Introduction

Abstract

The Introduction argues for the continued relevance of Derrida and deconstruction in contemporary Continental philosophy by showing that deconstruction speaks to resolutely material issues via its thinking of life death and in turn survival and autoimmunity. It contends that Derrida’s deep engagement with Freud across the full trajectory of his work, and in particular Freud’s theory of life and death drives, supplies the key way into this problematic and its consequential implications. The recasting of life as survival legible in Derrida’s dealings with Freud, it argues, bears directly on the question of normativity in deconstruction and the question of deconstruction’s ethics and politics. Specifically, the Introduction elaborates how the logic of survival enables deconstructive critique to destabilize and put into question, to “shake up,” certain inherited understandings of life and death, and the political, understood as the theological-political.