Jacques Derrida is arguably the foremost philosopher of the humanities and their place in the
university. Over his long career he was concerned with the humanities' fate status place and
contribution. Through his deconstructive readings and writings Derrida reinvented the Western
tradition by attending closely to those texts which constitute it. He redefined its procedures
and protocols questioning and commenting upon the relationship between commentary and
interpretation the practice of quotation the delimitation of a work and its singularity its
signature and its context: the whole form of life of literary culture together with the
textual practices and conventions that shape it. From early in his career Derrida occupied a
marginal in-between space - simultaneously textual literary philosophical and political - a
space that permitted him a freedom to question to speculate and to draw new limits to
humanitas. With an up-to-date synopsis review and critique of his writings this book
demonstrates Derrida's almost singular power to reconceptualize and reimagine the humanities
and examines his humanism in relation to politics and pedagogy.
