Thanks for dropping by.
This blog is a site for dumping my thoughts, ideas, problems, questions, quotations and other material associated with my PhD thesis.
Specifically, my research (in its present incarnation) seeks to account for the reception given to Derrida in the US. In connection with this historical theme, I’m pursuing two avenues:
1. How have historians characterised Derrida’s impact, and how has he affected their theory and practice.
2. How does Derrida himself conceive of the ‘now’ or ‘today’ of his writing – ie. in what sense does he conceive of the historical moment of his work, and of history itself.
Accordingly the two branches focus on the theoretical debates of historians and philosophers of history, and the early writings of Derrida on phenomenology: Husserl, Heidegger, Levinas.
This is, of course, entirely provisional. Thanks again for dropping by, and please feel free to contribute to discussion.
March 14, 2008 at 1:41 am
what commentaries are you using to help you get through the phenomenology?
wondering because i’ve been rereading terry pinkard’s, and it’s pretty helpful.
also, how far along are you in your phd program – i.e., how long before this dissertation needs to be done?
curious,
b
March 14, 2008 at 11:10 am
Hi Beau,
Thanks for dropping by.
I did one course on phenomenology which was an overview, from Husserl through Heidegger, Sartre, Merleau Ponty and Levinas, which largely consisted of reading excerpts from their works,and then I’ve simply carried on reading the texts themselves. I read a book called Husserl: A guide for the perplexed, by Matheson Russell, (Continuum) which was a good starting point. Mostly though, I think it’s worth just sitting down and slowly nutting it out for yourself.
It helps to read them through with others, I’ve found. I’ve only been going for about 8 months, so I still have a long way to go!
April 1, 2008 at 11:23 am
Ah, I see you actually meant Hegel’s Phenomenology. Oops. I haven’t been using a commentary, just trying to nut through it on the text alone.
April 22, 2009 at 11:58 am
hi drew !
nice to see your blog.
i also interested in Derrida thought,
specially after i read “Force of Law”.
I used that article to be my small thesis last year.
as Phd candidate, do you have some e-book (the free one)
from Derrida, especially from his early writing.
tks.