruction to date. Highly recommended. . . .Library Journal

About the Author

John D. Caputo is the David R. Cook Professor of Philosophy at Villanova University and is editor of Fordham University Press' Perspectives in Continental Philosophy Series.

Product details

  • Publisher ‏ : ‎ Fordham University Press; 1st edition (January 1, 1996)
  • Language ‏ : ‎ English
  • Paperback ‏ : ‎ 215 pages
  • ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0823217558
  • ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0823217557
  • Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 11.2 ounces
  • Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 8.9 x 0.5 x 5.8 inches
  • Customer Reviews:
    4.6 4.6 out of 5 stars 36 ratings

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  1. John D. Caputo

    John D. Caputo

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    John D. Caputo, the Thomas J. Watson Professor of Religion Emeritus (Syracuse University) and the David R. Cook Professor of Philosophy Emeritus (Villanova University) is a hybrid philosopher/theologian who works in the area of radical theology. His most recent book, "The Insistence of God: A Theology of Perhaps," is a sequel to The Weakness of God, which develops his concept of radical theology and engages in dialogue with Malabou, Zizek and Latour. He has also just published "Truth," a part of the Penguin “Philosophy in Transit” series, aimed a general audience. His interest is centered on a poetics of the "event" harbored in the name of God, a notion that depends upon a reworking of the notions of event in Derrida and Deleuze. His past books have attempted to persuade us that hermeneutics goes all the way down ("Radical Hermeneutics"), that Derrida is a thinker to be reckoned with by theology ("The Prayers and Tears of Jacques Derrida"), and that theology is best served by getting over its love affair with power and authority and embracing what Caputo calls, following St. Paul, "The Weakness of God." His notion of the weakness of God, an expression that needs to be interpreted carefully by following what he means by "event," is reducible neither to an orthodox notion of kenosis nor to a death of God theology (Altizer, Zizek), although it bears comparison to both. He has also addressed wider-than-academic audiences in "On Religion," "Philosophy and Theology," and "What Would Jesus Deconstruct?" and has an interest in interacting with working church groups like Ikon and the Emergent Church. While at Syracuse, Professor Caputo specialized in continental philosophy of religion, which means both working on radical approaches to religion and theology in the light of contemporary phenomenology, hermeneutics and deconstruction, and tracking down the traces of radical religious and theological motifs in contemporary continental philosophy.

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  2. Jacques Derrida

    Jacques Derrida

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    Jacques Derrida (1930-2004), was born in Algeria, has been called the most famous philosopher of our time. He was the author of a number of books, including Writing and Difference, which came to be seen as defining texts of postmodernist thought.

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Customer reviews

4.6 out of 5 stars
4.6 out of 5
36 global ratings

Top reviews from the United States

Wayne
5.0 out of 5 stars These guys, John (Jack) and Jacques resonate.
Reviewed in the United States on March 5, 2014
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I have indicated the degree to which I have appreciated this purchase and how it his been of value to me. Hope you have the same experience that I did and that it will be beneficial to you.
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Shawn T Loescher
5.0 out of 5 stars Deconstructing Deconstruction
Reviewed in the United States on May 9, 2017
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As in introduction to deconstruction this book is outstanding and provides wonderful examples of the complexity and transformative capabilities of deconstruction.
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reader 451
4.0 out of 5 stars Best introduction to Derrida
Reviewed in the United States on January 9, 2012
I checked into various introductions to Derrida, including Leslie Hill's Cambridge Introduction to Derrida, Sarah Wood's Reader's Guide to Writing and Difference, and Simon Glendinning's Derrida Introduction, and I recommend John Caputo's Deconstruction in a Nutshell as the best. Caputo's book, first, lets Derrida himself speak, since the first chapter consists of an interview given on the inauguration of a doctoral program of philosophy at an American university. The book's chapters, indeed, are structured around Derrida's answers at that event as well as around his published works. Second, manuals are ill fitted to the plastic and playful nature of deconstruction, and Caputo's approach works best for its subject matter.

If I can summarise Caputo (deconstruction in a nutshell in a nutshell...), deconstruction is about eyeing the contradictions and gaps (différence(s)) within a text. It is an invitation to push against a text's limits, seeking the paradoxical or tangential within it in order to draw out fresh inferences, fresh meanings from it. Thus Derrida asked about the gap between transcendence and immanence, the khora, as it is called in Plato's works, to make fresh observations on Platonic metaphysics. But deconstruction does not happen in a vacuum. It calls for new interpretations in the context of other texts. To give a sample of what Caputo writes: 'For deconstructive thinking is acutely sensitive to the contingency of our constructions, to the deeply historical, social, and linguistic "constructedness" of our beliefs and practices. [...] In other words, deconstructive thinking is a way of affirming the irreducible alterity of the world we are trying to construe - as opposed to the stupefying nonsense that deconstruction reduces the world to words without reference.'

