Between Foucault and Derrida

Yubraj Aryal is a Postdoctoral Researcher at the University of Montreal and Visiting Scholar at New York University. He is also the editor of Journal of Philosophy: A Cross-Disciplinary Inquiry. Dr. Aryal has interviewed Brian Massumi, Kwami Anthony Appiah, Lauren Berlant, Paul Patton, Richard Rorty, Robert Young and others. Vernon W. Cisney is Assistant Professor of Interdisciplinary Studies and Philosophy at Gettysburg College. He is the author of Deleuze and Derrida: Difference and the Power of the Negative (Edinburgh University Press, 2018) and Derrida’s Voice and Phenomenon: An Edinburgh Philosophical Guide (Edinburgh University Press, 2014). He is the co-editor of Between Foucault and Derrida (Edinburgh University Press, 2016); The Way of Nature and the Way of Grace: Philosophical Footholds on Terrence Malick’s Tree of Life (Northwestern University Press, 2016); and Biopower: Foucault and Beyond (University of Chicago Press, 2015). Nicolae Morar is Assistant Professor in Philosophy and Environmental Studies and an Associate Member with the Institute of Ecology and Evolution at the University of Oregon. Christopher Penfield is Charles A. Dana Associate Professor of Philosophy at Sweet Briar College. He is the co-editor of Between Foucault and Derrida (EUP, 2016) and author of numerous articles on contemporary French philosophy, social and political theory, and aesthetics, including those published in or by Deleuze and Guattari Studies, The Journal of Speculative Philosophy, Tate Publishing, Foucault Studies and The Cambridge Foucault Lexicon.

In bringing together the key texts in Foucault’s and Derrida’s ground-breaking intellectual confrontation, alongside the insights of some of their most astute readers, Between Foucault and Derrida attests to the ongoing force of their philosophies in the present. Each has provided us with ways of thinking about language, knowledge and power that have defined our age but also oriented it in very different, even contrary, directions. This book is a careful analysis of the wide-ranging implications of this most unusual of encounters.

• AcknowledgmentsChronology1. IntroductionChristopher PenfieldI. The History of Madness Debate 2. Cogito and the History of MadnessJacques Derrida3. My Body, This Paper, This FireMichel Foucault 4. ‘But Such People Are Insane’: On a Disputed Passage from the First MeditationJean-Marie Beyssade5. A Return to Descartes’s First MeditationMichel Foucault6. Deconstruction, Care of the Self, Spirituality: Putting Foucault and Derrida to the Test Edward McGushinII. The End of Reason 7. The History of Historicity: The Critique of Reason in Foucault (and Derrida)Amy Allen8. 'The End of Man: Foucault, Derrida, and the Auto-Bio-Graphical'Ellen ArmourIII. The Voice 9. ‘Murmurs’ and ‘Calls’: The Significance of Voice in the Political Reason of Foucault and Derrida Fred Evans10. 'Let Others be Ends in themselves': The Convergence between Foucault’s Parrēsia and Derrida’s Teleiopoesis Leonard LawlorIV. The Placeless Place11. The Aporia and the ProblemPaul Rekret12. The Folded Unthought and the Irreducibly Unthinkable: Singularity, Multiplicity, and Materiality, in and between Foucault and DerridaArkady PlotnitskyV. Crisis, Life and Death 13. Living and Dying with Foucault and Derrida: The Question of BiopowerJeffrey T. Nealon14. Philosophy on Trial: The Crisis of Deciding between Foucault and DerridaPeter GrattonNotes on ContributorsIndex