Forms in the Abyss

by Martinot, Steve

• ISBN13: 9781592134403
• ISBN10: 1592134408
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2007-09-28
• Publisher: Temple Univ Pr

Summary

The relationship between the existentialist Jean-Paul Sartre and the post-structuralist Jacques Derrida has never been fully examined until now. InForms in the Abyss, Steve Martinot finds, between theses two important philosophical thinkers of the twentieth century, "a common uncommonality" by which he sees them confront each other as "kindred souls", despite their vast differences.Martinot argues that while Sartre's writing sets out a significant set of critical ethical precepts for living in the world, and Derrida's critique of language in turn throws into question the process of arriving at an ethics (though constituting at the same time an ethics of writing), a bridge between these two thinkers can be constructed. He demonstrates that one can use the critical tools provided by Derrida, and the forms of discourse and reasoning developed by Sartre, to set the two in dialogue with each other. In the process, Martinot develops a theory of dialogue that incorporates both ethics and form.Martinot contributes a new way of thinking about critical and social theory and even more importantly, adds a new ethical and political imperative to post-modern thought thatmany critics have often found missing in the works of thinkers such as Derrida.Forms in the Abysspromises to be a significant contribution to our critical understanding of western thought.

Author Biography

Steve Martinot is Instructor at the Center for Interdisciplinary Programs at San Francisco State University. He is the author of The Rule of Racialization: Class, Identity, Governance (Temple), editor of two previous books, and translator of Racism by Albert Memmi.

Table of Contents

Introduction	p. 1
History and Writing
The Metaphysics of a Common Language
The Narrative of Metaphysics
The Historical Dimension
A Common Uncommonality
The Form of Uncommon Logic	p. 37
Invention
Diffearance
Neaantisation
On Heidegger
The Parameters of Homology	p. 73
Extensions of the Double Non-negation
Sartre's Use of the Skew Relation as a Formalism
Derrida's Use of the Skew Relation in his Thematics
The Middle Voice
Always Already
Form and Structure	p. 103
On Form
On Structure
The Derridean Circle
Mediation
The Triadic Circle in its Historical Moment
Conclusion: The Structures of Ethnocentrism
The Look and its Inner Narrativizations	p. 150
The Look
The other-as-object
The Look
The Meta-narrativity of the Look
A Critique and Extension of the NMN-structure
The Form of Form
The Sartre-Derrida Homology	p. 180
The Inside of the Outside, the Supplement
A Note on "Infrastructure"
Separation in Immediacy, the Hymen
The Role of Narrative
The Social Text of the Glyph
Dissemination
Reading the Imagination as Reading
Conclusion
Circularities and Foundations
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