Derrida: Ethics Under Erasure

Reviews / Votes

Today, more than ever, it is necessary to step back from easy or pious uses of the word ethical. It has also been necessary, for some time now, to move beyond dismissals and deifications of Derrida. Nicole Anderson, one of the worlds most formidable Derrida scholars of the post-Derrida generation, achieves both these tasks. Derrida: Ethics Under Erasure provides a nuanced reading of Derrida, while accepting the difficulty of any simple affirmation of the deconstructive tradition. At once informed by tradition and original, Anderson's book sets the tone for a twenty-first century deconstruction. Nicole Anderson's Derrida: Ethics Under Erasure provides a wonderfully clear and convincing account of the ethical relevance of deconstruction. Ranging across Derrida's entire oeuvre, Anderson demonstrates that deconstruction calls us to rethink without ever abandoning such traditional ethical categories as freedom, responsibility, and moral obligation. It also shows how such an "ethics under erasure," far from being divorced from our everyday lives, can help explain our most concrete, lived experience. This book should put to rest once and for all the uninformed and yet widespread belief that deconstruction is irresponsible, unethical, or nihilistic. Anderson's book clearly and patiently reveals the problems posed to contemporary philosophy by ethics, notably in the wake of deconstructive thought. Careful to avoid the simplifications which often accompany appeals to the "ethical" dimension of literary or philosophical discourse today, this study provides a necessary start-point for those wishing to evaluate seriously the question of philosophy as ethical practice.