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The Frontiers of Theory

Remains – Jacques DerridaText and Commentary

By Jacques Derrida, Pleshette DeArmitt and Kas Saghafi

Format

£19.99

About this book

Explores Jacques Derrida’s thoughts on what it means to ‘remain’

  • Draws an analogy between Western thought and Indian “religion”
  • Argues for significance of the terms “remains” and “remainder” for deconstruction
  • Charts their use in Derrida’s work


In a very late essay, “Remain(s)—The Master, or the Supplement of Infinity,” authored just two years before his death, Derrida conjoins two registers or fields of research, bringing together his early and his late work. In this complex and illuminating work, an analogy is drawn between two vastly different “cultures”—the Greco-European Onto-theo-phenomenology and the Vedic Brahmanic of India. Commenting on the work of eminent Indianist scholar Charles Malamoud, Derrida argues for the significance of the notion 0f the remainder (reste) as a key word in his deconstructive vocabulary. This volume is devoted to elucidating Derrida’s enigmatic essay and providing much-needed context.

Reviews

Pleshette DeArmitt and Kas Saghafi have given us a great gift with this book. Lucidly and patiently, they show us how to understand the central importance for Derrida’s thought of remaining, leavings, leftovers, and so on. This is writing that never flinches from the encounter with the impossible conditions of mourning what is gone and all that leaves.
Remains makes a moving, rich and significant contribution to Derrida Studies by providing an erudite account of Jacques Derrida’s reading of philosophy’s leftovers in sacrifice, vomit, cadavers and other unassimilable figures.
Table of contents

Series Editors' Preface
Acknowledgements
List of Abbreviations

Departure

PART I. REMAIN(S)
1. Remain(s)—The Master, or the Supplement of Infinity
Jacques Derrida

PART II. REMAINDER, REMAINS
2. What Remains: Remaining in Derrida’s Writings

PART III. TROPES OF CANNIBALISM
3. Leftovers
4. Cannibal: The Consumption of the Other

PART IV. ECONOMY OF SACRIFICE
5. Economy of Sacrifice

PART V. THE REMAINING OF THE REMAINDER
6. Leaving, Remaining

Bibliography
Index

About the contributors

Pleshette DeArmitt

Pleshette DeArmitt was Associate Professor and Chair of Philosophy at the University of Memphis. She conducted research in contemporary French thought, feminist theory, and psychoanalysis. Her articles on Derrida, Kofman, and Kristeva were published in Mosaic, Philosophy Today, Research in Phenomenology, and The Southern Journal of Philosophy. She was the author of The Right to Narcissism: A Case for An Im-possible Self-Love (2014), co-editor of Sarah Kofman’s Corpus (2008) and a memorial issue of Epoché on Derrida (2006). She also co-translated three essays by Derrida, “A Europe of Hope” (2006), “Aletheia,” (2010), and “Remain(s)—the Master, or the Supplement of Infinity.”

Kas Saghafi

Kas Saghafi is Professor of Philosophy at University of Memphis. He researches and teaches in contemporary French thought. He is the author of two books, The World after the End of the World (2020) and Apparitions—Of Derrida's Other (2010) and numerous articles. He is co-editor, with Geoffrey Bennington, of a two-volume collection of Derrida’s writings entitled Thinking What Comes (2024). He has also co-translated, with Pleshette DeArmitt, four essays by Jacques Derrida.

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