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From Life to Survival

Derrida, Freud, and the Future of Deconstruction
  • Robert Trumbull
Language: English
Published/Copyright: 2022
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About this book

Contemporary continental thought is marked by a move away from the “linguistic turn” in twentieth-century European philosophy, as new materialisms and ontologies seek to leave behind the thinking of language central to poststructuralism as it has been traditionally understood. At the same time, biopolitical philosophy has brought critical attention to the question of life, examining new formations of life and death. Within this broader turn, Derridean deconstruction, with its apparent focus on language, writing, and textuality, is generally set aside.

This book, by contrast, shows the continued relevance of deconstruction for contemporary thought’s engagement with resolutely material issues and with matters of life and the living. Trumbull elaborates Derrida’s thinking of life across his work, specifically his recasting of life as “life death,” and in turn, survival or living on. Derrida’s activation of Freud, Trumbull shows, is central to this problematic and its consequences, especially deconstruction’s ethical and political possibilities. The book traces how Derrida’s early treatment of Freud and his mobilization of Freud’s death drive allow us to grasp the deconstructive thought of life as constitutively exposed to death, the logic subsequently rearticulated in the notion of survival. Derrida’s recasting of life as survival, Trumbull demonstrates, allows deconstruction to destabilize inherited understandings of life, death, and the political, including the dominant configurations of sovereignty and the death penalty.

A major intervention in ongoing debates on the question of deconstruction’s ethical and political possibilities, from the death penalty to the question of the animal, to eco-deconstruction.

Author / Editor information

Contributor: Robert Trumbull Robert Trumbull teaches Philosophy at Seattle University.

Reviews

There are traces of Freud throughout Jacques Derrida’s work, as Trumbull demonstrates in this challenging, rewarding examination of those traces across the decades of the deconstructionist’s writing on “life death,” “autoimmunity,” the “impossible,” and “living on,” among other significant Derridian themes. --- Robert Trumbull’s new book is a fascinating exploration of the relationship between the two thinkers. --- Trumbull’s book distinguishes itself by the ambitious scope of its argument, which undertakes a new understanding of the status of life throughout Derrida’s work. Through original argument, he reconstructs a Derridean concept of life (life death) as made possible by a trace that runs throughout Derrida’s work, from his early texts on Husserl, through responses to psychoanalysis, Nietzsche and Heidegger, to the more obviously “political” work, such as Derrida’s writing on the death penalty. Trumbull’s exploration of the normative aspects of Derrida’s work is informed by an innovative account of the status of norms within vitalism and Foucauldian biopower, producing a new understanding of deconstructive politics.---Penelope Deutscher, Northwestern University

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    Frontmatter

    i
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    Contents

    vii
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    Abbreviations

    ix
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    Introduction: Derrida, Freud, and the Future of Deconstruction

    1
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    1 From Grammatology to Life Death

    11
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    2 Interrogating the Death Drive

    35
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    3 Survival as Autoimmunity

    68
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    4 Mortality and Normativity

    97
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    5 Sovereignty, Cruelty, and the Death Penalty

    127
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    Acknowledgments

    155
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    Notes

    157
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    Bibliography

    185
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    Index

    195
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Publishing information
Pages and Images/Illustrations in book
eBook published on:
April 5, 2022
eBook ISBN:
9780823298754
Pages and Images/Illustrations in book
https://doi.org/10.1515/9780823298754
eBook ISBN: 9780823298754
Keywords for this book
Continental philosophy; death drive; death penalty; deconstruction; ethics and politics; Jacques Derrida; La vie la mort; life death; Sigmund Freud; sovereignty
Audience(s) for this book
For an expert adult audience, including professional development and academic research
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