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Of Grammatology

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Jacques Derrida’s revolutionary approach to phenomenology, psychoanalysis, structuralism, linguistics, and indeed the entire European tradition of philosophy―called deconstruction―changed the face of criticism. It provoked a questioning of philosophy, literature, and the human sciences that these disciplines would have previously considered improper. Forty years after Of Grammatology first appeared in English, Derrida still ignites controversy, thanks in part to Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak’s careful translation, which attempted to capture the richness and complexity of the original. This fortieth anniversary edition, where a mature Spivak retranslates with greater awareness of Derrida’s legacy, also includes a new afterword by her which supplements her influential original preface. Judith Butler has added an introduction. All references in the work have been updated. One of contemporary criticism’s most indispensable works, Of Grammatology is made even more accessible and usable by this new release.

Paperback: 560 pages

Publisher: Johns Hopkins University Press; Fortieth Anniversary ed. edition (January 4, 2016)

Language: English

ISBN-10: 1421419955

ISBN-13: 978-1421419954

Product Dimensions: 6 x 1.4 x 9 inches

Shipping Weight: 1.7 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)

Average Customer Review: 2.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)

Best Sellers Rank: #157,987 in Books (See Top 100 in Books) #22 in Books > Politics & Social Sciences > Philosophy > Movements > Deconstruction #67 in Books > Textbooks > Humanities > Literature > Literary Theory #980 in Books > Textbooks > Humanities > Philosophy

Four decades ago The John Hopkins University Press published a translation of Jacques Derrida's DE LA GRAMMATOLOGIE by a young scholar named Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak. Not content with merely translating Derrida's three hundred page tome (which took five years), Spivak also added her own Preface of almost ninety pages!As the decades passed, OF GRAMMATOLOGY came to be seen as THE definitive text of deconstruction (at least among literary types) and this translation became, undoubtedly, quite a cash cow for its publisher. To honor this, John Hopkins Press has issued this handsome revised edition that includes not only a new Afterword by Spivak, but also a new Introduction by Judith Butler.Forty years ago Spivak's translation and her impressive Preface were greeted with much praise. However, once serious scholars got around to reading the text side by side with the French original, it became clear that Spivak was not as fastidious a translator as one might hope. The Heidegger scholar Thomas Sheehan observed that there were "dozens of mistranslations (sometimes three to a page, some of them howlers) plus misspellings, omissions, and manglings of the Greek" in the first forty pages alone. To remedy this situation, Johns Hopkins Press eventually issued a second edition about a decade ago. That "Corrected Edition" had a cool new cover and even an index, but not so much a page of explanation to tell us who corrected what or where. This handsome "Fortieth Anniversary Edition" also has a new, less cool, cover and boasts that it is a Newly Revised Translation without, alas, telling the reader anything about the revisions.All that aside, OF GRAMMATOLOGY is a great book, written when Derrida was at the height of his powers. Is it his best book?

Of Grammatology