Eftichis Pirovolakis

Written in the aftermath of the deaths of the French philosophers Jacques Derrida (1930-2004) and Paul Ricoeur (1913-2005), this book is an important and innovative study of the contentious relation between deconstruction and hermeneutics. Offering close readings of Derrida's and Ricoeur's writings on phenomenology, psychoanalysis, structuralist linguistics, and Levinasian ethics, Eftichis Pirovolakis introduces the motif of 'improbable encounters,' and explicates why the two thinkers may be said to be simultaneously close to each other and separated by an unbridgeable abyss. Pirovolakis complicates any facile distinction between these movements, which are two of the most influential streams of continental thought, and questions a certain pathos with respect to the distance separating them. Pirovolakis also translates Derrida's brief tribute to Ricoeur: "The Word: Giving, Naming, Calling," which appears here in English for the first time. The book is essential reading for anyone immersed in continental philosophy or literary theory.

Improbable Encounters between Deconstruction and Hermeneutics

Reading Derrida and Ricoeur

Dorothea Olkowski

This volume addresses the issue of freedom in the philosophy of Deleuze and Guattari. This is all the more challenging in that Deleuze-Guattari almost never use the term freedom, preferring instead, the concept of the refrain. The essays collected in the volume show that freedom has been understood in a remarkably narrow sense and that in fact freedom operates as the refrain in every realm of thought and creation. The motivating approach in these essays is Deleuze-Guattari’s emphasis on the irreality of media and capitalistic sign regimes, which they perceive to have taken over even the practices of philosophy, the arts, and science. By offering a clear and engaging treatment of the underexplored issue of freedom, this volume moves the discussion of Deleuze-Guattari’s philosophy forward in ways that will appeal to researchers in Continental philosophy and a wide range of other disciplines.

Eftichis Pirovolakis

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