Alienation After Derrida

Alienation After Derrida rearticulates the Hegelian-Marxist theory of alienation in the light of Derrida's deconstruction of the metaphysics of presence. Simon Skempton aims to demonstrate in what way Derridian deconstruction can itself be said to be a critique of alienation. In so doing, he argues that the acceptance of Derrida's deconstructive concepts does not necessarily entail the acceptance of his interpretations of Hegel and Marx.

In this way the book proposes radical reinterpretations, not only of Hegel and Marx, but of Derridian deconstruction itself. The critique of the notions of alienation and de-alienation is a key component of Derridian deconstruction that has been largely neglected by scholars to date. This important new study puts forward a unique and original argument that Derridian deconstruction can itself provide the basis for a rethinking of the concept of alienation, a concept that has received little serious philosophically engaged attention for several decades.

Review: It is widely recognised that we live in a time which is more resistant than eighteenth and nineteenth century thinkers knew how to be to teleological conceptions of a final end of history. The classical idea that history would culminate in the realisation of a condition in which human beings are no longer alienated from themselves is no longer convincing.

The work of Jacques Derrida has seemed to many to provide a radical critique of the classical idea - and hence also of the classical emancipatory project - of 'dealienation'. In this faithful and scholarly review of the Derridean critique of teleologism Skempton convincingly shows that the idea of dealienation is neither theoretically indefensible nor simply outdated. - Simon Glendinning, Reader in European Philosophy, European Institute, London School of Economics and Political Science.