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The Work of Mourning
Jacques Derrida is, in the words of the New York Times , "perhaps the world's most famous philosopher—if not the only famous philosopher." He often provokes controversy as soon as his name is mentioned. But he also inspires the respect that comes from an illustrious career, and, among many who were his colleagues and peers, he inspired friendship. The Work of Mourning is a collection that honors those friendships in the wake of passing.
Gathered here are texts—letters of condolence, memorial essays, eulogies, funeral orations—written after the deaths of well-known figures: Roland Barthes, Paul de Man, Michel Foucault, Louis Althusser, Edmond Jabès, Louis Marin, Sarah Kofman, Gilles Deleuze, Emmanuel Levinas, Jean-François Lyotard, Max Loreau, Jean-Marie Benoist, Joseph Riddel, and Michel Servière.
With his words, Derrida bears witness to the singularity of a friendship and to the absolute uniqueness of each relationship. In each case, he is acutely aware of the questions of tact, taste, and ethical responsibility involved in speaking of the dead—the risks of using the occasion for one's own purposes, political calculation, personal vendetta, and the expiation of guilt. More than a collection of memorial addresses, this volume sheds light not only on Derrida's relation to some of the most prominent French thinkers of the past quarter century but also on some of the most important themes of Derrida's entire oeuvre-mourning, the "gift of death," time, memory, and friendship itself.
"In his rapt attention to his subjects' work and their influence upon him, the book also offers a hesitant and tangential retelling of Derrida's own life in French philosophical history. There are illuminating and playful anecdotes—how Lyotard led Derrida to begin using a word-processor; how Paul de Man talked knowledgeably of jazz with Derrida's son. Anyone who still thinks that Derrida is a facetious punster will find such resentful prejudice unable to survive a reading of this beautiful work."—Steven Poole, Guardian
"Strikingly simpa meditations on friendship, on shared vocations and avocations and on philosophy and history."— Publishers Weekly
Gathered here are texts—letters of condolence, memorial essays, eulogies, funeral orations—written after the deaths of well-known figures: Roland Barthes, Paul de Man, Michel Foucault, Louis Althusser, Edmond Jabès, Louis Marin, Sarah Kofman, Gilles Deleuze, Emmanuel Levinas, Jean-François Lyotard, Max Loreau, Jean-Marie Benoist, Joseph Riddel, and Michel Servière.
With his words, Derrida bears witness to the singularity of a friendship and to the absolute uniqueness of each relationship. In each case, he is acutely aware of the questions of tact, taste, and ethical responsibility involved in speaking of the dead—the risks of using the occasion for one's own purposes, political calculation, personal vendetta, and the expiation of guilt. More than a collection of memorial addresses, this volume sheds light not only on Derrida's relation to some of the most prominent French thinkers of the past quarter century but also on some of the most important themes of Derrida's entire oeuvre-mourning, the "gift of death," time, memory, and friendship itself.
"In his rapt attention to his subjects' work and their influence upon him, the book also offers a hesitant and tangential retelling of Derrida's own life in French philosophical history. There are illuminating and playful anecdotes—how Lyotard led Derrida to begin using a word-processor; how Paul de Man talked knowledgeably of jazz with Derrida's son. Anyone who still thinks that Derrida is a facetious punster will find such resentful prejudice unable to survive a reading of this beautiful work."—Steven Poole, Guardian
"Strikingly simpa meditations on friendship, on shared vocations and avocations and on philosophy and history."— Publishers Weekly
272 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2001
28 people are currently reading
821 people want to read
About the author
Jacques Derrida
650 books1,792 followersJacques Derrida was a French philosopher best known for developing deconstruction, a method of critical analysis that questioned the stability of meaning in language, texts, and Western metaphysical thought. Born in Algeria, he studied at the École Normale Supérieure in Paris, where he was influenced by philosophers such as Heidegger, Husserl, and Levinas. His groundbreaking works, including Of Grammatology (1967), Writing and Difference (1967), and Speech and Phenomena (1967), positioned him at the center of intellectual debates on language, meaning, and interpretation.
