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Positions is a collection of three interviews with Jacques Derrida that illuminate and make more accessible the complex concepts and terms treated extensively in such works as
Writing and Difference and
Dissemination. Derrida takes positions on his detractors, his supporters, and the two major preoccupations of French intellectual life, Marxism and psychoanalysis.
The interviews included in this volume offer a multifaceted view of Derrida. "Implications: Interview with Henri Ronse" contains a succinct statement of principles. "Seminology and Grammatology: Interview with Julia Kristeva" provides important clarifications of the role played by linguistics in Derrida's work. "Positions: Interview with Jean-Louis Houdebine and Guy Scarpetta" is a wide-ranging discussion that touches on many of the polemics that Derrida's work as provoked.
Alan Bass, whose translation of
Writing and Difference was highly praised for its clarity, accuracy, and readability, has provided extremely useful critical notes, full of vital information, including historical background.
About the author
Jacques Derrida is a professor at the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales, Paris. His books
The Truth in Painting; The Post Card: From Socrates to Freud and Beyond; Writing and Difference; Spurs: Nietzsche's Styles/ Eperons: Les Styles de Nietzsche; Dissemination; Margins of Philosophy of Spirit: Heidegger and the Question; and
Given Time: I. Counterfeit Money are published by the University of Chicago Press.
Alan Bass received his Ph. D. from the John Hopkins University and then went on to psychoanalytic training in New York City, where he is now a practicing analyst. He has published and lectured on both deconstruction and psychoanalytic theory and practice. He is the translator of Derrida's
The Post Card: From Socrates to Freud and Beyond, Writing and Difference, and
Margins of Philosophy, published by the University of Chicago Press.
