Few thinkers of the latter half of the twentieth century have so profoundly and radically transformed our understanding of writing and literature as Jacques Derrida (1930–2004). Derridian deconstruction remains one of the most powerful intellectual movements of the present century, and Derrida's own innovative writings on literature and philosophy are crucially relevant for any understanding of the future of literature and literary criticism today. Derrida's own manner of writing is complex and challenging and has often been misrepresented or misunderstood. In this book, Leslie Hill provides an accessible introduction to Derrida's writings on literature which presupposes no prior knowledge of Derrida's work. He explores in detail Derrida's relationship to literary theory and criticism, and offers close readings of some of Derrida's best known essays. This introduction will help those coming to Derrida's work for the first time, and suggests further directions to take in studying this hugely influential thinker.

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Readers of Blanchot have long been aware of the importance of politics in the writer's intellectual itinerary. But though the history of Blanchot's political involvements is now quite well documented (albeit frequently misrepresented to polemical ends), much remains to be understood about Blanchot's conception of the political. Prompted in part by his support for the ‘Not In Our Name’ appeal, which was to be one of Blanchot's last political gestures, this essay fragment, which is part of a longer inquiry, reconstructs the writer's thinking on the question of the subject of politics and the closely related issue of the relationship between law and violence. It examines Blanchot's response to Hölderlin's translation of a famous fragment from Pindar entitled ‘Das Höchste’ (‘The Most High’) and places Blanchot's writing within the wider context of the political thought of Benjamin, Schmitt, Agamben, and Derrida.

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