Derrida argued that Western philosophy was structured around binary oppositions—such as speech over writing, presence over absence, or reason over emotion—that falsely privileged one term over the other. He introduced the concept of différance, which suggests that meaning is constantly deferred and never fully present, destabilizing the idea of fixed truth. His work engaged with a wide range of disciplines, including literature, psychoanalysis, political theory, and law, challenging conventional ways of thinking and interpretation.
Throughout his career, Derrida continued to explore ethical and political questions, particularly in works such as Specters of Marx (1993) and The Politics of Friendship (1994), which addressed democracy, justice, and responsibility. He held academic positions at institutions such as the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales and the University of California, Irvine, and remained an influential figure in both European and American intellectual circles. Despite criticism for his complex writing style and abstract concepts, Derrida’s ideas have left a lasting impact on contemporary philosophy, literary theory, and cultural criticism, reshaping the way meaning and language are understood in the modern world.
Derrida argued that Western philosophy was structured around binary oppositions—such as speech over writing, presence over absence, or reason over emotion—that falsely privileged one term over the other. He introduced the concept of différance, which suggests that meaning is constantly deferred and never fully present, destabilizing the idea of fixed truth. His work engaged with a wide range of disciplines, including literature, psychoanalysis, political theory, and law, challenging conventional ways of thinking and interpretation.
Throughout his career, Derrida continued to explore ethical and political questions, particularly in works such as Specters of Marx (1993) and The Politics of Friendship (1994), which addressed democracy, justice, and responsibility. He held academic positions at institutions such as the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales and the University of California, Irvine, and remained an influential figure in both European and American intellectual circles. Despite criticism for his complex writing style and abstract concepts, Derrida’s ideas have left a lasting impact on contemporary philosophy, literary theory, and cultural criticism, reshaping the way meaning and language are understood in the modern world.
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Displaying 1 - 12 of 12 reviews
October 13, 2023
This revealed itself as untimely, a book of memorials and eulogies, one read over a week of sadness, a mourning both personal and local as well as one historical and global.
The mixture of condolences and intellectual rumination was satisfying, if not masterful. The figures remembered were famous (Foucault, Barthes) and some not so well known. Such distinctions didn’t matter to Derrida as they were all known to him. Grief is imminently personal and perhaps ontologically impossible. Derrida’s gift of transcribing loss and memory is yet another of his invaluable contributions.
The mixture of condolences and intellectual rumination was satisfying, if not masterful. The figures remembered were famous (Foucault, Barthes) and some not so well known. Such distinctions didn’t matter to Derrida as they were all known to him. Grief is imminently personal and perhaps ontologically impossible. Derrida’s gift of transcribing loss and memory is yet another of his invaluable contributions.
December 5, 2018
Woefully, dolorously horrifying—both for its intrinsic properties and for the extrinsic circumstances of my reading of it—this is a collection of Derrida’s eulogies for his writer friends, put together not too long before his own decease.
The introduction begins with the premise that Derrida has a ‘politics of mourning,’ which is tied specifically to his ‘politics of friendship’—quoting the lines that “philia begins with the possibility of survival. Surviving—that is the other name of mourning whose possibility is never to be awaited” (3). This arises out of the ‘law of friendship’: “one friend must always go before the other; one friend must always die first” (id.). Even when the deaths are simultaneous, “their friendship will have been structured from the very beginning by the possibility that one of the two would see the other die, and so, surviving, would be left to bury, to commemorate, and to mourn” (id.). The writings collected here arise out of these principles. In some ways, the first eulogy, on Barthes, sets the tone for all of them:
On the occasion of Loreau’s decease – “I have already lost too many friends and I lack the strength to speak publicly and to recall each time another end of the world” (95). It has given him “Coeur a l’intime farouche” – “a heart timid to intimacy” (103), the opposite of Woolf.
