Jacques Derrida is probably the most famous European philosopher alive today. The University of Nebraska Press makes available for the first English translation of his most important work to date, Glas. Its appearance will assist Derrida's readers pro and con in coming to terms with a complex and controversial book. Glas extensively reworks the problems of reading and writing in philosophy and literature; questions the possibility of linear reading and its consequent notions of theme, author, narrative, and discursive demonstration; and ingeniously disrupts the positions of reader and writer in the text. Glas is extraordinary in many ways, most obviously in its typography. Arranged in two columns, with inserted sections within these, the book simultaneously discusses Hegel's philosophy and Jean Genet's fiction, and shows how two such seemingly distinct kinds of criticism can reflect and influence one another. The customary segregation of philosophy, rhetoric, psychoanalysis, linguistics, history, and poetics is systematically subverted.
In design and content, the books calls into question "types" of literature (history, philosophy, literary criticism), the ownership of ideas and styles, the glorification of literary heroes, and the limits of literary representation.
- ISBN10 0803265816
- ISBN13 9780803265813
- Publish Date 1 January 1990 (first published 28 December 1986)
- Publish Status Out of Print
- Out of Print 11 July 2009
- Publish Country US
- Imprint University of Nebraska Press
- Format Paperback (US Trade)
- Pages 262
- Language English