Given Time II
About this ebook
In 1991, Jacques Derrida published the first half of a seminar delivered from 1978 to 1979 on gifts and time, but the second installment (though expected) was not completed in his lifetime. Given Time II completes the seminar with eight sessions that showcase Derrida’s most advanced work on the problematic of the gift in Heidegger, with deep dives into some of the most difficult texts in the Heideggerian corpus, including “The Origin of the Work of Art,” “The Thing,” and “On Time and Being.”
Beyond Heidegger, Derrida engages Claude Lévi-Strauss, Marcel Mauss, Maurice Blanchot, Jacques Lacan, and others on the act of giving and receiving, the sacrificial gift, and more. Throughout, Derrida identifies a paradox of gift giving: for the gift to be received as a gift, it must not appear as such, since gifts often involve a cycle of debt and repayment. Given Time II is a uniquely Derridean treatment of an important subject in the work of Heidegger and beyond.
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About the author
Jacques Derrida (1930–2004) was director of studies at the École des hautes études en sciences sociales, Paris, and professor of humanities at the University of California, Irvine. Several of his books have been published in translation by the University of Chicago Press. Laura Odello is visiting associate professor of French and francophone studies and Italian studies at Brown University. She has translated many of Derrida’s works into Italian. Peter Szendy is the David Herlihy University Professor of Comparative Literature and the Humanities at Brown University. His many books include The Supermarket of the Visible: Toward a General Economy of Images. Geoffrey Bennington is Asa G. Candler Professor of Modern French Thought at Emory University. He is the author of several books on Derrida and translator of many others by him, and he is coeditor of The Seminars of Jacques Derrida series. Peggy Kamuf is professor emerita of French and comparative literature at the University of Southern California. She is coeditor of The Seminar of Jacques Derrida series.
