Book of Addresses - Paperback

by Peggy Kamuf (Author)

This book consists of a series of essays that all turn around questions of the address of speech or writing. They argue and demonstrate that meaning is not just a matter of the active intention of a subject (for example, speaker, writer, or other signatory of a meaningful act) but also of its reception at another's address. The book's main concern is therefore with a theory of meaning and of action that is not centered on the intentional, self-conscious subject. The fifteen chapters explore this problematic within three broad areas: love, jealousy, and sexual difference; fiction or literature; and political or public discourse. The book engages principally with contemporary French thought and includes important new readings of work by Jacques Derrida, Hélène Cixous, Maurice Blanchot, and Jean-Luc Nancy.

Front Jacket

This book consists of a series of essays that all turn around questions of the address of speech or writing. They argue and demonstrate that meaning is not just a matter of the active intention of a subject (for example, speaker, writer, or other signatory of a meaningful act) but also of its reception at another's address. The book's main concern is therefore with a theory of meaning and of action that is not centered on the intentional, self-conscious subject. The fifteen chapters explore this problematic within three broad areas: love, jealousy, and sexual difference; fiction or literature; and political or public discourse. The book engages principally with contemporary French thought and includes important new readings of work by Jacques Derrida, Helene Cixous, Maurice Blanchot, and Jean-Luc Nancy.

Back Jacket

What pleasure, what serious and playful pleasures I had reading this magnificent, substantial book. It is thoroughly knowledgeable, concerned both to guide the reader who is uncertain and to satisfy the one who is informed.--Helene Cixous, College International de Philosophie, Paris
"Those of us uprooted by the force of Derrida's writing are fortunate to have Kamuf's book to guide us."--L'Esprit Createur

Author Biography

Peggy Kamuf is the Marion Frances Chevalier Professor of French and Comparative Literature at the University of Southern California.