Derrida and Autobiography

The work of Jacques Derrida can be seen to reinvent most theories. Robert Smith offers a reading of Derrida's philosophy and an investigation of theories of autobiography. He thinks through Derrida's texts in a new way, and finds new perspectives on the work of classical writers including Hegel, Nietszche, Kierkegaard, Freud and de Man. The work of Jacques Derrida can be seen to reinvent most theories. In this book Robert Smith offers both a reading of the philosophy of Derrida and an investigation of current theories of autobiography. Smith argues that for Derrida autobiography is not so much subjective self-revelation as relation to the other, not so much a general condition of thought as a general condition of writing - what Derrida calls the 'autobiography of the writing' - which mocks any self-centred finitude of living and dying. In this context, and using literary-critical, philosophical, and psychoanalytical sources, Smith thinks through Derrida's texts in a new, but distinctly Derridean, way, and finds new perspectives to analyse the work of classical writers including Hegel, Nietzsche, Kierkegaard, Freud, and de Man.