Get Free Shipping on orders over $79
Threshold Phenomena : Derrida and the Question of Hospitality - Michael Naas

Threshold Phenomena

Derrida and the Question of Hospitality

By: Michael Naas

Hardcover | 20 August 2024

At a Glance

Hardcover


$320.75

or 4 interest-free payments of $80.19 with

 or 

Ships in 15 to 25 business days

Threshold Phenomena reexamines Jacques Derrida's thinking of hospitality, from his well-known writings of the 1990s to his recently-published seminars on the same topic. The book follows Derrida's rereading of several central figures and texts on hospitality (Sophocles' Oedipus at Colonus, Kant's Perpetual Peace, Levinas's Totality and Infinity) and his attempt to rethink questions surrounding not only private but also public hospitality in the form of immigration law, the contemporary treatment of migrants or stateless peoples, and the establishment of cities of asylum.
Naas develops many of the central themes of Derrida's seminar-the relationship between hospitality and teletechnology (telephone, internet, cyberspace, etc.), the role of fatherlands and mother tongues in hospitality, questions of purity, immunity, and xenophobia, and the possibility of extending hospitality beyond the human-to animals, plants, gods, and clones. Reframing Derrida's approach to ethics, Naas reconsiders the relationship between hospitality and deconstruction, concluding that hospitality is not merely a theme to be treated by deconstruction but one of the best ways of describing its work.
Naas's book turns around a figure that Derrida himself returns to several times throughout the seminar: the threshold-a figure of hospitality par excellence, but also, in his seminars, another name for what Derrida in the 1960s began calling differance. Threshold Phenomena concludes that Derrida's seminar on hospitality is one of the best introductions we have to Derrida's work in general and one of the surest signs of its continuing relevance, a seminar that is at once fascinating and engaging in its own right and necessary for analyzing today's increasingly nationalistic and xenophobic political climate.

Industry Reviews
An exceptional achievement. Highly recommended.-- "Choice Reviews" Naas's book accompanies and enlightens Derrida's seminar with a particularly hospitable form of commentary whose relaxed ease is a real achievement.---Penelope Deutscher, Northwestern University This is the fullest treatment of Derridean hospitality to date and the only one that builds upon the recently published versions of his Hospitality seminar. It is also a pedagogical tour de force, enabling engagements on different levels: with Derrida as a teacher and humorist, as a public intellectual, and as a champion of the undocumented.---Diane Rubenstein, Cornell University

More in History of Western Philosophy

Letters from a Stoic : The Ancient Classic - Seneca

RRP $24.95

$21.75

13%
OFF
On the Shortness of Life : The Stoic Classic - Lucius Annaeus Seneca

RRP $24.95

$21.75

13%
OFF
Discipline Is Destiny : The Power of Self-Control - Ryan Holiday

RRP $24.99

$21.75

13%
OFF
A Sand County Almanac : And Sketches Here and There - Aldo Leopold
Mini Philosophy : A Small Book of Big Ideas - Jonny Thomson
Right Thing, Right Now : Good Values. Good Character. Good Deeds. - Ryan Holiday
Letters from a Stoic : The Penguin Classics L210 - Lucius Annaeus Seneca

RRP $22.99

$20.75

10%
OFF
Thus Spoke Zarathustra : Penguin Classics - Friedrich Nietzsche

RRP $26.99

$22.99

15%
OFF
Ethics : Penguin Classics - Benedict De Spinoza

RRP $26.99

$22.99

15%
OFF
Critique of Pure Reason : Penguin Classics - Immanuel Kant

RRP $32.99

$26.99

18%
OFF
Beyond Good and Evil : Penguin Classics - Friedrich Nietzsche

RRP $17.99

$16.75

The Nicomachean Ethics : Penguin Classics - Aristotle
Discourses and Selected Writings : Penguin Classics - Epictetus
Meditations : Popular Penguins : Popular Penguins - Marcus Aurelius
Meditations : The Philosophy Classic - Marcus Aurelius

RRP $24.95

$21.75

13%
OFF
The Nicomachean Ethics : Penguin Classics - Aristotle

RRP $26.99

$22.99

15%
OFF
Socrates : The Great Philosophers - Anthony Gottlieb

RRP $16.99

$15.99

Meditations : Penguin Classics - Marcus Aurelius

RRP $17.99

$16.75