Derrida For Beginners
by Jim Powell
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Book Summary Information
Author: Jim PowellIllustrator: Van Howell
Edition: Paperback
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 2007-08-21
ISBN: 1934389110
Number of pages: 192
Publisher: For Beginners
Book Reviews of Derrida For Beginners
Book Review: 10 reasons you shouldn't be embarrassed to be seen reading this book...
Summary: 5 Stars
[1] It's not any more embarrassing than being caught with a copy of "Sandman," "Sin City," "Watchmen," or any of the other more high-brow graphic novels ("comic books," as they're known around the house in their t-shirts and underpants), not to mention kicking back with a collection of the complete "Calvin & Hobbes." Even the great Einstein needed a little brain-candy from time-to-time, I'll bet.
[2] Derrida himself might have approved the concept--the unorthodox method of using a combination of text, image, and humor in as "degraded" and "marginalized" a medium as the comic book to present a discipline as unorthodox as deconstruction which champions the marginalized.
[3] You can always pretend your reviewing it for your gifted four-year-old who's taking an Introductory Post-Structuralism seminar at the super-exclusive preschool where the little egghead is enrolled.
[4] "Derrida for Beginners" actually does give you a solid basis for understanding the key components of deconstruction--a platform from which to launch, if you choose, a further exploration of this complex discipline. As an overview of Derrida's entire body of work, you are much better oriented to the difficult terrain than if you were to start off cold reading "Of Grammatology," let's say.
[5] Chances are really good that no one who sees you reading this book has any idea who Derrida is and would therefore be reluctant to poke fun at you. After all, you may only have a comic book knowledge of Derrida and deconstruction, but that's more than your altogether ignorant interlocutor possesses.
[6] This book is titled "Derrida for Beginners," not "Derrida for Dummies," or an "Idiot's Guide to Derrida." So right off the bat, you can feel a lot better about yourself. You're not sitting behind a book announcing you to every passerby as either an idiot or a dummy. You're simply a beginner. Like a beginner at swimming, or sumi-e, or mountain-climbing. There's nothing shameful about being a beginner. Furthermore, the implication here is that Derrida isn't a subject for idiots or dummies, no matter how dumbed down.
Be proud. You're taking on a subject those intellectual Cro-Magnons slunk behind their Grishams and Dan Browns wouldn't take on for another thirty or forty-thousand years.
[7] It's a fun, fast, clever, informative read--who cares what other people think, anyway? Most of them are ill-informed boobs who can't think as it is. Deconstruct them! While they're snickering, this book will show you how.
[8] Come on, help me out here. Ten reasons for anything are a lot. Deconstruction invites participation from the reader; actually, it presupposes the unavoidable input of the reader. You're not just passively reading this list, but in the act of reading you're altering it as well. So you take number eight and I'll move on to reasons nine and ten.
[9] You don't have to be "seen" reading this book at all. Read it in a closet, with a booklight. Or in the bathroom. Provided you're regular enough, and the plumbing is okay, you should have the basics of deconstruction down in about a week.
[10] Deconstruction as a discipline, and Derrida as a philosopher, are important, not only in themselves, but in the influence they've had on subsequent thought. Much of what we see today in the arts, in literature, in academia, in politics, even in pop culture, bears the pawprints of deconstruction whether your realize it or not. It's always better to realize it...and this book, festooned as it is with silliness and fun, will very seriously help you do just that.
Summary of Derrida For Beginners
Derrida is one of those annoying geniuses you can take a class on, read half-a-dozen books by and still have no idea what he?s talking about. Derrida?s ?writing? is definitely confusing (it?s like he?s pulling the rug out from under the rug that he pulled out from under philosophy). But beneath the confusion, like the heartbeat of a bird in your hand, you can feel Derrida?s electric genius. It draws you to it; you want to understand it?but it?s so confusing. Jim Powell?s Derrida For Beginners is the clearest explanation of Derrida and deconstruction presently available in our solar system. Powell guides us through blindingly obscure texts like Grammatology (Derrida?s deconstruction of Saussure, Lévi Strauss, Roussseau), ?Différance? (his essay on language and life), Dissemination (his dismantling of Plato, his rap on Mallarmé), along with his other masterpieces.Philosophy Books
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