‘For those wanting to discover or rediscover Jacques Derrida still alive and thinking after life, Geoffrey Bennington is the exemplary guide, scholarly and acrobatic, grave and droll. Let’s follow him. Along the way with fear and trembling he reminds us that reading lives between the possibilities and impossibilities of an opening onto no end. Combining the strength of a rigorous pedagogy with the creative and extravagant powers of the poet-philosopher, GB is a bookworm of genius, actively inhabiting the entire Derridian archive. He has read everything, he hears and understands everything. Working from a double experience (his own and Derrida’s), he reconstitutes the philosophical hero’s adventure, from the age of 22 until his final days. Bennington, who knows Derrida’s script by heart, becomes Derrida’s actor: played by Bennington, Derrida becomes the hero of a devastating philosophical epic. This admirable book which claims to be melancholic is also a triumph of freedom in fidelity, not half.’

Hélène Cixous, Director of the Centre d’Études Féminines,
Université Paris VIII, Emerita

‘Geoffrey Bennington was Derrida’s close friend, and is his distinguished translator, his collaborator (in their Jacques Derrida), and one of Derrida’s most profound readers. He has an exemplary knowledge of all Derrida’s work. One distinctive value and originality of the essays in this book is the way they show in detail how Derrida’s “early work” foreshadows the later books and essays, down to the final seminars. A necessary book for all those interested in Derrida’s writing.’

J. Hillis Miller, UCI Distinguished Research Professor of
Comparative Literature and English, The University of California
at Irvine