Jacques Derrida, Thinking What Comes, eds. Geoffrey Bennington, Kas Saghafi, two volumes, Edinburgh University Press, March 2024 – volume 1; volume 2

In two volumes, Geoffrey Bennington and Kas Saghafi present the majority of Jacques Derrida’s untranslated, and previously uncollected, essays and interviews. Dating mostly from 1992 to 2004, these writings offer a fuller picture of Derrida’s biography, theoretical engagements and the stakes of his social and political investments. In the interviews in Essays, Interviews, and Interventions by Jacques Derrida: Thinking What Comes, Volume 1, Derrida proposes the foundation of a new European political culture, discusses the strengths of Nelson Mandela, and reflects on the archive. He also considers his experience of political life, his relationship to institutions (particularly the Collège international de philosophie), and his views on ‘intellectualism’. Whether writing about public health, Palestine, or the notion of the promise, Derrida is razor-sharp and impassioned. These volumes allow significant insight into his mature thought.

… Institutions, Inventions, and Inscriptions by Jacques Derrida: Thinking What Comes, Volume 2 collects Derrida’s writings on friends including Emmanuel Levinas, Alain David, Louis Marin, Marie-Louise Mallet, Safaa Fathy, Mathieu Bénézet and Jos Joliet. It also features interviews that illuminate his experience at school, his writing habits, the relation he saw between philosophical discourse to the ‘poetic’, and his views on the singularity of literature and fiction. Whether writing about racism and anti-Semitism, filiation and fidelity, or hospitality and responsibility, Derrida is razor-sharp and impassioned. These volumes allow significant insight into his mature thought.