In
Biodeconstruction, Francesco Vitale demonstrates the key role that the question of life plays in Jacques Derrida’s work. In the seminar
La vie la mort (1975), Derrida engages closely with the life sciences, especially biology and evolution theory. Connecting this line of thought to his analysis of cybernetics in
Of Grammatology, Vitale shows how Derrida develops a notion of biological life as itself a sort of text that is necessarily open onto further articulations and grafts. This sets the stage for the deconstruction of the traditional opposition between life and death, conceiving of death as an internal condition of the constitution of the living rather than being the opposite of life. It also provides the basis for the deconstruction of the rigidly deterministic concept of the genetic program, an insight that anticipates recent achievements of biological research in epigenetics and sexual reproduction. Finally, Vitale argues that this framework can enrich our understanding of Derrida’s late work devoted to political issues, connecting his use of the autoimmunitarian lexicon to the theory of cellular suicide in biology.
Table des matières
Acknowledgments
Introduction
1. Toward Biodeconstruction
2. Between Life and Death: Différance
3. The Absolute Programme
4. The Text and the Living
5. Between Life and Death: The Bond
6. Beyond Life and Death: Autoimmunity
7. Living On: The Arche-performative
Notes
Bibliography
Index
A propos de l’auteur
Francesco Vitale is Professor of Aesthetics at the University of Salerno, Italy. He is the author of
The Last Fortress of Metaphysics: Jacques Derrida and the Deconstruction of Architecture, also published by SUNY Press, and the author and editor of several books in Italian on Derrida and contemporary French philosophy.
Mauro Senatore is a British Academy Fellow at Durham University in the United Kingdom and Adjunct Professor of Contemporary French Philosophy at the Instituto de Humanidades, Universidad Diego Portales, Santiago, Chile. He is the author of
Germs of Death: The Problem of Genesis in Jacques Derrida, also published by SUNY Press.
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