A review of Philosophy of Derrida
The Philosophy of Derrida is the latest installment in McGill-Queen's Continental European Philosophy series — a line of books that aims to furnish accessible introductions to the work of influential European thinkers, all the while "combin[ing] clarity with depth, introducing fresh insights and wider perspectives" and "providing a comprehensive survey of each thinker's philosophical ideas." It goes without saying that producing an introduction to Derrida that is at once clear, deep, original, and synoptic is a tall order to fill.
Dooley and Kavanagh succeed in a number of important respects. They offer a brisk but wide-ranging rendition of the increasingly popular narrative in which the seemingly disparate emphases of Derrida's "early" and "later" work are unified by an underlying continuity. Highlights along the way include an informative take on Derrida's relationships to Freud, Husserl, and Heidegger, and a more insightful and even-handed treatment of Rorty's interpretation of Derrida than is typical. Accompanying these strengths, however, are a number of problems that, according to reviewers, have also challenged other recent introductions to Derrida. Such problems include the taking of a somewhat insular approach that hesitates to subject Derrida's guiding assumptions to critical scrutiny, an underdeveloped assessment of alleged points of contact between "Derrida and analytic philosophy," and an account of Derrida on "ethics" and "politics" that leaves these central terms ill-defined and pays insufficient attention to the difference between doing ethical or political philosophy and inquiring into the conditions of possibility for doing ethical or political philosophy.[1]