Name: Of grammatology
ISBN: 9780801818790

Of grammatology

Jacques Derrida's revolutionary theories about deconstruction, phenomenology, psychoanalysis, and structuralism, first voiced in the 1960s, forever changed the face of European and American criticism. The ideas in De la grammatologie sparked lively debates in intellectual circles that included students of literature, philosophy, and the humanities, inspiring these students to ask questions of their disciplines that had previously been considered improper. Thirty years later, the immense influence of Derrida's work is still igniting controversy, thanks in part to Gayatri Spivak's translation, which captures the richness and complexity of the original. This corrected edition adds a new index of the critics and philosophers cited in the text and makes one of contemporary criticism's most indispensable works even more accessible and usable.

What Hacker News says

wandaJan 2014

I don't know about 'life-changing' but the best books I ever read were:

Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus

  (Ludwig Wittgenstein)

Being and Time

  (Martin Heidegger)

Of Grammatology

  (Jacques Derrida)

Writing and Difference

  (Jacques Derrida)

Martian Timeslip

  (Philip K. Dick)

Ringworld

  (Larry Niven)

The Forever War

  (Joe Haldeman)

The Metamorphosis

  (Franz Kafka)

Finally, the Greek tragedies and Goethe's poetry are basically perfect.

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fratisJan 2013

For those interested in learning about the subject, here's a good place to start (in order):

Ferdinand de Saussure, Course in General Linguistics http://books.google.com/books?id=B0eB8mvov6wC&printsec=f...

Jacques Derrida, Of Grammatology http://www.mohamedrabeea.com/books/book1_3997.pdf

and, for fun...

Jacques Derrida, Differànce http://hydra.humanities.uci.edu/derrida/diff.html

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lofatdairyMar 2023

Certainly not unique to Baudrilliard. Judith Butler I think has been voted one of the worst academic writers several times to my knowledge (she was president of MLA for a term, too, if I'm not mistaken). Deleuze and Guatarri are famously incoherent, Derrida as well (Of Grammatology being famously translated by the famously vague Spivak), and personally I find Arendt incredibly difficult to follow. FWIW, a lot of these postmodern authors come from the Continental tradition's linguistic turn, and as a result if you're writing coming from a skepticism towards language's ability to convey meaning in the first place, you're probably going to end up with a pretty complicated but vague articulation. It probably also comes quite a bit from a bit the Hegelian influences.

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cadlinSep 2013

I don't know why you'd say French writers in the mid-twentieth century wrote books without citing him. Of Grammatology, the ur-text of deconstruction, has 28 references for him in the index, and that's not including the introduction.

He's a major influence on post-structuralism and is generally accepted as such.

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igraviousSep 2013

That's not what Nietzsche said.

He said that Christianity (not Judeo-Christianity iirc) is a slave morality. It preaches equality N. says and only a slave or an underling would preach equality and they do so because they have less than their masters. So in that way it is a self-interested morality (if you accept it was advocated by an underclass). He contrasts this with a master morality (might is right basically).

What is ethics or morality? It's what values you hold and project onto the world, correct? So I guess N. is saying that these values are subject to your socio-economic place in the world. That's quite materialist -- like Marx, who said more or less the same thing except that Marx said that the material conditions of your (as a class) existence shape your ideology. I think the text to look at for N. is "On The Genealogy of Morals" and the text for Marx is "The German Ideology".

Regarding the provenance of deconstruction. I'm not about to read "Of Grammatology" any time soon but you are the first person I've heard to assert the Heidegger should be given credit so you need to, you know, cite your source please.

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stephenpAug 2013

hemmingwaymaker.com. Makes long sentences short. An online de-obfuscator and English to English translator. Helps me finally read Finnegan's Wake and Of Grammatology.

slantrime.com. bends user provided words to make unlikely rhymes, with seed capital from slim shady.

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