Given Time II - by Jacques Derrida (Hardcover)

Book Synopsis

The long-awaited conclusion to Derrida's seminar on the gift and time.

In 1991, Jacques Derrida published the first half of a seminar delivered from 1978 to 1979 on gifts and time, but the second installment (though expected) was not completed in his lifetime. Given Time II completes the seminar with eight sessions that showcase Derrida's most advanced work on the problematic of the gift in Heidegger, with deep dives into some of the most difficult texts in the Heideggerian corpus, including "The Origin of the Work of Art," "The Thing," and "On Time and Being."

Beyond Heidegger, Derrida engages Claude Lévi-Strauss, Marcel Mauss, Maurice Blanchot, Jacques Lacan, and others on the act of giving and receiving, the sacrificial gift, and more. Throughout, Derrida identifies a paradox of gift giving: for the gift to be received as a gift, it must not appear as such, since gifts often involve a cycle of debt and repayment. Given Time II is a uniquely Derridean treatment of an important subject in the work of Heidegger and beyond.

Review Quotes

"Derrida stated in Given Time I that the seminar laid bare the premises of a problematic central to his work, but it is only now that readers have access to the full range of premises indicating places of his divergence from Heidegger, among them: Heidegger's evaluations of narrative, Husserl's thing, Kant's moral laws, the proper. In the precise, highly readable English of the translation, this volume facing off these two foremost philosophers will be a welcome addition to every library of Derrida."--E. S. Burt, University of California, Irvine

"Translated with elegance and clarity, this second installment of Given Time returns to Derrida's thinking of the gift in nine unpublished sessions (including an inspired, improvised session on Blanchot). Drawing on his readings of Baudelaire, Mauss, Benveniste, Lévi-Strauss, and Lacan in Given Time I, Derrida here gives a brilliant analysis of Heidegger's es gibt--'there is, ' or, literally, 'it gives'--as a way of thinking of 'giving' as more originary than time and being."--Elizabeth Rottenberg, DePaul University

About the Author

Jacques Derrida (1930-2004) was director of studies at the École des hautes études en sciences sociales, Paris, and professor of humanities at the University of California, Irvine. Several of his books have been published in translation by the University of Chicago Press. Laura Odello is visiting associate professor of French and francophone studies and Italian studies at Brown University. She has translated many of Derrida's works into Italian. Peter Szendy is the David Herlihy University Professor of Comparative Literature and the Humanities at Brown University. His many books include The Supermarket of the Visible: Toward a General Economy of Images. Geoffrey Bennington is Asa G. Candler Professor of Modern French Thought at Emory University. He is the author of several books on Derrida and translator of many others by him, and he is coeditor of The Seminars of Jacques Derrida series. Peggy Kamuf is professor emerita of French and comparative literature at the University of Southern California. She is coeditor of The Seminar of Jacques Derrida series.