Althusser is “at once too absent and too close” (114); he is a “multiplicity” for whom “it is incumbent upon us not to totalize or simplify” (116).
In recalling Riddel, he remembers fondly “that unbelieving hope that haunts our most intense friendships: the promise that we would see each other more often later on, that in the end we speak without end and be together, interminably” (127). It is “a strange familiarity” that is “never contradicted between us by distance” (131).
To Lyotard, who said once that “there shall be no mourning” (217)—in order to protect the interest of the deceased: “for wouldn’t the institution of mourning run the risk of securing the forgetting? Of protecting against memory instead of keeping it?” (218). Or by contrast “the work of mourning seeks neither to save from death nor deny it, but to save from a ‘worse than death’” (230), with spectres of Adorno and Levinas (and thus Agamben) on Auschwitz.
Most heartbreakingly, for Deleuze, without whom he must “wander all alone in that long discussion that we should have had together” (195), an empty spectre of Milton's "hand in hand, with wandering steps and slow, Through Eden took their solitary way."
Plenty more: De Man, Levinas, others. Much of philosophical interest worked over in the individual eulogies. But my interest is much more intensely personal; some things are like death, conjuring the irretrievable loss of a necessary person--and in mourning them, one might find insight in these meditations.
The introduction begins with the premise that Derrida has a ‘politics of mourning,’ which is tied specifically to his ‘politics of friendship’—quoting the lines that “philia begins with the possibility of survival. Surviving—that is the other name of mourning whose possibility is never to be awaited” (3). This arises out of the ‘law of friendship’: “one friend must always go before the other; one friend must always die first” (id.). Even when the deaths are simultaneous, “their friendship will have been structured from the very beginning by the possibility that one of the two would see the other die, and so, surviving, would be left to bury, to commemorate, and to mourn” (id.). The writings collected here arise out of these principles. In some ways, the first eulogy, on Barthes, sets the tone for all of them:
Two infidelities, an impossible choice: on the one hand, not to say anything that comes back to oneself, to one’s own voice, to remain silent […] But this excess of fidelity would end up saying and exchanging nothing. It returns to death. It points to death, sending death back to death. On the other hand, by avoiding all quotation, all identification, all rapprochement even, so that what is addressed to or spoken of Roland Barthes truly comes from the other, from the living friend, one risks making him disappear again, as if one could add more death to death and thus indecently pluralize it. We are left with having to do and not do both at once, with having to correct one infidelity with the other. (45)For Foucault, he writes that “one does not carry on a stormy discussion after the other has departed” (81), instead believing that “The only recourse left us in the solitude of questioning, to imagine the principle of the reply” (89). Death as the crafting of a monologic space.
On the occasion of Loreau’s decease – “I have already lost too many friends and I lack the strength to speak publicly and to recall each time another end of the world” (95). It has given him “Coeur a l’intime farouche” – “a heart timid to intimacy” (103), the opposite of Woolf.
Althusser is “at once too absent and too close” (114); he is a “multiplicity” for whom “it is incumbent upon us not to totalize or simplify” (116).
In recalling Riddel, he remembers fondly “that unbelieving hope that haunts our most intense friendships: the promise that we would see each other more often later on, that in the end we speak without end and be together, interminably” (127). It is “a strange familiarity” that is “never contradicted between us by distance” (131).
To Lyotard, who said once that “there shall be no mourning” (217)—in order to protect the interest of the deceased: “for wouldn’t the institution of mourning run the risk of securing the forgetting? Of protecting against memory instead of keeping it?” (218). Or by contrast “the work of mourning seeks neither to save from death nor deny it, but to save from a ‘worse than death’” (230), with spectres of Adorno and Levinas (and thus Agamben) on Auschwitz.
Most heartbreakingly, for Deleuze, without whom he must “wander all alone in that long discussion that we should have had together” (195), an empty spectre of Milton's "hand in hand, with wandering steps and slow, Through Eden took their solitary way."
