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evil_isa's review against another edition
challenging
informative
medium-paced
5.0
jacking off rousseau for 150 pages is pretty sick
casparb's review against another edition
This was excellent and insightful and complicated and I was a little terrified of it but it was entirely worth the time. The difficulty of Derrida's prose is endlessly complained about but I find it perfectly comprehensible once having adjusted - the secret is keeping in mind the first couple words of the sentence by the time it reaches its end (this is more unorthodox than it sounds).
So the notorious 'Derridean' sentences aren't so present as one might imagine. I did enjoy however: 'In the experience of suffering as the suffering of the other, the imagination, as it opens us to a certain nonpresence within presence, is indispensable: the suffering of others is lived by comparison, as our nonpresent, past or future suffering. Pity would be impossible outside of this structure, which links imagination time, and the other as one and the same opening to nonpresence'
A pleasant surprise to understand as much as I think(!?!) I did.
So the notorious 'Derridean' sentences aren't so present as one might imagine. I did enjoy however: 'In the experience of suffering as the suffering of the other, the imagination, as it opens us to a certain nonpresence within presence, is indispensable: the suffering of others is lived by comparison, as our nonpresent, past or future suffering. Pity would be impossible outside of this structure, which links imagination time, and the other as one and the same opening to nonpresence'
A pleasant surprise to understand as much as I think(!?!) I did.
jbryson's review against another edition
2.0
I'm not a big fan of Derrida. He believes words have no meaning, then he writes in such a way as to prove it, at least for his own writings.
howattp's review against another edition
2.0
I can't even compose a review for this, as the signifier cannot properly sign the signified, which is an ethnocentric judgment anyway.
iateapineapple's review against another edition
4.0
This book is hugely important, and if you are willing to give it a chance (and have some kind of idea about the big strands of French academia in the 1960s) it can be hugely rewarding. That said, Derrida is NOT an easy writer at the best of times, compounded by the fact that this book covers an enormous breadth of topics and Derrida was (according to the rumor-mill) high most of the time he wrote it. That said it proposes the basic derridean structures of writing and trace things which (IMO) have been unbelievably influential in academia, from queer theory to aftopessimism. It’s a good read, but only if you are willing to put up with its b.s.
line_so_fine's review against another edition
5.0
Oh Jacques, you rocked my world when I read this back in the day. Structuralism! Phenomenology! Deconstruction! Booyah! Yes, I said Booyah!