French Literature Reviews - 2026
The Late Derrida
Philosophy, Anthropology and Ideas
W. J. T. MITCHELL and Arnold I. DAVIDSON [eds.], The Late Derrida, Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 2007, 200 p.
ISBN 978-0-226-53257-8
ISBN-10 0-226-53257-7
SUMMARY
The rubric “The Late Derrida,” embracing all its playful puns and ambiguities, refers to the later period of Jacques Derrida’s work, specifically the vast surge of new writings by and about him roughly between 1994 and 2004. During this timeframe, Derrida published more than he had produced throughout his entire career up to that point. At the same time, this volume deconstructs the very concept of lateness and the utility of periodization. It questions the “fact” of his purported turn toward politics, law, and ethics, while highlighting the deep continuities running through his entire oeuvre.
The contributors to this volume share their insights into Derrida’s recent work and examine how it reshapes their earlier readings of classic texts such as Glas and Of Grammatology. Some of them have maintained a close association with Derrida since the very beginning—both in France and the United States—yet none of them are dogmatic Derrideans. Rather, this book is a work of rigorous critique, offering a profound and sustained engagement with the thought of one of the most prominent philosophers of our time. It stands as an acknowledgment that Derrida’s work has yet to be fully comprehended—and perhaps never can be—in its entirety.
CONTENTS
W. J. T. Mitchell
Dead Again
Vincent B. Leitch
Late Derrida: The Politics of Sovereignty
J. Hillis Miller
Derrida Enisled
W. J. T. Mitchell
Picturing Terror: Derrida's Autoimmunity
Rodolphe Gasché
European Memories: Jan Pato ka and Jacques Derrida on Responsibility
Frances Ferguson
Jacques Derrida and the Critique of the Geometrical Mode: The Line and the Point
Stephen Melville
"Allô? Allô?"
Geoffrey Hartman
Homage to Glas
Freddy Tellez and Bruno Mazzoldi
The Pocket-Size Interview with Jacques Derrida
Hélène Cixous
Jacques Derrida as a Proteus Unbound
Michael Fried
Three Poems
Lorenzo Fabbri
Philosophy as Chance: An Interview with Jean-Luc Nancy
Jacques Derrida
A Certain Impossible Possibility of Saying the Event
Jacques Derrida
Final Words
The volume edited by W. J. T. Mitchell and Arnold I. Davidson examines the later period of Jacques Derrida’s work, focusing on the surge of writings produced between 1994 and 2004. The book deconstructs the concept of lateness and questions the notion of a distinct turn toward politics, law, and ethics in Derrida's output, highlighting the deep continuities running through his entire oeuvre and reshaping earlier readings of classic texts such as Glas and Of Grammatology.
Comprising contributions from scholars with long associations with Derrida in France and the United States, the book provides critique while engaging with the thought of a prominent philosopher whose work, as the volume suggests, remains to be fully comprehended in its entirety. Readers interested in contemporary philosophy, deconstruction, and the reception of Jacques Derrida's later writings may find this collection relevant to their studies.