Germs of Death

Mauro Senatore is a British Academy Fellow at Durham University, United Kingdom, and Adjunct Professor of Contemporary French Philosophy at the Instituto de Humanidades, Universidad Diego Portales, Santiago, Chile. He is the author and editor of several books, including Performatives After Deconstruction.

"…a compact and ambitious reading of a significant portion of Jacques Derrida's philosophical work … what makes Senatore's book so valuable is its insistence on Derrida's thinking of a general or minimal structure of genesis." — Phenomenological Reviews"Senatore here demonstrates with stunning insight, clarity, and economy that Derrida's work of the 1960s and '70s needs to be understood as a radical critique or deconstruction of both the philosophical concept of life (from Plato to Hegel) and the prevailing biological model of heredity as a 'genetic program.' It will be impossible henceforth to read Derrida on questions of the trace, dissemination, life, and so on, without coming to terms with 'the germs of death.'" — Michael Naas, author of The End of the World and Other Teachable Moments: Jacques Derrida's Final Seminar"The book represents a major contribution to the field of Derrida studies and phenomenology, particularly its attention to the concept of genesis that formed the basis of Derrida's earliest study of Husserl and the origin of his concept of writing. The unique contribution is the inclusion of the works from the periods of the mid-1970s, which have been neglected in the mainstream scholarship on Derrida." — Gregg Lambert, author of Philosophy after Friendship: Deleuze's Conceptual Personae

• Acknowledgments Preface IntroductionThe Inaugural InscriptionThe Scene of Divine CreationThe Legacy of Husserl’s Origin The Most General GeneticismThe Generation of ConsciousnessThe Origin of Forms1. Platonism I: The Paternal ThesisA Problem of SyntaxThe Origin and Power of the LogosThe Textuality of Plato’s TextAutochthonyThe Natural Tendency to DisseminationThe Science of the Disseminated Trace2. Platonism II: Kho¯ra The Earth of FathersThe Boldness of TimaeusThe Dynamis of Kho¯ra The Concept of History3. Hegelianism I: Tropic MovementsThe Philosophical Introjection of Ordinary LanguageThe Life of the ConceptThe Hegelian Treatment of EquivocityThe Negation of ConsciousnessThe Two Deaths of the Metaphor4. Hegelianism II: The Book of LifeThe Systematic Figure of the GermThe Tree of LifeThe Circulation of Singular GermsA Note on Classification5. Hegelianism III: The Genetic ProgrammeThis Is a ProtocolThe Logic TextThe Two Deaths of the PrefaceThe Preface Is the Nature of the LogosThe Tain of the MirrorA Non-genetic Thinking of GenesisPostscript Notes Bibliography Index