Derrida and Modernism: A Review of Understanding Derrida, Understanding Modernism

Abstract: Understanding Derrida, Understanding Modernism constitutes a series of essays that explore Jacques Derrida's relationship to modernism and modernity. Jean-Michel Rabaté's edited collection finds in Derrida and deconstruction an expansion of the figures and terms through which modernism can be approached and narrated. Establishing a new interface between modernist literature and philosophy, Understanding Derrida, Understanding Modernism provides different coordinates and parameters for defining and rethinking the relationship between, literary modernism and its historical moments. Simultaneously, this collection demonstrates how modernism and modernity serve as apposite lenses for understanding a host of Derrida's critical and philosophical pursuits.