Judeities: Questions for Jacques Derrida

Invited to answer questions about his relationship to Judaism, Jacques Derrida spoke through Franz Kafka: "As for myself, I could imagine another Abraham." He explores the movement between growing up Jewish, "becoming Jewish," and "Jewish being" or existence. In his essay "The Other Abraham," which appears here in English for the first time, he imagines other Abrahams in light of the proclaimed universalism of philosophy and its recent fragmentation into "philosophemes." Thus we no longer confront "Judaism" but "Judeity," multiple Judaisms and Jewish existences, manifold ways of being and writing as a Jew--in Derrida's case, as a French-speaking Algerian deprived of, then restored to French nationality in the 1940s. Contributions contrast Derrida's thought with philosophical predecessors such as Rosenzweig, Levinas, Celan, and Scholem, and trace confluences between deconstruction and Kabbalah. Derrida's relationship to the universalist aspirations in contemporary theology is also discussed, and an evaluation is offered of his late autobiographical writings.

Author: Bettina Bergo
Publisher: Fordham University Press
Published: 06/15/2007
Pages: 224
Binding Type: Paperback
Weight: 0.90lbs
Size: 8.99h x 6.31w x 0.73d
ISBN: 9780823226429

About the Author

BETTINA BERGO is Assistant Professor of Philosophy at the University of Montral and the author of Levinas: Between Ethics and Politics. The most recent of her many translations is, with Michael B. Smith, Judeities: Questions for Jacques Derrida (Fordham).

Joseph Cohen is Visiting Professor of Philosophy at the Hochschule fur Gestaltung in Karlsruhe, Germany, and Program Director at the College International Philosophie, Paris. He has published Le sacrifice de Hegel (2006) and Le spectre juif de Hegel (2005). Author of many articles, he recently edited Heidegger-le danger et la promesse (2006), a critical collection on Heidegger and the end of history.

Raphael Zagury-Orly is Professor of Philosophy at the Bezalel Academy of Fine Arts in Jerusalem and Researcher in Philosophy atthe University of Tel Aviv. He has translated Gilles Deleuze and Jacques Derrida into Hebrew and is the author of many articles.

MICHAEL B. SMITH is Professor Emeritus of French and Philosophy at Berry College and the translator of many works, including, with Bettina Bergo, Judeities: Questions for Jacques Derrida(Fordham).