Ebook: Politics of the Gift: Exchanges in Poststructuralism

Marcel Mauss's Essai sur le don (1923-4) has become one of the central non-philosophical references of contemporary French philosophy. Lacan, Deleuze and Derrida, to name only a few, return to the concept of the gift explicitly and repeatedly.

Gerald Moore shows how the problematic of the gift drives and illuminates the last century of French philosophy. By tracing the creation of the gift as a concept, from its origins in philosophy and the social sciences, right up to the present, Moore shows its central importance for a poststructuralist understanding of the relation between philosophy and politics.

Key features

• Offers a panoramic new perspective on the relationship between poststructuralist philosophy and politics
• Includes in-depth readings of the concepts of the gift and exchange in the thought of Heidegger, Lacan, Deleuze, Derrida and Nancy
• Presents a new account of politics in terms of the simultaneous necessity and impossibility of sacrificing the gift

More about Gerald Moore

Gerald Moore's Staff Page at Wadham College, University of Oxford