Ebook: Derrida, Responsibility, and Politics

A contribution to the debate about the ethics and politics of deconstruction. The trend in existing critical literature is to approach this issue by way of a question of deconstruction's ethico-political significance. The author argues that such an approach threatens to undermine the singularity of Derrida's deconstructive discourse; it does so by submitting a discourse which is not entirely semantic to a question of meaning and significance. Patrick suggests that the difficulty itself confirms Derrida's claim that deconstruction transforms. By tracing the link between the transformative and the strategic aspects of Derrida's, this book develops an alternative conception of deconstructive ethics and politics. It investigates how the task of assuming responsibility opens not merely an ethical dimension but also a political, rhetorical and strategic even in deconstruction.