Afterword

legacy

Lubomir Doležel

pp. 174-178

in: Michael Thomas, The reception of Derrida, Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan, 2006

Abstract

In his readings of Benjamin, de Man, Kant, Nietzsche and Marx, to name but five prominent examples from the preceding chapters, we have seen that Derrida has been engaged with the question of an intellectual legacy and inheritance. With the notion of spectrality Derrida gathers these themes together to perhaps greatest effect. His thoughts in the related areas of the proper name, the signature, mourning, inheritance and spectrality are all the more significant when they are used, as suggested here, to consider the reception of Derrida's own work, especially that of the word deconstruction and all that it has been heir to over the last four decades.