Derrida seems to have been a uniquely misunderstood figure, though that may partly have been his own fault. He was resistant to any codification of his work. This arguably reflected the circularity of deconstruction, but as a consequence the false inference was made that deconstruction refuses to recognise any sort of truth or any sort of interpretative legitimacy. Second, Derrida himself was an unashamed public figure. Public reactions to Derrida were often stormy even if, as time passes, he is perhaps entering the mainstream. And finally he did not refrain from voicing his political views directly or indirectly - and this comes out again in Caputo's volume. Yet Derrida (or Caputo) does not deny that such a thing as the truth exist. Nor did he contend that every possible interpretation of a text is valid, merely that a plurality of interpretations are possible. Indeed, because deconstruction is valid in a context (linguistic, literary, cultural, historical), it actually rules out pure free-associating interpretations. 'There is nothing outside the text', Derrida's famous quip, means that whatever objective reality may exist out there can only be gotten at through texts. Caputo: 'It is not that there are no "referents" or "objectivity" but that the referent and objectivity are not what they pass themselves off to be, a pure transcendental signified.' There is nothing outside the text for us as far as our ability to describe or communicate it is concerned, an important qualifier. Language is a collection of symbols, not the actual thing - an idea only borrowed from the Swiss linguist Ferdinand de Saussure. I am looking forward to trying Writing and Difference. Caputo's short volume was a great start.
10 people found this helpful
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Ricardo Aguilar
5.0 out of 5 stars Five Stars
Reviewed in the United States on February 16, 2017
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Excellent book where Caputo draws his own perspective on Derrida's work.
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David C N Swanson
5.0 out of 5 stars The gift that keeps on
Reviewed in the United States on January 14, 1999
DECONSTRUCTION IN A NUTSHELL contains a series of questions to and answers by Jacques Derrida at the inauguration of Villanova's doctoral program in philosophy a few years ago. Why it is for the most part Catholic schools that are willing to teach any sort of innovative philosophy in the Anglo world I'm not entirely sure. Anyway, Derrida talks about justice, comparing it with the giving of a gift. Before quoting what he says, I'd like to bear in mind a few maxims from La Rochefoucauld:
"A man's ingratitude may be less reprehensible than the motives of his benefactor."
"Over-eagerness to repay a debt is in itself a kind of ingratitude."
"Almost everybody enjoys repaying small obligations, many are grateful for middling ones, but there is scarcely a soul who is not ungrateful for big ones."
Here's Derrida: "The only thing I would say about the gift - this is an enormous problem - is that the gift is precisely, and this is what it has in common with justice, something which cannot be reappropriated. A gift is something which never appears as such and is never equal to gratitude, to commerce, to compensation, to reward. When a gift is given, first of all, no gratitude can be proportionate to it. A gift is something that you cannot be thankful for. As soon as I say 'thank you' for a gift, I start canceling the gift, I start destroying the gift, by proposing an equivalence, that is, a circle which encircles the gift in a movement of reappropriation. So, a gift is something that is beyond the circle of reappropriation, beyond the circle of gratitude. A gift should not even be acknowledged as such. As soon as I know that I give something, if I say 'I am giving you something,' I just canceled the gift. I congratulate myself or thank myself for giving something and then the circle has already started to cancel the gift. So, the gift should not be rewarded, should not be reappropriated, and should not even appear as such. As soon as the gift appears as such then the movement of gratitude, of acknowledgment, has started to destroy the gift, if there is such a thing - I am not sure, one is never sure that there is a gift, that the gift is given. If the gift is given, then it should not even appear to the one who receives it, not appear as such. That is paradoxical, but that is the condition for a gift to be given. "That is the condition the gift shares with justice. A justice that could appear as such, that could be calculated, a calculation of what is just and what is not just, saying what has to be given in order to be just - that is not justice. That is social security, economics. Justice and gift should go beyond calculation. This does not mean that we should not calculate. We have to calculate as rigorously as possible. But there is a point or limit beyond which calculation must fail, and we must recognize that."
To the extent that Derrida is not just being mystical, he seems to me to be talking about kindness, and would be better off using that word, even if Plato did not. Derrida takes La Rochefoucauld's ideas to an extreme, which is strange. La Rochefoucauld was convinced that there was no kindness in the world. He spoke of justice as a disguised expression of "self-interest," just as political theorists referred to it as a contract. Derrida seeks to promote more kindness in the world, well aware of its existence, by accepting La Rochefoucauld's assertion that it does not exist.
7 people found this helpful
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Craig Chalquist, PhD, author of TERRAPSYCHOLOGY and DEEP CALIFORNIA
5.0 out of 5 stars A very welcome nutshell indeed....
Reviewed in the United States on May 16, 2000
....for Derrida is not easy reading. This fine book takes some of his best concepts and explains them in a clear and witty style. Highly recommended starting point for the beginner to deconstructionist thought.
4 people found this helpful
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Steiner
4.0 out of 5 stars Discover Derrida
Reviewed in the United States on May 14, 2009
This round table discussion, delivered at Villanova in 1994, is one of the clearest and most engaging introductions to the thought of Jacques Derrida. Surrounded by faculty, and speaking in excellent English, Derrida fields a wide range of questions regarding the nature of deconstruction and how it has been misunderstood so frequently and irresponsibly by his critics. John Caputo has also provided an outstanding collection of critical commentaries which address in greater detail the issues which were brought up at the round table. Although Caputo is a little polemical at times, he does an excellent job refuting the mediocre criticisms leveled at Derrida from the likes of Sokal, Quine, Gutmann and others who are quick to condemn without truly reading the work of Derrida. This is an exceptionally clear and engaging collection of essays for any reader looking for a safe entryway to the complexity of Derrida's massive corpus.
3 people found this helpful
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Maheux, J.
5.0 out of 5 stars great book
Reviewed in Canada on May 8, 2019
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very readable
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