This special issue of South Atlantic Quarterly commemorates and interrogateswith varying measures of appreciation and critiquethe late work of the philosopher Jacques Derrida. Resisting simple memorialization of Derrida since his death in 2004, this collection contends that the late work of this prolific theorist remains to be better understood. The contributors explore the peculiar intensitya combined sense of both patience and urgencythat characterizes Derridas late writing, suggestive, among other things, of his ...
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This special issue of South Atlantic Quarterly commemorates and interrogateswith varying measures of appreciation and critiquethe late work of the philosopher Jacques Derrida. Resisting simple memorialization of Derrida since his death in 2004, this collection contends that the late work of this prolific theorist remains to be better understood. The contributors explore the peculiar intensitya combined sense of both patience and urgencythat characterizes Derridas late writing, suggestive, among other things, of his preoccupation with mortality, of time running out, and of so many pressing things to be done. The essays address a wide array of Derridas concerns: human rights, justice, religion, the performative, the gift of death, mourning, and sovereignty. They often put Derridas texts in conjunction with the works of othersWordsworth, Agamben, Schelling, and Benjamin, to name a fewthat resonate with and on occasion resist Derridas own thinking and writing. One essay offers a reading of Wordsworths elegy Distressful gift! as a dialogue with questions posed by Derrida, using as its frame the kind of nonnormative mourning that Derrida advocated, together with a haunting analysis of the character of survival. Other essays look at Derridas theory of performativity as advanced in his late works, continuing his emphasis on the power of language, and in general they emulate his vigilance in attending to force and violence everywhere.
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