Plenty more: De Man, Levinas, others. Much of philosophical interest worked over in the individual eulogies. But my interest is much more intensely personal; some things are like death, conjuring the irretrievable loss of a necessary person--and in mourning them, one might find insight in these meditations.
September 8, 2017
I dove into this book expecting to find a book about death. Instead, i found this wonderful —equally sad and invigorating— meditation on friendship which has nothing to envy of Montaigne's or Nietzsche's.
January 4, 2015
there is no friendship without the possibility that one friend will die before the other
Read
November 29, 2022horrifying incredible ! beautiful & a candidate for my top three of JD
September 4, 2024
A beautifully presented, vulnerable treatise on the philosophy of loss, mourning, and honoring the dead. I’m a better person for having read this one.
December 19, 2020
Da rileggere interamente 🥀💙
October 8, 2008
This volume is a compendium of obituaries by Jacques Derrida on several key figures of continental philosophy who have since passed in recent years. The book, gathered as a whole, essentially marks the end of an important era in the history of Western philosophy, it was the era of existentialism, phenomenology, structuralism, post-structuralism, Marxist theory, and deconstruction.
Derrida writes elegant and respectful essays about literary theorist Roland Barthes, Paul DeMan, philosopher Michel Foucault, Max Loreau, Jean-Marie Benoist, Marxist theorist Louis Althusser, Edmond Jabes, Joseph Riddel, Michel Serviere, Louis Marin, feminist Sarah Kofman, Gilles Deleuze, Emmanuel Levinas, and Jean-Francois Lyotard.
Although this text is far from a major work of philosophy on behalf of Derrida, I am positive it will be an important resource for future students, and an elegant work of preservation for a by-gone era.
Derrida writes elegant and respectful essays about literary theorist Roland Barthes, Paul DeMan, philosopher Michel Foucault, Max Loreau, Jean-Marie Benoist, Marxist theorist Louis Althusser, Edmond Jabes, Joseph Riddel, Michel Serviere, Louis Marin, feminist Sarah Kofman, Gilles Deleuze, Emmanuel Levinas, and Jean-Francois Lyotard.
Although this text is far from a major work of philosophy on behalf of Derrida, I am positive it will be an important resource for future students, and an elegant work of preservation for a by-gone era.
September 25, 2011
This is a book I'd like to read again. "The Work of Mourning" is a book of passionate eulogies, sprinkled with philosophical digressions here and there, depending on Derrida's subject. I ordered the book specifically for the chapter on Sarah Kofman, but found myself captivated by the intensity of Derrida's grief for these people.
Two chapters remain prominent in my mind: the last words on Lyotard, and the entirety of the eulogy for Kofman, which is particularly moving for Derrida's avowed difficulty putting words to Kofman's death, of his desire to "catch up to her...trying to keep her alive" (170). He follows that with an interesting commentary on Kofman's last work. This tension between the personal and the public eulogy characterizes - endearingly - the book as a whole.
Two chapters remain prominent in my mind: the last words on Lyotard, and the entirety of the eulogy for Kofman, which is particularly moving for Derrida's avowed difficulty putting words to Kofman's death, of his desire to "catch up to her...trying to keep her alive" (170). He follows that with an interesting commentary on Kofman's last work. This tension between the personal and the public eulogy characterizes - endearingly - the book as a whole.
October 9, 2008
I have a lot of questions about the efficacy of the material in this book. Though it is profound that Derrida succeeded almost all of his colleagues, and therefore had to undertake the work of writing for them, I believe the profundity of the material lies more with the moment of grief than after. Though I very much enjoyed a few of these eulogies, it felt like I was prying into Derrida's tender process of eulogizing. I did empathize with some his ways of dealing with and looking at grief, and this is interesting in relationship to deconstruction.
May 5, 2008
Amazing...wonderful look at the loss of loss.
January 9, 2009
wasn't feeling so good at the time...
Displaying 1 - 12 of 12 reviews