Modern history

The World after the End of the World: A Spectro-Poetics

The World after the End of the World: A Spectro-Poetics

In this book, Kas Saghafi argues that the notion of "the end the world" in Derrida's late work is not a theological or cosmological matter, but a meditation on mourning and the death of the other. He examines this and several other tightly knit motifs in Derrida's work: mourning, survival, the phantasm, the event, and most significantly, the term salut, which in French means at once greeting and salvation. An underlying concern of The World after the End of the World is whether a discourse on salut (saving, being saved, and salvation) can be dissociated from discourse on religion. Saghafi compares Derrida's thought along these lines with similar concerns of Jean-Luc Nancy's. Combining analysis of these themes with reflections on personal loss, this book maintains that, for Derrida, salutation, greeting, and welcoming is resistant to the economy of salvation. This resistance calls for what Derrida refers to as a "spectro-poetics" devoted to and assigned to the other's singularity.

Abbreviations

Prologue: Salut—A Spectro-Poetics

The End of the World

Chapter 1. The World after the End of the World

Intact

Chapter 2. Safe, Intact: Derrida, Nancy, and the “Deconstruction of Christianity”

Death

Chapter 3. Derrida Is the Death of Death

Resurrection

Chapter 4. Nancy’s Resurrection

Survivance

Chapter 5. The Desire for Survival?

Chapter 6. For a Time: The Time of Survival

Chapter 7. Dying Alive: The Phantasmatics of Living-Death

Notes

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