Derrida and Law

Justice and the Violence of Legality
1. Auflage 2026
ISBN: 978-1-032-96429-4
Verlag: Taylor & Francis Ltd

Buch, Englisch, 340 Seiten, Format (B × H): 156 mm x 234 mm

Reihe: Discourses of Law

This book brings together an interdisciplinary range of scholars from across the spectrum of disciplines, generations, and geopolitical divides to revisit Jacques Derrida’s account of law, violence and justice.

Deconstruction is variously a philosophy of aporia, a method of patience, a practice of paradoxes, an ontography of uncertainty, a hermeneutics of escalation that sought not only to challenge metaphysical complacencies but also to transgress boundaries, test limits, and above all to provoke, invoke and convoke thought. As a reworking of the philosophical tradition, its impact on law and legal theory became unavoidable in 1989 when Derrida, persuaded by the late Drucilla Cornell, came to address a law school audience on the mystical foundations of law. In a lecture – ‘Force of Law’ – that had global intellectual resonance, he startled the jurists by declaring that deconstruction ‘is’ justice. For some lawyers, it was a landmark thesis, a liberation. For others, it was deemed to be nihilist, a denial of all possibility of meaning, and so denounced as the equivalent of tearing up the constitution, or burning of the flag. Some twenty years after his death, in this book, renowned Derridean scholars revisit this legacy, as it offers a series of re-readings of ‘Force of Law’, and a series of new reflections on Derrida’s account of the violence of legality and the possibility of justice.

This book will appeal to philosophers, legal theorists, and others with an interest in deconstruction and Continental theory.

Zielgruppe

Postgraduate

Autoren/Hrsg.

Haverkamp, Anselm

Goodrich, Peter

Ronell, Avital

Inhaltsverzeichnis

Introduction: Force v Law Part One: Law 1. Doing Justice to Deconstruction 2. In the Waiting Room of Injustice: Pascal, Kafka, Derrida 3. Is Deconstruction Justice? 4. Nasorum vis: Hate Inside and Outside Law 5. Justice without Force 6. Derrida’s Wake: Radical Patience between Justice and Forgiveness Part Two: Force 7. The Divine Tantrum: On Law and Anger 8. Sacrifices: On a Footnote in ‘Critique of Violence 9. De-expiation and the Bloodless Strike: On the Force of the Incalculable 10. The Suicide of the Critique of Violence 11. What does a Weak Language Say About Law? 12. Aprés la loi: Kafka, Benjamin, Derrida 13. Afterword: Derrida and Benjamin

Über Autor(innen)

Peter Goodrich is Professor of Law at Cardozo School of Law, New York, and Visiting Professor in Social Science at New York University Abu Dhabi. An ardent advocate of the argute yet habile silent p, as in psithurism, ptomaine, cupboard and rhubarb, he writes on forensic rhetoric, visual advocacy, law and literature, juristic semiotics.

Anselm Haverkamp, Emeritus Professor of English at NYU, is Professor of Philosophy at LMU Munich. As director of the NYU Poetics and Theory Program he for years organized and taught the “Literature and Philosophy” seminars with Jacques Derrida (Fall term) and Stanley Cavell (Spring term).

Avital Ronell is University Professor of the Humanities and Professor of German and Comparative Literature at New York University. She has taught at UC-Berkeley, Germany, France, Princeton, The European Graduate School (currently) and has published many works inflected by deconstruction and hermeneutics.