The Tain of the Mirror: Derrida and the Philosophy of Reflection

by Rodolphe Gasché

Deconstruction is no game of mirrors, revealing the text as a play of surface against surface. Its more radical philosophical effort is to get behind the mirror and question the very nature of reflection. The Tain of the Mirror (tain names the tinfoil, or lusterless back of the mirror) explores that gritty surface without which no reflection would be possible. Rodolphe Gasché does what no one has done before in many discussions of Derrida, namely to tie his work in an authoritative way to its origins in the history of the criticism of reflexivity.

Genres: Philosophy, Theory

358 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1986

About the author

Rodolphe Gasché is Distinguished Professor and Eugenio Donato Professor of Comparative Literature at the State University of New York at Buffalo.

Reviews

[Spoust1]

With The Tain of the Mirror, Rudolph Gasché has given us one of the great texts on Jacques Derrida and deconstruction. Gasché situates Derrida’s project in the tradition of German philosophy that includes G. W. F. Hegel, Edmund Husserl, and Martin Heidegger. According to Gasché, deconstruction is the practice of exposing the multiplicitous infrastructures — linguistic, institutional, and more — that make thought possible but which thought cannot recognize as belonging to it. This is a detailed and wide-ranging study of Derrida, but note: it is probably only for the advanced student. Unless one is already familiar with Hegel, Husserl, and Heidegger, The Tain of the Mirror would not make for a good introduction to Derrida.

[Joseph Lewis]

Good explanation of Derrida’s philosophy as a part of the Phenomenological tradition, and a critique/alternative to Platonism. Strong explanation of Hegel’s philosophic methods in the first few chapters, perhaps more time could have been spent on Heidegger owing to the importance of him to the book. This however could be because a basic familiarity with Heidegger is excepted, which I lack, so it might just be on me.

[William]

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