Erotics of Deconstruction
Auto-Affection After Derrida
Published on 31. May 2026
Book
Paperback/Softback
312 pages
978-1-3995-3974-6 (ISBN)
Description
Erotics of Deconstruction takes advantage of over a decade of publications from Derrida's seminars to creatively demonstrate the deep material range of deconstruction and emphasise its under-recognised erotic nature. It activates psychoanalysis without the long-embedded philosophical trajectory that forged the human, psychic life and sexuality as categorically distinct from 'the animal' (inherent to dialectics and psychoanalysis). It generates new conversations with Derrida's feminist contemporaries as they encounter pressing questions in current critical thought. From the larger frame of 'life death' and the broadest auto-affective relation of inside to outside, to the difficult to grasp interface of conceptual and sensible, Erotics of Deconstruction does not retreat to a reparative life force or erotics of the good, but includes the unsettling friction of an originary relation to violence. Parsed by means of case studies from literature, philosophy and visual culture, erotics in this volume lap at every edge.
Reviews / Votes
I have never been so moved by a book about Derrida, or about sex. It moves, you could say. It dazzles and moves. It moves animal or biological, dorsal, secret, violent, bloody, nonbinary, masturbatory, vocal or spoken in tongues, historical, artistic, maternal, decomposing, technological and more. Just brilliant. -- Gil Anidjar, Columbia UniversityMore details
Language
English
Place of publication
Edinburgh
United Kingdom
Target group
College/higher education
Illustrations
12 colour illustrations
Dimensions
Height: 155 mm
Width: 233 mm
Thickness: 28 mm
Weight
524 gr
ISBN-13
978-1-3995-3974-6 (9781399539746)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Person
Lynn Turner is a Reader in Visual Cultures at Goldsmiths, University of London. She is the author of Poetics of Deconstruction: on the threshold of differences (Bloomsbury, 2020), co-editor, with Undine Sellbach and Ron Broglio, of The Edinburgh Companion to Animal Studies (EUP, 2018), editor of The Animal Question in Deconstruction (EUP, 2013) and co-author, with Astrid Schmetterling, of Visual Cultures As... Recollection (Sternberg, 2013).
Content
List of Illustrations
Notes on Contributors
Acknowledgements
Lapping It Up: An Introduction for these Erotics of Deconstruction (Lynn Turner)
Part I: Procreativity
1. Derrida's Tongues (Elissa Marder)
2. Spoonful: The Dorsal Deconstruction of Eroticism (David Wills)
3. Two Pirouettes: The Politics of Spoiling (for) Fun in Preciado's Revolutionary Vitalism and Derrida's Death Drive (Eszter Timar)
4. Double Blind Date (Naomi Waltham-Smith)
5. Postscript: Deconstruction and Love (Nicholas Royle)
Part II: Vulnerability
6. Sanguine Resistance: Dreaming of a Future for Blood (Lynn Turner)
7. Touch, Flesh, Wound and the Caress of the Screen (Elizabeth Wijaya)
8. No Deconstruction Without Pleasure: Openings, Tunnels and Holes (Quinn Eades)
9. Bodies in E-motion: Kofman and Cixous Encountering Rembrandt (Lenka Vrablikova)
10. Voice and Sextuality (Anne Emmanuelle Berger)
Part III: Panthropology
11. The Masturbating Animal: The Auto-hetero-affection of the Living (Nicole Anderson)
12. Playing the Field: Non-non-binary Promiscuity (Vicki Kirby)
13. 'Gene for Gene': Cloning, 'Sexiness' and the (Post)Maternal in Carola Dibbell's The Only Ones (Naomi Morgenstern)
14. Erotics of Decomposition: Cells and their Oceans (Elina Staikou)
Index
Notes on Contributors
Acknowledgements
Lapping It Up: An Introduction for these Erotics of Deconstruction (Lynn Turner)
Part I: Procreativity
1. Derrida's Tongues (Elissa Marder)
2. Spoonful: The Dorsal Deconstruction of Eroticism (David Wills)
3. Two Pirouettes: The Politics of Spoiling (for) Fun in Preciado's Revolutionary Vitalism and Derrida's Death Drive (Eszter Timar)
4. Double Blind Date (Naomi Waltham-Smith)
5. Postscript: Deconstruction and Love (Nicholas Royle)
Part II: Vulnerability
6. Sanguine Resistance: Dreaming of a Future for Blood (Lynn Turner)
7. Touch, Flesh, Wound and the Caress of the Screen (Elizabeth Wijaya)
8. No Deconstruction Without Pleasure: Openings, Tunnels and Holes (Quinn Eades)
9. Bodies in E-motion: Kofman and Cixous Encountering Rembrandt (Lenka Vrablikova)
10. Voice and Sextuality (Anne Emmanuelle Berger)
Part III: Panthropology
11. The Masturbating Animal: The Auto-hetero-affection of the Living (Nicole Anderson)
12. Playing the Field: Non-non-binary Promiscuity (Vicki Kirby)
13. 'Gene for Gene': Cloning, 'Sexiness' and the (Post)Maternal in Carola Dibbell's The Only Ones (Naomi Morgenstern)
14. Erotics of Decomposition: Cells and their Oceans (Elina Staikou)
Index