The Event of the Thing: Derrida's Post-Deconstructive Realism
© 2009
Jacques Derrida's writings often embed the key themes of deconstruction in a notion of the thing. The Event of the Thing is the most complete examination to date of Derrida's understanding of thinghood and its crucial role in psychoanalysis, ethics, literary theory, aesthetics, and Marxism.
Arguing that the thing, as a figure of otherness, destabilizes the metaphysical edifice it underlies, Michael Marder reveals the contributions it makes to critiques of humanism and idealism. Subsequently, the new realism that emerges from deconstruction holds the possibility of an event that problematizes all attempts to objectify the thing. An illuminating analysis of Derrida and phenomenology, The Event of the Thing is an innovative and compelling study of a crucial aspect of one of the twentieth century's greatest thinkers.
Product Details
- World Rights
- Page Count: 186 pages
- Dimensions: 5.9in x 0.4in x 9.3in
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Reviews
‘The Event of the Thing by Michael Marder is probably one of the most comprehensive and integrative readings of Derrida’s oeuvre to date … Marder’s confident and elegant prose reveals an original style, distinctly different from Derrida’s and yet just as carefully performative and rhythmic.’
Roy Ben-Shai Telos
‘The Event of the Thing is a rigorous, innovative exposition of Derrida’s concept of the thing, which permeates his work. With reference to Derrida’s published and unpublished writings, Michael Marder accomplishes a thoughtful and exciting consideration of what is a major thread in Derrida’s corpus. Marder’s excellent scholarship is of singular importance.’
John Leavey, Department of English, University of Florida
‘The Event of the Thing is an original and important work that demonstrates for the first time how Derrida radically rethinks the tradition of the thing in philosophy, psychoanalysis, and aesthetics.’
Sean Gaston, Department of English, Brunel University
‘Michael Marder’s book is an example of what philosophy should be in the twenty-first century. Similar to Tugendhat’s analysis of the Heideggerian concept of truth, Rorty’s endorsement of Dewey’s politics, or Vattimo’s interpretation of the Nietzschean Overman, Marder has produced a singular reading of Derrida’s notion of the “thing” and paved the way towards a highly original post-deconstructive realism.’
Santiago Zabala, ICREA Research Professor, University of Barcelona -
Author Information
Michael Marder is an assistant professor in the Department of Philosophy at Duquesne University. -
Table of contents
Table of Contents
Acknowledgements 4
Introduction Hoc nihil ad rem 6
Chapter I: The Event of the Thing: 'Ereignis in Abyss' 13I.1. Protocols of the thing: That the event will have been possible 14
I.1.1 It's virtually happening… 15
I.1.2 Double affirmative, double perhaps 24
I.2. In-to the things themselves! 33
I.2.1 'What' 'is' 'inside' 'the' 'thing'? 33
I.2.2 The event of expropriation, or how the thing 'spirits away' 41
I.3. The literary and the poetic: A name without the thing and the things without a name 50Chapter II: 'This Thing Regards Us': The Promise of 'Reified' Intentionality 60
II.1. The real of intentionality and the intentionality of the real 61
II.1.1 The real of intentionality: Noema and hyle 61
II.1.2 The intentionality of the real: Res nostra agitur 67
II.2. The thing of the senses 78
II.2.1 Not-hearing-oneself-speak 78
II.2.2 The imperative for thinking the hand 86
II.3. Being read: Under the eye of the text 93Chapter III: Deconstruction of Fetishism: The Love and the Work of the Thing 101
III.1. For the love of the thing: Derrida's psychoanalysis 102
III.1.1 Who/what is analyzed in psychoanalysis? 103
III.1.2 Psychoanalysis and resistance–of the (non-idealized) mother 111
III.1.3 How to love the thing, or what does psychoanalysis resist? 122
III.2. The thing at work: On commodity fetishism, or the “phenomenology of value” 130
III.2.1 The enframing (of) value 130
III.2.2 Money, credit, and other 'counterfeit things' 140
III.2.3 Becoming-thing of the thing, becoming-world of the world 148Chapter IV: On the Thing that Deconstructs Aesthetics 154
IV.1. Style, the signature of the thing 155
IV.1.1 The point of style 155
IV.1.2 Spongy stones, stony sponges, and the countersignature of the thing 160
IV.1.3 Painting with an auto-affective eye (“double vision”) 165
IV.2. Subjectile, the 'epoch' of the thing 172
IV.2.1 Reductio ad rerum: In the memory of… 172
IV.2.2 Thrown together: The artist and the thing 178
IV.2.3 Instead of arriving: 'The bottom without bottom of things' 186
IV.3. Parergon, the thing alongside the work 192Conclusion: Post-Deconstructive Realism: Of What Remains 199
Abbreviation Key 209
Notes 213
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